Barely promoted

One day to go. One day to go. One day to go. One day to go...

I did sleep last night. And had nightmares. But, they were about everything in my life except the tenure decision.

Yesterday featured, and today will feature, truly soul-sucking meetings, the kind where I lose respect for people and for the college. Hours and hours of them. What message is the institution trying to send, exactly?

Annajane's been moved again. The weekend psychiatrist at the nursing home watched her in a state of "extreme agitation" for an hour, then sent her off to a psych hospital I'd never heard of, down in Metropolis. Websurfing revealed that it's in an awfully good neighborhood, is happy to take care of anorexics with religious dietary restrictions, and has a "geriatric psychiatric unit." The last is good news: it's expressly for people with dementia superimposed on a prexisting major psychiatric disorder. Even the guy on duty late on Saturday night said more cogent things about my mother's condition than I've yet heard.

I spoke with Annajane on Sunday afternoon. She could speak, actually. She wasn't sure what hospital she was in, or what county. But, she could put words together, and she managed some classic manicky racism and snobbery: "Oh, the nursing home was dreadful. They had _Mexican_ doctors." What about the last hospital? "Well, they didn't have _quality_ people there, you know.")

I'll try to talk with her new attending today. He's supposed to be back from his long weekend.

Meanwhile, I surged again. Entirely normal (for me) day 15, after another entirely normal (for me) 25 day cycle. My question, though: just how is the entirely normal (for me) accompanying acne in any way evolutionarily adaptive? What about the damn migraine? The two combined appear to form an effective species propagation prevention plan, really.

Academics at home

I'm late to this party. Laura at Apartment 11D has started quite a discussion over divisions of household labor—see the lively back-and-forth over at Crooked Timber, too. Unfortunately Beaker came to find me to go make dinner as I was reading through the debate... my attitude at that moment was not, shall we say, entirely constructive.

Beaker's not an academic, but he's got the credential, and his work comes in bursts of similar intensity.

The basic issues in how Beaker and I divide things just seem so, well, different from what most of those joining the discussion have brought up. A lot of it is tied up in his CF: he needs to eat, more than most of us, but often isn't hungry and always has huge restrictions on what he should eat. So, he hates dealing with food, and I do most of the menu decision making and a majority of the actual cooking. But, he does the dishes. But then I hang out in the kitchen and put away leftovers and wipe down counters while he does the dishes. Even though he often isn't in the kitchen when I'm cooking.

Mostly, we're both horrible slobs and don't do any other cleaning until we're about to have guests. He shouldn't use most cleaning chemicals, thanks to the fumes. So I do the bathrooms. But, he does the vacuuming, wearing a respirator, on the rare occasions it gets done.

I do all the laundry. He fears dealing with my clothes: what's delicate? what gets put away where?

But, he fixes everything, and there's an awful lot broken in our old house. And just a lot of necessary maintenance: draining and refilling the heating system. Shovelling snow. Putting plastic on the windows. Keeping the computer network going. Et cetera.

These days, I do the bills, but we've oscillated on that. And he's been doing more garden planning and maintenance than I have.

I think the only things that bother me are the food decision making, and ending up cooking by myself pretty regularly. Otherwise we have decent tradeoffs. And, I try to remember that he spends literally hours each day on medical self-maintenance. Which should count.

One small but relevant note: Beaker lived in a fraternity as an undergraduate, but one whose brothers did all their own cooking, cleaning, and maintenance. Okay, yes, when the word "fraternity" gets mentioned in Granolaton he gets some funny looks. But, after watching the brothers and alumni for ten years, I have to admit that they tend to marry pretty young and pretty happily.

Paranoia grows...

Last week, I went out to dinner with my department chair, his wife, and a guest speaker.

We went to the only expensive restaurant in Granolaton. While we were there, the dean dropped by our table and was introduced to the guest.

At no point did he make eye contact with me. Aiiiiiiieeeeeee!

At that dinner, my chair pointed out that, if anything were even slightly wrong with the case, the department would already have been told and asked for more information. Which hasn't happened.

But, still, aaiiiiiiiieeeeee!

Annajane's moved

She got transferred to the nursing home on Wednesday.

Web surfing reveals: in 2000 or so, this home was one of the worst in the state. Since then, they've changed management, hired a public relations firm, and have been trying to improve their reputation. They had a bed, and were willing to take a dementia patient with a psychiatric history. Dr. Loud has been there, and doesn't think they're so bad, according to Marla the hospital social worker.

One newsletter they have posted on their web site congratulates many staffers for their long years of service. It's not clear whether that's good or bad, given the history.

Yesterday I spoke with the admissions person; today, with the social worker, and with Ricky and my grandmother. My mother started on the third floor, but immediately got moved to the sixth floor, which is their secure dementia unit. They say she's been wandering and is anxious. But she's wearing her dentures and has been eating.

It's not clear what kind of medical followup there will be. I'm worried that they'll give her antipsychotics again—she had a bad episode after being started on Haldol a few months ago, and there's still some question of what role medication played in the current dreadful turn of events. The social worker gave me the name of her main nurse and of the psychiatrist who visits.

