Tep, I just caught up. So glad you had a wonderful shower and that your families get you so well. So sorry about the stress with your dad, though. I am sending healthy planful vibes his way.

I'm glad you're going to the doctor, Andi. You might also go old school and try Vicks vapor rub or Save the Baby on your chest in the short term.

I hope that they not only sort all this out, but are able to come up with a plan to prevent it from happening again that is a plan my dad can understand and stick to. He worries me.

I'm glad that they, at least, have something they know is wrong and are trying to solve. Very scary.

And your shower sounds really nice. I'm glad you had that even with the rest of the stress of life right now.

I'm glad you're going to the doctor, Andi.

eta: Yes, this. Sometimes you don't realize how bad you feel until you are given a way to feel better.

She is also brilliant and the last few months her level of malnutrition has caused memory lapses and the inability to focus. Enough that she couldn't deny it.

This rings so true to me. I support people truly being in charge of themselves and that includes choosing not treat but, damn, things like malnutrition and dehydration and electrolyte imbalances really affect the ability to do so. We thought something was wrong with Dad for a month or two and he was just stubborn. In his case, it was brain cancer. And even with the best hindsight, it was terminal and no treatment was going to give him any enhanced quality of life. But the fact is that if we'd been able to get him to a doctor and checked out sooner, he at least might have had a chance to truly comprehend his situation and choose for himself what he wanted. It's so complicated. And heart wrenching as well.

Bunches of ~ma for fixing your dad, Teppy.

Bodies = complicated.

Appointment made for 10:45.

Quick and easy fix~ma, Andi.

Meh. I haven't actually felt dizzy today, but I went anyway since it was so bad yesterday. Doc says it's viral rather than bacterial, eustachian tube dysfunction, swollen up so fluid can't drain from ears and sinuses. Recommended I use the neti pot more often since I have one.

In a counterproductive move, I want to kill my dad. I just called him to see how he's doing, and he sounds basically fine. I asked him if he saw his doctors, and he said yes, and his sodium level is fine now. (I have no reason to disbelieve this, except that he kept calling it his "soda level," and not as a joke, so I begin to wonder how much of his conversation with his doctors is being accurately relayed to me.)

I asked him if he talked to his doctors about the medication causing his bad side effects (notably the confusion and very VERY bad tremors), and he said that "the doctor said none of his patients have ever had those kind of problems because it isn't a strong medication."

And I lost it. I started yelling at him, right there in my work hallway on my cell phone. I don't doubt that his doctor might not have seen any patients with such bad side effects, because not all drugs affect every patient the exact same way -- but there has to be a patient who's the first one the doctor has seen with those problems, and maybe patient #1 is Dad. The actual product information that the manufacturer has to include with the drug SAYS IT CAUSES TREMORS AND CONFUSION.

Dad said, "Well, you don't know what my doctors know."

All right then, stop fucking asking me for advice from now on. Ask your fucking doctors. I'm done.

I don't think I know *more* than doctors, nor have I ever claimed to. I don't have that kind of training and experience, nor have I ever claimed to. But I fucking well know how to READ, and I know how to comprehend and interpret actual research done on medications.

Whatever. I'm done. I care about what happens to him, I love him, I want him to be as healthy as possible. But I'm done trying to offer any useful, possibly helpful, input. Fuck it. Let his doctors figure it out. Fuck it.

Teppy, that just sucks when parents are that stubborn.

Even if he understood everything perfectly, his condition is draining more than just him. And right now? Yeah, I think taking a caregiver break (as opposed to a daughter break) is probably self defense for you, and for your relationship with him.

It's a shame he doesn't understand the amazing resource he has in you. My grandmother was the same way -- she wouldn't do anything my mom or uncle told her, but if a doctor said it, it was suddenly magic.