Life Is Too Exciting for Sleep

I need to be asleep right now, but I cannot. I'm making my first court appearance as a paralegal tomorrow. I'm not a certified paralegal, but certification is not required, and no current national certification exists anyway. My PseudoAunt says I'm at least as qualified as the average rookie certified  paralegal and that I'm a quicker study than most of them, which makes me of more use to her.

I still cannot disclose precisely what I'm doing, although if the adversary reads this, he or she (I'm giving out nothing here) already has an idea.

My PseudoAunt's mom had two attorney suits custom made for me, and I have four silk blouses and a strand of cultured pearls to wear with them, along with two sets of 1 1/2-inch heels (just right for my small feet). PseudoAunt, as an attorney, already had the attire. Even with the haute couture, PseudoAunt and I will both  look like we showed up in court for "Take Your Daughter to Work Day," but we will at least be suitably [no pun intended] attired.

PseudoAunt has acquired written authorization to have a physician seated at her table with her at anytime she so chooses in any legal proceeding, sort of like Campbell Alexander, the character portrayed by Alec Baldwin in My Sister's Keeper, was allowed to have a service dog in court because of an undisclosed medical condition that turned out to be epilepsy. (I knew when the character and his dog  first were introduced in the book version that the dog was a seizure dog. Jodi Picoult laid out far too many clues and shouldn't have bothered with the pretense of keeping the illness hidden if she was going to give away so much. It's great to make the reader think he or she is smart, but too much is overkill. Additionally, as far as the movie version goes, I didn't like the change in ending from the way the book ended. )

PseudoAunt has a really good dog, Pippa, Pippa is a Golden Retriever/Labrador mix.  I'm trying to talk her into having Pippa certified as a service dog. PseudoAunt has cystic fibrosis. (It's a bit ironic that she has cystic fibrosis, as. my dad and his two brothers are carriers, as is their mother [it's more common in the French Canadian population than in the North american population at large] but none of my grandmother's descendants has the phenotype and the disease. Doctors have assumed I have it because of my French surname along with my small stature, slight build, and skinny little neck, which give me the classic look of a CF patient, but I'm clear. PseudoAunt is Cuban-American on both sides, and Cubans aren't known for any predisposition toward the condition.) The dog could be trained easily enough to press a medic alert button in the event that PseudoAunt were unable. PseudoAunt just says "maybe" when I bring the idea up to her, but she says even if Pippa were certified as a service dog, she still wouldn't bring her to court. She says it would be just one more thing about which to worry.

PseudoAunt's dad's computer is going to be set on Skype Mode so PseudoUncle can watch her first actual court appearance. (She has legal permission to Skype for the benefit of a legal associate in California who is on call in the event that she bccomes ill.) She's drafted many legal documents since she received notice that she passed the bar about eight months ago, but this will be her actual court debut.

If things go extremely well, we'll be finished with everything before mid-morning. We still have the hotel suite in case we need it, or we can go back to the condo where we spent the previous night.

I'm a little nervous, more for PseudoAunt than for myself, but just a bit jittery for myself as well. I'm more excited than nervous, though. It's going to be a great day. F. Lee Bailey and Mark Geragos, be afraid! Be very afraid!

"House" Cuddy, Nightmares, Klonopin

I'm awake because I had a nightmare and couldn't go back to sleep afterward.
If I'm with either of my parents or my Pseudorelatives, or if Chairman Mao is present, I can go back to sleep folowing a nightmare. If only the graveyard staff is available to help me, I may as well begin my day at whatever time it is that the nigthmare occurred. It takes some time afterward for my heart rate to return to normal. After some nightmares, such as the one I just had, I have to take medication to slow my pulse.

I also took Klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication. following last night's/ this morning's nightmare. The nurse watching me says I shouldn't be blogging about this because addicts and other potential drug thieves will know that there is Klonopin in my house when I am at home. Since my real name isn't used here, though, I'm not terribly worried. Uncle Mahonri, sticky though his fingers may be, is not, to the best of my knowledge, either an addict or a drug thief, although if he were, that would go a long way toward explaining a few things about him that heretofore have been unexplained. Similar things could be said about much of the family on Dad's side. My parents do keep drugs locked anyway, and even if they didn't, they would when Dad's relatives were around. Dad's relatives have so many quirks already that the very last thing any of them needs is to add drug experimentation to their already mildly to moderately abnormal psychological states.

I finally got around to watching the most recent "House" episode. Cuddy broke it off with House at the end. If the writers plan to have House and Cuddy frequently breaking up and reconciling, I supposed I'll keep watching. They character of Gregory House is sufficiently erratic that his relationships would realistically be far from smooth. If, however, the writers finally brought the two characters together just to break them up, I will not watch anymore. Such is basically jerking the viewers around, and I don't intend to remain a viewer in order to be jerked around by writers. I'll monitor the program for a few weeks to see what direction the show is headed, but that will be all. Even the hunky Jesse Spencer, who probably does look a bit like pseudoUncle, won't be enough to entice me to continue following the show.

