Sense of doom

My grandmother started coughing up blood last night. She's in the hospital now. She's had a bunch of scans. The staff are wearing masks around her, because "it might be TB." Ricky and Marina are both there with her today.

Ricky will be able to stay with her there tomorrow. See, he got fired from the taxi company. A second accident was enough to convince even the high school buddy who had taken him on (and kept him on for over seven years) that he wasn't worth the trouble. (The first accident? Somehow the accelerator hit the floor, as a six-year-old was trying to climb into the taxi. Marina told me about that one, and about how her painkillers were going missing, when I was last there. It was an unfortunate conjunction, as she was only too aware.)

This means that they're living off Marina's income. It also means that they have no transportation but buses and trains. Ricky asked the ambulance to take her to the hospital that's sort of on a bus line that goes by the apartment. Conveniently, Marina is working further down the same bus line. She'll be putting in an evening shift with Nana.

The detail that killed me? They've put a baby monitor into Nana's bedroom. That's how she got Ricky up when she started coughing.
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I re-checked Cornell's stats today. In my age group, 31.3 percent of cycles result in pregnancies; 20.6 percent in live births. What exactly do they mean by "pregnancy"? Gestational sac in the uterus, actually. So that's taking out the chemicals and the ectopics already. And I'm not yet past that threshold -- and just looking at that final number makes it seem like too much, like I cannot be that lucky, it is too damn low to allow hope, why did I do all of this again?
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Dr. Wow asked the publisher to extend our deadline by a week. It's a fucking good thing he's thousands of miles away from me. I am currently regenerating some very slow pictures and stewing.
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A ray of light? Radio Nigel. That's my 80's. (Ah, if only someone would stream WLIR's Screamers of the Week...)

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Oy. Stress all around.

I've been following along enough to know who Marina is, but who is ******?

[Emma Jane]

A stress-related misuse of a real name, that's who... oy indeed.

I do try to keep a cheat sheet on the "about" page...

[Simone]

I wish you luck, hope and the body memory of "I did this once before..." I hope that you're on the lucky side of the Cornell statistics.

Simone

[Jody]

There's no reason you can't be in that lucky slice of the statistical pie.

I'm sorry about Nana, and the relatives. Stress doesn't seem like a big enough word to capture it, really.

[ivfcycler]

bon courage.