aaaaakkkkk. Times, oh, a bazillion.

My brother called me last night. My brother does not often call me, but I don’t think any of us are really big phoners. I hate calling people and suspect I may harbor some sort of minor phobia about it. I can’t recall my brother ever calling me until a few years ago when our mother landed in the hospital due to a blood clot in her lung. My father never used to call me either – Mama was always the Offical Phoner, and I still remember the sheer terror I felt waaaaay back ages ago, over ten years ago because we were in our last house, when I answered the phone and it was Daddy calling, and he was just making all this casual chit-chat and the whole time I was internally screaming, WHY ARE YOU CALLING!!! WHAT’S HAPPENED TO MAMA!!!!! Turned out he just called because he knew we were looking around for a VW Bug and someone he knew had one for sale. But seriously, my heart basically stopped for like five minutes till he finally got around to telling me why he was calling.

But that’s really not my point at all. Daddy calls me all the time now, since Mama is no longer able to be the Official Family Phoner. That’s not my point either. My brother calling was my point, and even that’s not as weird as it used to be. In the last couple of years I’ve probably talked to my brother on the phone more total minutes than we’ve talked on the phone our entire lives previously.

Anyhow. He called because he was really about to go careening over the edge. And my brother is not an over-the-edge kind of guy. There were several things driving him over the edge last night. One being that Daddy did get to come home yesterday, at long last. Which is great, of course. What isn’t so great is that he came home with bandaging that has to be done, and although we all thought that the VA was sending a Home Health Care nurse out daily to change the bandages, J had just discovered that the Home Health Care Nurse was actually only coming out to show someone ELSE how to change the bandages. And it’s not JUST changing bandages, which even I could probably manage with a minimum of turning white and passing out. As long as I could do it without really looking. Kind of like I watch House without really looking. It’s also cleaning the two big deep quarter-sized holes and packing them with gauze. And it’s twice a day.

"WHAT??!!?!???" I shrieked.

"I CAN’T DO THAT!!!!" he shrieked. "I CAN’T DO THAT, I’LL PASS OUT!!!! I CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT IT!!!!!"

"OHMYGOD I CAN’T DO THAT EITHER!!! I’LL PASS OUT!!!! I MAY THROW UP JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!!!!!" I shrieked right back. Yes, we are both very very very squeamish. I still clearly remember my brother playing with a mini-stapler in church, poking a hole in his finger, seeing blood, and collapsing in the floor. And I very nearly joined him. And we were teenagers. Neither of us can handle blood, bodily fluids, or anything the slightest bit icky. At ALL.

So we shrieked back and forth awhile in horror and disbelief. Then we calmed down and tried discussing it like rational adults. He said the SIL may be able to handle it. She’s not squeamish, and actually works in a medical setting. Her last job was admitting people to the emergency room at the local hospital, so she’s seen her share of blood and bodily fluids. And one of his kids, Goth Chick, thinks she can do it. But we were both horrified that the VA would send someone home who has open gaping quarter sized wounds that need to have gauze packed into them daily. We’ll KILL him!!! We said. He’ll end up getting a horrible infection and dying because we are, NEWS FLASH!!! NOT trained medical professionals who know how to pack gauze into open wounds without filling it with germs and without passing out ourselves!!!!

So I said I’d call around today and see why in the HELL they are making US do that, and find out what exactly we’d have to do to get the Home Health Care people to do the Icky Bandage Changing. Because, seriously, if I could handle stuff like that I’d have gone into nursing myself and be making way more money than I am checking out graduating seniors, that’s for sure.

Today I get on the phone between calls from panicky non-graduating seniors and their mommies and their daddies, and I get the nurse practitioner at the VA. Who tells me that no, we can’t get someone else to it, we’ll just have to do it ourselves because that’s what families do and we are going to have to just buck up and stop being such great big wimps, because they send people home with WAY worse wounds than that. She said it a little more nicely of course. And said it’s a "dry" wound and it doesn’t have to be kept sterile – as in you don’t have to use sterile gloves and stuff – so although there’s a chance of infection, as with any wound, it’s not as dire as we thought. And she gave me the number for the home health people (they are called Tarheel Home Health which seems like a really odd name to me even though we are in NC, and I keep thinking it’s "Tarwheels" which was the name of our local skating rink when I was a kid) and they told me the nurse will actually be visiting a bunch of times – fifteen all together – and he’ll have a bath person and a physical therapist visiting too. So we aren’t being abandoned and left to our own inadequate, non-medical, overly-squeamish devices.

Tonight J called again and said the SIL had changed the bandage, and it wasn’t THAT bad.

The really scary thing is that she’s going away on Friday for a weekend with her friends that she’s been planning FOREVER. And I may have to do it myself Saturday. Unless the niece can do it. When I realized that, I nearly fainted on the spot. My best friend Kim the Nurse said she’d come over Sunday and check it out for us, but she’s working till then in Johnson City Tennessee and can’t come by.

The other really bad thing is that my mother was MUCH worse after Daddy came home. Which makes no sense at all. But she was being very mean to him and mean to the SIL and the nieces and telling them that she would do what she wanted and she didn’t have to listen to them and she was mad because everyone was ignoring her when the nurse was there giving the bandage-changing demonstration. This is so unlike my mother that it is pretty much beyond comprehension. But her doctor said that’s what Altzheimer’s patients do- become like children. Bratty children, apparently. J was beside himself about that too, and he’s really patient with her. But having her be mean to the SIL and the niece after all they’ve done is more than he can take. Even though we all know she can’t help it. Last night we were talking about nursing homes. It’s beyond horrible to have to even consider that. But if Daddy can’t rest and have some peace, he won’t get well.

Today, though, she was better. So maybe we can just check them out and see about getting her on a list. If they have lists. And talk to him about Assisted Living places, which might be an option too since he’s determined to take care of her as long as he can.

All in all, it’s been a pretty darned depressing few days.

And I’m behind reading, I’m behind noting, we’re crazy busy at work, and Baker B and I are going back to Asheville Friday night.

So… waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!