I didn't like either the admissions director or the social worker. Then again, who am I? Some fucking out-of-state relative barging in. Why should they listen to me?

They don't have phones in the rooms on the sixth floor. There's a payphone, and they suggested that I try calling the nursing station.

My mother's case manager Tom will be picking up her belongings from the adult home on Monday.

Ricky called, alarmed because Marla had been very blunt in describing my mother's prognosis to my grandmother ("She used the word 'hopeless!'"), and needing the address and phone number of the home. He then had to hang up and call back, because he hadn't brought pencil and paper with him to the phone. I asked to speak with Nanna. She's really, really sad. They'll go to visit this Sunday. I hope it isn't too horrible, and that they can stand going back. My mother has three roommates, all also suffering dementia.

Meanwhile, I'll be watching for cheap weekend fares.

I'm part of the problem!

With the full support of my profession and my institution, I've been helping to make us more like a third world county:

U.S. infant mortality has climbed for the first time in more than four decades, mainly because of complications associated with older women putting off motherhood and then having multiple babies via fertility drugs, the government said Wednesday.

Ready for the wait list crowd

Confront the horde clamoring for seats in your class like the stylish professorette does. Choose one item from each category:

• • Dark brown turtleneck.
  
  
  • Dark brown fitted jacket, buttoned to the neck.


• • Brown, beige and red plaid skirt, nearly to the ankle.
  
  
  • Brown, beige, and red paisley skirt, wrap, just past the knee.


• • Dark brown riding boots, low heel, tall.
  
  
  • Dark brown lace-up boots, low heel, tall.

One week to go...

... until the phone call from the dean. (Unless they change the date again, of course.)

Meanwhile:

I found my first unquestionably white hair while showering yesterday morning.

Annajane is being transferred to a nursing home today. (The social worker has never been there, but was very impressed they had a web site. Unfortunately, Google turns up their public relations company using the nursing home as a case study—just how much did they have to improve the dreadful reputation of this place, anyway?—higher than the nursing home's own site.)

My friend close to partuition gave birth yesterday, the day before she would have been induced. Oh, did she sound tired over the phone.

And we threw a little party for the wife of our coy candidate, working along the theme "Granolaton doesn't suck at all." I hope it's a good sign that she's visiting. And I hope they decide soon. He's off collecting offers.

Calling Annajane

(From February 8).

On the cordless phone at the nurses' station, the one that they can bring over to her.

11:00 a.m. They said she was asleep. Could I try back at 11:30, when they'd bring her lunch?

1:15 p.m. They seemed uncertain that she'd recognize a phone, talk into it, remember to hold it to her ear. They were right, for the most part. She didn't get any comprehensible words out, either, except for asking about the weather and a slow, angry "I... WILL... NOT..." directed to the aides, not to me. But she laughed when I told her about a bureaucratic catastrophe that I hit when I got back to Granolaton, and she was dramatically silent, then dropped the phone, when I asked how she was doing and how they were treating her.

During my visit, it seemed like she understood far more of what was being said than she could respond to. Those two responses during this call, the laughter and the angry silence, convince me even more.

The aides got bored with handing her back the phone before I did.

I'd have to guess she was in the restraining chair.

Dr. Direct absolves his specialty of responsibility

(From February 3)

Dr. Direct called my cellphone while I was standing at the train station. He's surprised by the improvement she's shown since a week ago, he says. He'd still like to do an EEG (apparently none has been done; when he commented on one last week, there had been some mix-up). He doesn't think it's CJD, because of the bounceback. In fact, he thinks she's mostly displaying a lot of the underlying mental illness now—of course, with some dementia. (Which doesn't mean she doesn't need to be in a nursing home.) He probably thinks that a medication reaction was what pushed her to her worst.

So, the neurologist thinks she's crazy, and the shrink thinks she's demented. How convenient! No one has to try to treat her (not that treatment has been particularly helpful, overall, ever), and the nurses and aides end up doing all the work.

How Annajane is doing

(From February 3)

Her level of lucidity varies wildly. She can usually be gotten to answer direct questions or follow direct commands. She can usually answer questions like, "What is your favorite color?," although it can take several tries to get an answer. She likes listening to me tell stories; during the third visit she dropped off to a nap while I was talking.

She recognizes people. She remembers things from day to day.

But, when she originates a subject or a sentence, she struggles, phoneme by phoneme, to get the words out. And most of the time they just don't make any sense. Most of the grammar is gone, too.

Quite often, she dissolves in angry tears, calling out "Hurry up!" or "NO... NO... NO..." or, one awful time, "Kill me! Kill me! I want to go to HELL!" Usually these outbursts are directed at the aide. She's crying or angry or both, a lot of the time. It's usually not clear why. The anger at caretakers goes way, way, back.

She isn't eating much. She can hold a fork or spoon, and will scoop things up, but she'll eat more if you feed it to her.

She's wearing diapers, although the aides try to get her to use the bathroom.

She clearly needs help to be fed, bathed, and clothed. The tranquilizers make it much easier for the staff to handle her. She can walk around; I think they're more afraid than they need to be about her falling.