hey hey hey - wow this has been the longest i've been away from the blog in a long time...

there's been so much going on and i've been so exhausted by the time i sit down to the computer that i just push my blog aside and have been updating my status on Facebook -- i know, i know, how DARE i update facebook before my own blog --- i've felt the same.

i have high hopes that this will be a lengthy post... alas, i may fall asleep as i write it... or gigglemom may give a call to me and i'll have to put the blog to the side again.

yes... i said "gigglemom may give a call" --- SO, that's a telltale sign that she's still alive.

*** as i wrote that, she actually called me. jeez, that was weird. maybe i should say "i may need to put the blog aside because i might win the lottery"..... nope. damn. nothin'.****

okay. when i last wrote, that was 3 days after GM's surgery.

for those trying to catch up, she had "Intestinal Volvulus" (if you click the link, make sure you read about the HUMAN kind, not the canine or equine kind)

It's also known as Twisted Intestines.

They were "ischemic" - which meant they were so twisted that blood flow couldn't get to them and they pretty much died and were rotting and infected...

(hope you're not eating right now... especially sausage.)

so, what happened was, the doctor had to remove her large intestine - and performed an "ileostomy" (click the link for a description)

basically, GM doesn't have a large intestine anymore and the small intestine is hooked up to her abdomen and she needs to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.

*** I just spent about 5 minutes trying to find a post from Feb/Mar 2006 when GM was in the hospital - I thought I'd posted about it... in fact I may have, but, I think GM made me take it down... Let me tell you that over the past few years, right before GM goes into the hospital, she would have bouts of diarrhea that would be terrible --- so terrible one night, that it was all over the floor and her legs and i was trying to clean her and i wound up throwing up on top of her legs... that mixed with the diarrhea and then the dog was trying to sniff the stuff --- it was a horrible night.

anyway, now she has the colostomy bag, which, most people may shudder at the thought of attempting to look at it or change it, not i. part of me wishes that she got this done years ago. it's pretty much contained. granted there are going to be horrendous accidents in our future, but, i don't foresee them being quite as horrific as the aforementioned episode...

i've emptied it with her a couple of times so far.

last monday (dec 29) she was moved from the hospital to the rehab...

now, in the hospital, there were no leaks or spills or any accidents. the nurses knew their shit. yes. pun was intended. i've been working on my Colostomy Bag Comedy Central Special - i've got at least a tight 5 minutes of ostomy material thus far.

anyway... in the hospital all was well.

now that she's been in the rehab, there've been about 4 accidents in the middle of the night. the nurses in there don't seem to know how to attach the bag correctly to the stoma (the stoma is what the small intestine that comes out of her abdomen is called... basically, the nurse in the hospital put it like this "it's your new ass." so that explained it succinctly.)

anyway... the rehab nurses don't seem to have the knowledge about the colostomy bag...

ALSO... the brand of bag in the hospital was MUCH different than the one they're using in the rehab. the hospital one seemed to have more of a protective barrier than the one in the rehab - i think the rehab one may be some sort of cheapo one.

yeah yeah yeah... i'm going on about colostomy bags... there will be more down the road on this blog...

in any event...

GIGGLEMOM IS DOING VERY WELL.

she's been in terrific spirits since the surgery - in fact, she and i have NOT fought since before she was operated on. which, not for nothing, has been very nice because we usually would have words on a daily basis.

i think that the reason for this is her Large Intestine and I didn't get along. he was a total dick - and now that he's out of the picture, all's well.

OH... DIET TIP FROM GIGGLEMOM:

Have your Large Intestine removed... she lost 38.1 pounds

seriously.

okay granted, she can't go meandering around in a bikini swinging her colostomy bag, but, dammit if she doesn't look SO much better.

her stomach - pre-surgery - was extremely distended --- it was hard to the touch, painful and she barely could walk... probably because she was lugging 40 pounds of dead intestines around with her.

by the way...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

on Christmas GM gave me a note as a present - it said that she has quit smoking and that was her gift to me.

best gift EVER (well, next to the pony i got when i was 10)

NOW FOR THE FUCKED UP STUFF...

on december 19th, that was the day GM had the surgery, i was in the hospital from 8:30am until 8:30pm

a very long day. a very exhausting day. very draining.

my dad, my stepmom, my aunt judy, uncle franky, uncle fran, cousin jimmy & his wife joyce, my godsister Lori and my mom's friend MaryAnn were waiting with me all day - which was absolutely fantastic of them to do so. I love them all.

that's not the effed up part.

