Furby Wranglings

Last week and a half was crammed with bad news: Thanksgiving went all right, had a nice visit/meal with Husband's Aunt. I'd planned to go visit Mom on Saturday, but Riza started acting up about 20 minutes into the trip. It started with the Cruise Control suddenly conking out; I tried a couple times to reset it, but it didn't take. A little later Riza started experiencing odd jerks and surges; my immediate thought was transmission problems (I admit it, I'm paranoid about my cars' transmission systems). While I might have made it to Mom's, I didn't like the idea of driving 90 miles home in the dark under those conditions. So I pulled over at the next exit, stopped the car, turned off the engine and called both Mom and Husband to let them know I was turning around and why. I was very disappointed, because as I told Mom, 'I had a cooler full of Thanksgiving I wanted to share with her'. Oddly enough, there were NO problems during the trip back, which leads me to think (and my Goodyear mechanic to provisionally agree) that it may have been my cruise control still acting up, because I did try to re-set it several times before pulling over and turning off the engine, which would have cancelled any CC commands in the system. My mechanic advised me NOT to take any trips out of town until he could check it out, which will be this coming Wednesday.

One good thing that resulted: Husband took me to see "Ghostbusters-Afterlife" that evening to make up for my disappointment. Great movie! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Cast, Director and Special Effects were all A +....

The REAL bad news starts here.

Older sister is in the hospital. Before Thanksgiving she'd finally gone in to get those odd masses in her lungs biopsied. Still don't know what they actually are, other than slightly larger than five years ago. But following the Biopsy procedure, Older Sister was in almost constant pain and occasionally coughing up blood. Mom and Younger Sister basically forced her to the doctor's office Wednesday (after she tried to cancel the follow-up visit 'because she hurt too much') and she was admitted. Several scans later, they discovered fluid not in her lungs, but in the lung cavity. The plan was to transfer her to a larger hospital where they could drain the fluid, and maybe start treatment for whatever is going on with the lungs. But, larger hospital had no beds available, so Friday local hospital did their best to drain the fluid with some success, but Older Sister is still in some pain. Mom is worried, I'm worried, Younger sister is Worried. Maybe by Monday the doctors will have some idea on how to go forward.

Thursday, we heard about college friends: Rafe, who was on the college radio station staff, bookstore frequenter, Friday night D & D player, and one of the founding members of our local SCA chapter, and his 2nd wife were apparently murdered by her adult son sometime over the Thanksgiving weekend. One of their local friends had asked the county sheriff to do a welfare check, and the bodies were discovered Wednesday. I actually was not that close to Rafe (Husband barely knew him outside the SCA), but he was one of the core members of the group I tended to hang out with in college; Bree, Emtae and Cobett had all reconnected with him over Facebook in the last five years or so and would occasionally share news with the rest of us. We had supper with Bree Friday night and reminisced about the college days; she plans to go to the services on December 18th.

From Bree we heard details about our friend Julie, who is in the hospital in St. Louis with seizures. About 10 years ago she'd had surgery to remove a tumor from an optic nerve, with the immediate result of seizures (they had to go in through her brain) and blindness. Eventually she regained vision in one eye, and the seizures were under control, and for the past five years or so she'd been doing really well. From what we were told, the doctors were trying to reduce one or more of her meds to alleviate some unwanted side effects. Poor Julie! Her husband (another college friend) has been a rock of support. It just isn't fair that they have to go through this again!

Aaannnnd, closer to home: Cobett's general health has deteriorated to the point where he is actively considering going into Assisted Living Care.

Can we start the month over??? This is too much for the beginning of December!!!

At least Jethro's ear infection has finally cleared up.... and I thought Bel was fussy about the daily ear drops!