Worries

Friday:

I stayed home sick again today. Overall I feel a bit better, but I coughed half the night and woke with a horrible sinus headache, and I’m just constantly coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose. Really not an appropriate time to work in a library, infecting everyone and making lots of gross noises. My little library is closed on Fridays so I was supposed to be back in the main library. At least they had two other staff today!

I had had a worrying phone call yesterday. A hospital was trying to get in touch with my brother Darren about him having a procedure at 6:30am the next day. So he’s put me as a contact, which is a good thing, but I couldn’t pass on the information because I can never get through in a hurry either!  His phone always goes straight to messages, which I don’t know if he even listens to, and it can be weeks before he reads emails. I think he rarely collects his snail mail too. He doesn’t like touching the mailbox. Or anything, really. He has OCD and a phobia of germs. It’s impossible. I could drive for an hour to his house, but I don’t know if he’d even be there or be awake. And it was too late anyway for this, the info included that he had to be fasting and what’s the point of telling him that 12 hours after the fast was to start? They’d probably been trying to call him for a week. After failing to get through to him all afternoon I tried to call the hospital back but I think they’d all gone home for the day. I missed a call early this morning that I assume was the hospital asking where the hell he was... and it will happen all over again when he reschedules.

Of course the real worry is that the procedure was a colonoscopy. Which I assume means a test for cancer. What the hell is it with this family and cancer? My father-in-law just had a biopsy and we’re waiting to hear how advanced his cancer is. And his wife has lung cancer. Both my parents (and Darren’s, obviously) died of cancer five years ago. I don’t have to worry about dying of heart disease, cancer will get me first.

Darren might not be comfortable with me knowing, at this stage. In my messages I didn’t mention that I knew what the procedure was.

He needs a phone that works. Maybe go back to a landline. And he needs to get internet access so he doesn’t have to go to the library to read his email. He needs to be contactable. I couldn’t tell him when Poppa got hurt, or about family functions, or anything.  He retreats further and further away from the rest of the world.