I went home and was dead tired. go figure.

at ten after 9pm I get a call from my cousin Kenny --- who, is an alcoholic that has manic depression (and I feel is a sociopath)

he starts yelling at me on the phone to get to the hospital, and "why aren't you here?! I am holding your mother's hand right now. She just got out of surgery and she's asking for you!"

I can tell he's drunk.

I say "Kenny, I was there for 12 hours. I just got home. You shouldn't be there if in fact you are."

He says "You are a horrible daughter - I'm going in to see her" and hangs up.

So, I call the nurses station - in the CRITICAL CARE UNIT... see, when I left the hospital, GM was in the recovery room and i saw her there. she was groggy and very doped up. and the nurses told me that she was doing great. so i felt comfortable enough to go home because i knew that the next week would be grueling for me.

anyway - i called the CCU nurses' station because they had given me the phone number to call there between certain times to check on her.

So, I spoke with the nurse asked how GM was doing and then asked "does she have visitors there now?"

she said "yes. she has her 2 sons who came up from Florida in there with her now."

That would be my cousins Kenny and Michael (mike had been driving kenny around)

I told her "yeah. I'm an only child and they live in Brick... and one of them is drunk. please get them out of there"

so they did.

Kenny called me soon after berating me for having them removed. Told me how horrible I am and hung up.

I go back to sleep.

at 12:40AM I get a phone call from an even drunker Kenny (he's at home now with his skank he met 2 months ago and who is a major alkie and they got engaged 2 weeks after they met. winners.)

anyway - he's telling me how angry he is with me, how horrible i am, what a miserable person i am and how i should have called him every half hour to let him know how my mom was. eff that.

his soulskank is in the background yapping -- now, she's supposed to be a nurse --- so i said 'let me talk to her' --- he put's Shiela on the phone and she cooly says "yes?"

I calmly say "Shiela, you are supposed to be a nurse and know that families that have someone go through surgery are probably exhausted and need to sleep. Please don't let Kenny call me anymore"

she says "are you done?"

I say "well no, i wasn't"

she said " Well I am you fucking bitch" and she hung up on me.

lovely.

it took me 2 hours to calm down (i'd called Michael at 1:30am after this happened and was very upset on the phone. told him to not bring kenny to the hospital again. he agreed. he told me how kenny and shiela had stolen money from him and that he was with kenny after working with him all day and was hoping to get his money back. okay.)

so, i get to sleep. i wake up to kenny calling me at 10am. blah blah blah, how i'm horrible, etc.

then he calls me at noon calls me the C word. and the skank is in the background saying "i hope her mother fucking dies"

if you don't think i wanted to go over there and have a few "words" with her......

anyway... i didn't hear from kenny until 6pm when he was drunker... berating me. saying that I am the crazy one, etc.

now, the visiting hours for the Critical Care Unit were 12-2, 4-5:30 and then 9pm - 10pm. I was at every one.

so gigglemom had her breathing tube taken out at 1pm the day after her surgery. I'd debated on telling her about the kenny stuff. I wound up telling her at the 4pm show.

then the kenny BS happened again at 6pm and i told her what was happening when i went there at 9pm.

she said "don't fight with him. try to talk him into going to Jersey Shore Hospital to the psychiatric ward"

i then went home and had a peaceful night's sleep.... until 3am

kenny called all freaked out on the phone... and i was NICE TO HIM as much as that galled me.

he told me that Shiela kicked him out and that he was living in the woods and how he wanted me to come see him and he'd cook me a hot dog on the fire. So I stayed on the phone with him for half an hour with him telling me how he's a black belt in the Art of Killing and how he was trained as a Marine to kill. blah blah blah.

something about how the echo sounded didn't set quite right with me... so i said "kenny, I've gotta tinkle... I'll call you right back."

