Hi, again, little circle of lockedness.

Hi, again, little circle of lockedness. I have deep breathed a bit and also the worst immediate situation did not go the worst, so that is huuuuuuge. I'm less wound, therefore, and will try to sleep or at least rest because I have to be up and dealing with again at 7am. So thank you for existing, because I was not ok. Not that I am, but I am not as not ok as I was. I'm ok enough that I think I will not need to torture any of you in person on the phone tonight, but I reserve the need for that for future usage plz and thanx u.

My dad had surgery today. He was supposed to have surgery today. That almost did not happen because of some as yet to be fully explained weirdness amongst the litany of doctors. Why this bothered me - I am the one who got the initial phone call because my parents were already checking in at the hospital. So I got sort of blind-sided and had to decide in a split second sort of way whether or not to give my mother's cell phone to them to reach her for an "urgent" call about the surgery. More to the point, I did decide NOT to give them a way to directly contact my father, because I'm sort of lacking the words to explain what cancelling the surgery would have done to him psychologically and emotionally. So this will probably be a really long post.

So I gave them my mom's cell, and left it to hope that she would handle it. I immediately was distressed about whether to warn my mom, and then knowing it was stupid and if there was really a cancellation that it would get ugly at reception, but my calling and adding another voice of confusion wouldn't change that or help. So I didn't warn her.

In the event, the doctor's office that was calling to say the surgery was cancelled ended up leaving a message on my mom's cell phone, which she didn't get to until after they were registered and checked in and going through pre-op. At that point apparently a lot of stuff happened but she didn't tell my dad. She handled it super well, in fact. Go mom.

Fortunately, the first my dad heard anything was from the surgeon himself, who said he had not cancelled and hadn't heard any reason to cancel, but went to talk to the oncologist. By some miracle, he actually got him on the phone and my dad's surgery was only delayed about an hour while this was all cleared up.

We still don't know precisely why this came up, although we are all assuming it means something horrible came up on the latest biopsy at the last minute. But we don't know and it doesn't matter because my dad has been in excruciating pain that I don't know how to describe. This time, it was from his hip, which would have been replaced in 2013 if he had not been diagnosed with cancer.

Details aside, the upshot is that his quality of life was crap, he was very close to becoming an invalid, and if they had told him he couldn't have the surgery, it would have killed him. And that could mean he would just shut down and die, or kill himself and die, or whatever it meant, but it would have killed him.

As distressed as he has been about what's gone on to get him to this surgery, that is nothing compared to the abject misery his life had become for him and the utter nothingness full of wretchedness existing looked like to him. The only hopeful thing that was a potential literal release from prison was maybe being able to walk and not be in constant pain.

So that was fun. It turns out that you can, indeed, experience sufficiently intense emotional distress that you shut down. I mean, I waited for several hours before I heard anything because I didn't know what was happening. Once I knew I tried to do the grocery shopping and some other stuff that needed to be done and I was empty. I mean my head literally felt empty all of a sudden, which is a bizarre sensation, let me tell you. I was staring at things and walking around and just trying not to go to sleep. Which doesn't mean I was sleepy, just that my brain had apparently decided we were shutting down and going into safe mode. I eventually got it together and bought some bottled brewed tea (that was hideous, but it was a patch and it worked enough, so, fine) and did stuff that needed to be done.

So, yeah. At least nobody has to listen to an hysterical ranting breakdown phone call. Tonight. But it really helps tremendously that you are out there because fragility is the name of the emotional and mental game right now. It would be nice if something just worked once or twice, like, just worked out, you know?