I had a freaking emotional breakdown at work today. I hate it when that happens. unfortunately, it happens all too frequently with me. Why? Because my life is a ridiculous roller coaster, and I can barely handle it. I went home after only an hour. Mary Jo, the district manager had come through and changed...EVERYTHING. I just wanted to...quit. I had done the trivia board to where each letter of TRIVIA was a different Christmas type...thing. The T was a tree, etc... Mary Jo told them to erase it yesterday. I thought they did it out of spite. I rewrote it today, and Chris (my boss) came in and told me Mary Jo wanted it gone. The customers had loved it, and it made me...happy to look at it. It was a tiny bit of Christmas that I was clinging to, and it got taken away. It's the little things that make you crumble, and I did just that. I didn't mean to, and I hate that it happened there... but it was bound to happen eventually. I was walking a very thin line.

Mom's back in the hospital. She didn't land there for any cancer related issues, she ended up there because she broke her hip. She got out of bed, and slipped, swung around and crashed against the side of the bed. After hours of suffering at home, she was brought by ambulance to Regions Hospital.

They had planned to do a pretty miraculous ball replacement surgery that would have her up and walking in a matter of days. Unfortunately, after further examination they detected a heart murmur. They decided she would have to be in the hospital for at least a week before they could operate.

I feel like the medical staff at Regions is really not taking care of her. She hasn't eaten anything since Thanksgiving, and they haven't fed her via IV yet. Her mouth is so dry that she can't swallow, so they gave her pills to swallow...??? They didn't make sure she swallowed them, they just left them in her mouth. Since she is rarely conscious, the pills stay there, waiting to choke her. When I asked them to take the pills out of her mouth, the nurse said "I can't stick my hand in her mouth. Or rather--- I WON'T put my hand in her mouth." and...SMILED at me?!?!?! I was furious.

They check on her twice per shift to check her vitals. She could choke to death and no one would ever know. She is not hooked up to any monitors or IVs!!! If she has a heart condition now, they damn well should be monitoring her heart! And if she isn't eating or drinking anything, she should have an IV.

Day one at the hospital, I was with her for 10 hours. I can't even....ugh. She had been flat on her back since 2am, and at 6pm, a nurse decided---broken hip and all---that she should sit up. She began very rapidly and without warning cranking the bed up into a sitting position. Mom was screaming STOP at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her face. The nurse ignored her, and told her to breathe. She said mom needed to drink some juice, and she couldn't do it lying down, and she couldn't tip the cup over her face. I yelled back at the nurse, who ignored me...so I pressed the button on the other side and put her back down. I glared at the woman, and said "Get a straw." She shrugged and walked away. She would SHUSH her whenever mom cried out in pain.

She is pure white, gaunt, dark circles under her eyes, constantly shaking. She is 53 years old and looks about 83. She went in because of a broken hip!!! They all keep talking about hospice care.

It's very possible mom has brain damage. She had a gamma knife procedure on her brain on November 25th. She wasn't given time to recover before she broke her hip. She wasn't entirely making sense, but now she's gone. She's hallucinating, and thinks Dad is a demon, and keeps kicking him out of the room. She thinks Sunnie and I are in elementary school, and asks Dad why we aren't in school and if he remembered to make our lunches.

It's so hard to go through every day acting like everything is normal, and perfectly okay. It's impossible to have Christmas all around you, and not be able to enjoy it. Every ounce of happiness is tainted with melancholy.

Sunnie and I went about bought a Christmas Tree with my tip change yesterday. We went to the house, and dug out the Christmas decor, and began festooning the house with pretend cheer. It started out well, but soon dwindled down to reveal the charade. The excitement vanished, the will suppressed. I went home, and Sunnie continued for a brief while to put lights on the tree with Paul.

Sunnie has been spending the nights with Paul's family, since Dad is spending every night at the hospital. He realized they have not been giving her the chemo injections that he gives her at home. They have all but made the decision to give up on her. They have her drugged into a stupor, barely human. They have locked her up and thrown away the key, seeing her as nothing more than a dying woman. She's not a person, we're not a family---we're a nuisance.

I'm so tired. SO tired.