It's been a long time since I've posted... I've been extraordinarily busy with my day job and the voiceover sessions at night. Went to Vegas with my husband at the first of August for a business event of his. It was okay - nothing to write home about.
Today is my brother's 49th birthday. I have no idea what to get for him -- what do you get the guy that has nothing? He lives very simply (not by choice -- more by necessity). Maybe I'll get him a gift certificate to Trader Joe's. He can always use food.
The thing that's turned my world upside down, though, is Mom. She 's having some awful health issues, and I'm worried sick. About 15 years ago, she had a second hip replacement surgery on her right side. They put in a Titanium and Teflon ball joint attached to the long bone in her leg. It was a Godsend at the time and fixed what was a very painful issue.
Since then, she was diagnosed with AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration - http://www.amd.org/). She went through several years of painful surgeries and needle-related treatments on the affected eye, but in the end, she completely lost her left eye to the disease.
Well, on August 8th, two things happened: The first was that her Titanium hip joint broke through the pelvic socket bone. They had not replaced that and she had been walking and shoveling the driveway and gardening on that hip for the past 15 years, and all the while, the metal ball joint was wearing away at the socket. She has an unbelievably high threshold of pain, and she occasionally complained about soreness, but the doctors said that it had to have been agonizing for at least the past five years.
The second thing that happened was a result of the first... The pain from that event caused a major spike in her blood pressure, which in turn caused a blood vessel to burst behind the retina of her remaining eye. She woke up the next morning unable to walk, and unable to see.
Her eye had filled with blood, and she said all she could see was a bright red cloud. It has since turned into a large black cloud that covers the central part of her vision. All she can see is some slivers of color and movement on the outside corners of her eye. Her eye doctor said it's AMD, and there is some hope because they have developed new treatments that didn't exist several years ago when they were treating the first eye.
However, she has to go in and have the pelvic socket fixed. The doctors have manufactured a replacement hip socket and will have to cut away about a third of her pelvis and replace it with this prosthetic joint, using a cement made from bone powder to attach it to the remaining bone.
This surgery was scheduled for August 31st, but her eye doctor said that cannot happen. She would be receiving blood thinners during and after the surgery to help avoid clots, but those same blood thinners could completely destroy the already weakened blood vessels in her eye. So they want to do a new laser therapy treatment on her eye FIRST, before she goes in for the hip surgery.
In the meantime, she is battling deep depression, serious pain, and fear. She has been living on her own since my father passed away, and I think that it's been her ability to be independent that has kept her lively and happy. If she loses both her eyesight and her ability to walk at the same time, I don't think she'll be able to make it very far after that. She's been putting on a brave face, but I can hear the strain in her voice.
So I leave this Saturday to go be with her. I don't know how long I will be there, but I will stay with her as long as it takes. My husband will be remaining in LA to keep the home fires burning, and I have arranged with my day job to be able to access the computer system and other business tools in case I need to stay with Mom for several months.
What this will do to my voiceover career, I have no idea. But that isn't a concern right now. Right now, all I care about is Mom.
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