Oh sweet zombie Jesus, SH. That's how you found out? How unbelievably sucktastic.

Barb, that neighborhood is close-ish to us.

Calling parents, right. I will do that once I am done eating dinner.

Why do parents not want to share these things with us? I found out my father was in the hospital when his ex wife called me to check in and see how i was handling the news. *sigh* "I didn't want to bother you". Right? Wrong! It's usually worse to hear it from a third party.

With me it was because I was the "baby." Younger by nine years than the Prince of Darkness and fourteen years than my sister. Never mind that my sister tells me everything and well does Mom know it. I think, actually, she depends on that, to spare herself of having to tell me anything.

The other reason is because my mother has some freakish privacy issues along the lines of "it's none of anyone's goddamned business."

My mother was going to go into hospital and have her gall bladder removed without telling us kids anything.

We were 15 and 12, living at home. Like we weren't going to notice she was gone? Crazy people. But I hide medical stuff from them because they deal really badly with it. They get all clingy which makes it worse.

Yeah, our parents are both on the same lines as that. It's major surgery, SO's dad. You're having an organ removed. WE WANT TO KNOW! It only came up because we were traveling halfway across the country to help out with my mom's surgery, which was happening the week after. Then we felt like crap because we didn't offer to help out with his dad's surgery. BECAUSE WE DIDN'T KNOW!

Sorry for the asscaps. I can't asscap at our parents, so.

Anyway, I think all parents are like that.

And I still didn't call my mom, even after saying here I was going to. And now it's 10:30 there so I can't. This was easier when they lived in Hawaii and I could call at midnight my time.

Barb, I'm sorry you're having to deal with this, though. Both of our families were not thrilled when we moved away from them, and they totally understood the reasons. But you just have to stand by it and do what's best for you and your immediate family.

My parents have stopped telling me right away when a car hits my dad on his bike (alarming frequency) or, you know, when he falls off a cliff in a fucking cave during a S&R training and has to be carried out. Not like he's 67 or anything.

Parents... My mom got married (4th time) without telling me until after the knot was tied - I hadn't even know she was seriously dating, and I didn't know the man at all. She also once went for a biopsy without telling us that anything might be wrong, and I'm pretty sure she'd have had surgery without telling us. Part privacy issues, but mostly "I didn't want to bother you" stuff.

I can't say much about parents not telling their children, since I put off telling my mother about the cancer. I wanted to be able to tell her just what was going on, which I couldn't really know until the surgery. I couldn't deal with her worry and my own.

I had to give up on Sheri Tepper. The anvils hurt my head too much. A few writers have at least attempted very alien aliens. Vernor Vinge's aliens in A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are good examples. James White wasn't a great writer by any means, but his Sector General aliens are a valiant effort at imagining aliens with very different mindsets and biologies.

One thing to try with bad antibiotic reactions is trying to take them at different times and with different amounts of food. Taking antibiotics with food in your stomach is usually the best policy, but not always.

Vernor Vinge's aliens in A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are good examples

Those were great. I could stand to read those again.