Amber's Abode

I'm still alive

It's about time I wrote in here again, I guess.  I haven't turned on the computer very much lately.  There has been a lot and nothing going on at the same time, which is pretty usual for me.

The biggest thing is that my best friend is sick, life threateningly so, according to most of his doctors.  Although they don't always know what they're talking about because he has outlived their original prediction by weeks.  About a month and a half ago, he came to play poker with me.  He played really well and had a great time.  Sometime the next day, he started acting really confused and sluggish and sleepy, unable to drive his chair correctly and forgetting things.  It was scary for all of us.  He went into the hospital to get checked out, and they said that it was the result of oxygen deprivation.  So they put him on oxygen, an antibiotic, and pain meds and sent him home.  Quite a handful of times in the next couple weeks we thought that we were going to lose him that night.  But he pulled through always, and still is.  Although currently he is not doing any oxygen or treatments besides pain medicine.  He knows what this may mean, but he seems as at peace as possible in his situation most of the time, and his body is so tired.  And he knows that myself and all his friends love him and will support whatever treatment decisions he makes.  And his mom has been a pretty good resource, though not perfect, so I'm not worried about his safety.

Those first couple weeks, I was over there anytime I was awake.  I felt that this was proof that I am a good friend.  But that space started to get really small with so many people there all the time, and nerves wore thin on all sides, so my friend started drawing some boundaries about times and amounts of visitors, both to maintain his independence and conserve energy.  Now when I go over it is usually for a couple of hours at a time, or in the evening to pray with him and his mom.  This seems to work well for everybody, but I still worry he will not think that I'm being a good friend.

I'm really trying, but I've never been close to anyone on this particular leg of their journey so far, so I'm having to figure out as I go what to do.  One of the reasons why I haven't blogged here in forever is because I thought it might be disrespectful to him to blog about it, but today I found I really needed to write something, so here I am.  If he reads this and finds it disrespectful in any way, I apologize and will change or delete it.

But there are other things going on for me as well.  This summer is winding down and my family decided to go home for the weekend without taking me, because nobody wanted to play caregiver for two nights.  This really really hurts.  Let's see, what else?

My bank account somehow arrived in the negative, probably because I got stuck downtown once recently and had to take a cab.  So none of my few automatic withdrawal things posted and so now I have to reopen accounts like Vongo (like an online Netflix where you watch movies on your computer) if I choose to.  Netflix has more selection and now computer viewing as well, so I think I will change.  But I hate having to worry about money.  On the good news side my dad has decided to start sending me some monthly again.  On the bad news side he sends it to my sisters and they divide it up and give it to me a little piece at a time, however they see fit, probably pocketing the rest.  This is really annoying.  I really need to find some kind of job I can do for PayPal donations or under the table money or something.

The nothing going on part comes because I still live here.  No real progress has been made on the foster home search yet.  Although my brother-in-law and sister picked out their top four choices, they left town and when they get back, they have to start work again, so I'm pretty much on my own, and no one is calling me back.  I will keep you updated.

I guess that's about it for now.  I hope you all are well and happy and enjoying the last couple weeks of summer.  I'll be back sooner next time.

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