I just woke up from a dream that I had when I was 17. It was the same exact dream I think, although some of the details could be different (as I never wrote dreams down that far back). I was working with most of my family in a warehouse of some sort. All of my family was there. Not just my parents, siblings, and wives/husbands married into the family but my dad’s grandparents, my dad’s uncles, etc. It was a full Bradley job fair sort of thing. In the middle of the warehouse was a huge display of alcohol, 6 packs, cases, single bottles of all types of alcohol (but mostly beer). My family was drinking it, all of us including myself. I wasn’t hugely drunk and we were all waiting around. Everyone knew someone was supposed to lose their shit, start knocking over the bottles and start a fight. You could see everyone glance around at each other (meanwhile we were working and drinking in the warehouse).
It was an uncomfortable time and at one point I yelled “Fuck It” and started smashing the bottles and trying to start a fight with family members. One of the several I tried to start a fight with was my father, but in reality he is not even close to capable of fighting with me, unless it was going to be one he musters his last reserves and uses a knife and something else to end it (he still has one good fight). Also present was my elder family (that I met as a young young child and who are now mostly dead). It felt weird, like I was fulfilling some position that was sort of passed down (yes I can see a whole lot of meaning there).
I awoke upset (which is what I am doing here now), frustrated at myself that I would even imagine doing it. I can blame part of this on a rough day (maybe week), holidays, winter, and not exercising or eating right lately. Most of that is changing as the holidays are basically over, we have stopped eating holiday foods so my normal eating habits are coming back (and may do I feel chunky right now) and I am back exercising today.
I think the other part is just pure anxiety. My mom went in for minor surgery on her heart. She was going to have a medicated stent put in. Lately she has been suffering minor heart issues, they have her on nitro to relieve the symptoms. Unfortunately they got in there today and found they couldn’t do anything due to some small bleed that they couldn’t find and due to the fact that the narrowing is at the bivalve on the bottom forward part of her heart, meaning a normal (non-medicated) stent has a greater than 50% of having to be fixed again with even harder conditions to fix, this is complicated by her diabetes).
She isn’t in any danger, the anemia/bleed has been going on for awhile and she isn’t going to die soon. However, they don’t want to put in the effective stent until they find the bleed because she will have to take Plavix for at least a year (and that would make her bleed even more). The other option they have is a bypass surgery. The surgeon is very very confident about my mom being ok, he said either the medicated stent if they find the bleed in the next 6 weeks, or a bypass surgery will work just as good and it should make everything fine. He also reassured us that she will not die anytime soon and its ok to take some time to look for the bleed. Also worst case scenario they put the stent in and later can still do the bypass.
So yesterday (Monday) was a 12 hour day of driving to Bellingham and back and waiting in the hospital room for her. It left me exhausted, not counting the last two weeks of no real sleep. So, I should be sleeping like a baby now, but instead going to have weird dreams that I am replaying my family’s issues in my life.
A Girl U Should Know 