I called the police. Told them my manic depressive cousin was calling me and saying how he was living in the woods and could they try to check that out --- i also gave the address of where he and the Skank live.

I called kenny back --- he started rambling and crying and then getting angry...

20 minutes later i hear dogs bark and he says "shit someone's at the door" and hung up.

now, i don't know about the woods near any of YOU, but usually there aren't any doors.

He called me back a minute later "ER. DID YOU CALL THE COPS ON ME?!"

i said "yes. I am worried about you."

then i asked to speak with the police. told them what's been going on. and then went to bed.

nothing happened. I called the station the next day and they said that there was no domestic violence occurence... which, um, yeah, i never mentioned domestic violence.

let me tell you, kenny has restraining orders on him from his other brother, his ex-wife and 2 ex-girlfriends.

so, at noon i get to the hospital to see G-mom.

she's upset and said that she never should've told me to talk nice to kenny. i told her about the phone call and the cops. and she said we need to get a restraining order.

we called the police and had them come to the CCU and talked with them (oh. did i mention that a month ago Kenny decapitated a cat and put it under the car of the mother of his child???)

we found out that since we haven't had kenny live with us in more than a decade, since we never were married to or dated him, we couldn't have a restraining order on him.

great.

i didn't hear from him via the phone for a week.

anyway... the restraining order attempt was on sunday (2 days after GM's surgery) -- on Monday night my cousin Michael calls me at 12:30am and tells me how Kenny jumped him and beat the hell out of him and that he called the cops on Kenny but when they got to the house, Kenny lied and said that Michael attacked him. Mike comes over. His jaw is swollen. I give him frozen peas. He goes home.

The next day, I'm at the hospital - they've moved GM to the surgical floor and into a private room YAY!!!

Michael calls and says he's downstairs in the ER.

I go down there and they tell him his jaw is broken. First time i've seen michael cry in my life. First, his brother beats on him. Busts his jaw and now he doesn't have insurance and can't get it fixed. It would cost $3500 to wire it.

Their mother tells him that if he presses assault charges on Kenny she'll kick michael out (he moved in with her this summer. He's 48. Kenny's 46.)

that day, my uncle franky came to my house and changed the deadbolt so that it's more secure.

On Christmas, outside of Kenny's son's house there was loud banging... Sue, the mom, took her son and left and went to an undisclosed location for a couple of days.

3 days later, her pool cover, jacuzzi cover and tubing for the water/etc were found slashed... totaling $9000 damage.

a few days later he called my house and left a message for my mother saying "Aunt Maureen, It's Kenny, I'm trying to find out how you are since no one will tell me anything and apparently Erin doesn't give a fuck about shit or shinola"

so i told my mom... she wound up calling him (this was the night before she went to rehab and they don't allow incoming calls after 10pm so there was no worry of her being disturbed late)

she wound up talking to him. he told her he was living in the woods (she could hear the teevee in the background) and was on with him for an hour. she was trying to get him to get help.

he actually said to her "You're talking out your paper ass."

my mom said "do you know what kind of operation I had?"

he said "yeah. I know."

so he was trying to be cruel to her. that fucking dick.

sooooo, he's burnt the bridge with gigglemom as well.

This past Thursday apparently Kenny was at a local bar tying one on. He called a friend of his and told him he was jumped by 15 guys and beaten. I'm not sure what happened.

The guy called Kenny's mother, who found out the cops went there to help. Then Kenny became belligerent, started fighting with the cops. The cops then arrested and handcuffed him and took him to Brick Hospital to detox (by the way Gigglemom was already out of Brick Hospital and is now in a rehab)

Last we knew, Kenny was still in the hospital in the ER because there were no beds.

Apparently the SoulSkank kicked him out and called his mom telling her that she couldn't handle him (awwwwwwwww... fuck you.)

but kenny's been calling Shiela to have her get him out. Kenny's mom told her not to.

I don't know what the outcome is of this so far... right now, I think he's still in there, but, he might be able to sign himself out by now. I don't know.

I am hoping that Michael WILL actually press assault charges because it may help to keep him in a facility since he's a "danger to others"

anyway...

THAT IS WHY I HAVEN'T WRITTEN IN 2 WEEKS!!!

eyes bleeding yet?