Dear God, please let me have a break

Thank you for all your kind comments on my last post. Each and every one of them touched my heart. Especially as I read them while sitting by my sister's side as she slept. They meant a lot to me.

I'm home. It was the most intense and emotional twelve days of my entire life. I've never cried so hard nor felt so much emotional pain. Even losing my mother six years ago wasn't this difficult.


My beautiful, vibrant and very active sister had what was originally a mild stroke two weeks ago and then later classified as a catastrophic event. She's completely paralyzed on the right side, unable to walk, read, write or speak anything other than mutterings that no one can understand. Yet she is still completely cognizant of everything that's happening, can answer yes/no questions and has use of her right side.

She's given up and is refusing all food. I had a lot of good visits with her before I left on Sunday, but I knew it was most likely the last time I'd see her. My niece said my sister is not only shaking her head no when offered food, but now she's covering her mouth with her left hand. Yet she still drinks water so this will probably go on for weeks.

My one niece and her husband have moved into my sister's house with her and plan on staying with her for at least the next three weeks. Since she's becoming weaker each day, this probably won't last three weeks.

Sadly there was a lot of family drama due to another very close relative that was going through some sort of mental breakdown before this happened, and during the past week they spun out of control. I've never been in the presence of someone suffering with mentally illness. It was another nightmare on top of the nightmare my sister was going through.

Even though it was horrible seeing my sister so disabled and knowing her choice to slowly commit suicide by starving herself to death, I will always value those wonderful moments with her. Often it was just the two of us and we laughed ourselves silly. We had a really good time together, especially when it was just the two of us. Some people couldn't bare to be in the room with her, I couldn't bare to not be in the room with her.

Three of my family members called me yesterday and told me they were diagnosed with strep throat. I've had a sore throat, terrible stomach pains, and the worse headaches of my life during the last four days. I thought it was all stress induced. As today progressed, I continued to feel worse. Finally at 4pm I went to the urgent care clinic and yes, I have strep throat too. I have a horse-sized bottle of Amoxicillin.

The only positive thing I can say is my weight is 173.4. The truth is that I really don't care about my weight right now. Everything I was so worried about, my weight, my clothes, my hair -- in the scheme of life it's all a bunch of trivial crap.

When I got home Sunday night I decided to stop taking Ambien. The last two nights I've been rewarded with some of the worst nightmares of my life. Full of death and violence. Both nights I woke myself up screaming (and my husband). I don't know if this is some sort of Ambien withdrawal or if it's from those twelve days of hell in Fairbanks. Whatever it is, it's scaring me and really interrupting much needed sleep.