I've been a bit absent here in blogger world. I've stopped by to read a little but have been too mentally exhausted to comment, so I've chosen to remain silent. Please don't feel I'm ignoring you.

Last Friday my dad had surgery to remove his colon and entire large intestine. He completed his chemotherapy and radiation shortly after the new year and since then has been just resting and preparing for this surgery. He spent over 5 hours in surgery and then another 3 hours in recovery before they settled him in a room. Then I had a nearly 2 hour drive home. Saturday morning I returned to the hospital to visit and after several hours I was so tired of his disgustingly rude behavior that I decided to come home for the rest of the afternoon. About 40 mins away from the hospital, I received a call that dad had coughed and his incision had re-opened. Back to the hospital I go, wait for the doctors to come exam and then they took him back into surgery to fix him up again. It turned into another late night.

As if the surgery isn't stressful enough, pile on my dad's bad attitude/terrible patient status and my mother's psycho behavior and you have a really big mess! I don't even want to waste the time and energy trying to even write about my mom's nuclear meltdown but I say I think she's got some kind of psychosis happening there. She was so out of control that I just stopped answering her phone calls.

Now for something positive. I can't bitch and complain and then leave things on a negative note.

My uncle (dad's younger brother) came here to stay during dad's surgery. I have not seen this man since I was 19 years old and have only spoken to him a couple times since then on the phone around the holidays (just the "hi, how are you?" holiday wishes kind of conversation). I was a little concerned about how he would be to deal with but to my surprise, he has been absolutely wonderfully helpful to me in dealing with dad. I can't even begin to express my gratitude and how much I appreciate all he did (and put up with). Friday I arrived at the hospital feeling absolutely stressed and exhausted to the point of tears and he just gave me a big hug and said, "baby girl, it will be alright". You know, sometimes that's all you need; just a little comfort and understanding. Saturday we had the entire day together and since we were just doing a lot of sitting and waiting, we had a lot of time to talk. We have so much in common and very similar personalities. We talked books and history and family things and a million other topics. We stopped at the bookstore, made frequent trips to starbucks and just got to know each other. It was a great experience to get reaquainted on an adult level. All these years I've been trying to figure out how I fit into this family because I couldn't look around and find anyone like me. Well I finally did and it is comforting.

Today dad came home from the hospital and tomorrow my uncle is leaving to return home. I'll be sad to see him leave but I am going to make a real effort to stay in contact. Now I'm feeling the weight of dad on my shoulders again, but for a few days at least, someone helped me carry the load.