Night and Day

I’ve not now slept in three days. Two nights were down to pure stress. I’d start to feel hot and agitated… Last night was something far worse.

After a good night — and I mean a *good* night — my Mum’s delirium came back worse. The poor thing has been suffering from the awful laxatives they gave her in the hospital. I’m beginning to think it some sick joke by somebody who thought it funny to deliver her back to the know-it-all-son who just wanted to protect his mother. Great situation given the role that fecal matter plays in UTI infections in older women…

I don’t know what to do other than push on. I know nobody rides in to help me. I know where this journey takes me and I’m not entirely certain at this point it doesn’t mean homeless.

So I push on because pushing on is the only thing I have left. I figure there’s a reason my father, my aunt, and two cousins are or were nurses. It must run in the genes. I’ve done things in the past day without batting an eye that would have made me faint at the thought just a few days ago. But this I guess is the truest manifestion of love that I know. Or that’s what I tell myself. I do it to save my sister from doing it when also hasn’t slept.

I especially care for my mother who didn’t deserve this — who does, asks the cynics — but, really, this really is wrong. A simple scan might yet unlock this puzzle (Monday I begin seeing if I can pursue that hope) or, certainly, a referral to an expert. Thus far, that hasn’t happened. Instead they just say another old lady has “dementia”, despite it not fitting any definition of dementia and being a match for every definition I’ve read of delirium. She also had low white blood cells on admission but infection was ruled out. I don’t know why. So many experts have no told me (or written) about those awful acute UTIs that present themselves with no other symptoms but delirium (and remember, my Mum has a whole lot of symptoms and still does).

I’m so tired and I have diminishing no options. We called out a duty GP tonight who turned up. He was nurse who, hearing about her urinary problems, pulled out a test tube and suggested we get a sample so our usual GP can dip it and send it to the lab. I didn’t bother explaining. I’m already broken and falling apart each and every day.

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Why Dunciad.com?

It’s a cool domain name and it was available. Yes, I know. Available. Crazy, isn’t it?

Really?

Yes. It also helps that it’s also my favourite satire written by Alexander Pope, one of the most metrically pure English poets who also knew his way around a crude insult or two. If you’ve not read it, you should give it a try.

So this is satire, right?

Can’t deny it. There will be some. But it’s also an experiment in writing and drawing, giving work away for free in order to see how many people are willing to support a writer doing his thing. It’s the weird stuff that I wouldn’t get published elsewhere in this word of diminishing demands and cookie-cutter tastes.