PseudoAunt -- the one who has cystic fibrosis -- has pneumonia. She was coming to California for a doctor's appointment that was scheduled for Monday, but the appointment has been moved up to Thursday. They'll be flying to California tomorrow. I hope the flight isn't endangering her health, but I understand why PseudoUncle wanted her California doctor to see her when she was actuall sick. If he sees her only when she's healthy, it could affect the course of treatment he recommends.

I may not spend much or any time with them on this trip. My mom called me and gave me a rather cold lecture about how everything is not about me and how I need not to bother the two of them right now. I'm not sure quite where my mom was coming from besides being her usual [I won't use the "h" word even though it probably applies] self. Of course I won't bother them. If one of them calls me and invites me to spend time with them I won't pass on the opportunity, but they obviously have weightier matters than my entertainment on their minds right now. I would also hope they understand that I would not expect to be entertained during any time spent with them on this trip. I just want PseudoAunt to be OK, like everyone else does. It's unfair of my mom to accuse me of thinking only of myself when I haven't spoken or written a word to anyone as all about the situation, until now, anyway.

I'm off to shower and make myself as un-ugly as possible for the day. Have a great Wednesday!

Life Has Settled Down

My mom is speaking to me again. She doesn't want me to discuss her PMS so much here, so for now I will need to humor her.

I love my dad. Even though he is at times irrational, he is kind to me when no one else is.

The pseudorelatives are dealing with whatever life throws at them. I'm glad they're no longer angry with me, because I hate it when they are. This is especially true when I am living with them, but I don't like being on the outs with them under any circumstances. Some really strange happenings went down tonight, but I don't think they would want me sharing most of them, so I won't. PseudoUncle has been highly stressed by medical school, which surely must be uncommonly stressful. It is also stressful to be in the way of medical students when they are feeling stressed. In a small condo it is sometimes difficult to find a place to be that is sufficiently far out of the way to avoid being hit by the residual fallout of that stress. Being part of a family sometimes means I have to take the good with the bad.

PseudoAunt mentioned tonight after PseudoUncle went to bed (he was REALLY exhausted) that I had never asked any questions about her recently diagnosed condition of cystic fibrosis. She was diagnosed with it at twenty-three, which is very unusual. The condition is usually detected in neonatal screening. The fact that she had it for twenty-three years before anyone realized she had it is a good sign, but it's still not as though she was symptom-free all those years. She does have the same long-term effects that any CF patient would have, which is, namely, lung scarring from repeated infections.

I told PseudoAunt that my dad had instructed me specifically not to ask questions, and that I hoped she didn't think I was unconcerned because I hadn't asked her about it. My reasons for not asking were that I didn't want to pry or be nosy in the event that there were things about which she didn't want people in general or me in particular to know, and also that I didn't want to be in trouble with my dad if he found out I had asked questions after having been told point blank not to say anything.

PseudoAunt said she appreciated both my and my dad's respect for her privacy, but that I should feel comfortable asking her anything I want to know. It can remain between the two of us, and she won't even mention it to my dad. She said that she never mistook my silence on the subject as a lack of concern; she correctly assumed that I was following orders. She said if there is something she tells me about her CF that I shouldn't share in a blog, she will tell me. Anything else can be shared. I suppose that negates the part about her not telling my dad that we talked about it, but since she brought it up, it's probably OK.

I was curious in a concerned way about her prognosis. She said she really doesn't know other than the obvious answer that no one expects her to expire anytime soon. Her specialists will have a better answer in about a year in terms of how rapidly her illness is progressing or if it's in some sort of remission or holding pattern.

I also asked about childbearing in relation to her condition. She's not yet certain, but at this point her doctors are saying that chances are she'll be able to bear a child or two. They don't want her to get pregnant until they have enough of a handle on her condition that it is safe for her to go almost a year without invasive diagnostic procedures. She said a large obstacle in terms of her having children will be to convince her husband that it's a safe bet. Under the very best of circumstances a pregnancy will take some toll on her; pregnancy typically impacts even perfectly healthy women to at least a slight degree. Her husband feels strongly that a life without their own biological children is preferable to a life without her. Even if the doctors OK pregnancy and her husband is convinced it's safe, fertility could be an issue. It's typically less an issue for women than men with CF, but PseudoAunt has so much difficulty keeping weight on that her cycles are affected. A woman can be too thin to ovulate. PseudoAunt has been thin enough for her cycles to be interrupted for quite some time. Until her CF diagnosis in December, she didn't know why. Now she's trying hard to gain weight, though not just for fertility reasons.

PseudoUncle asked my dad for the formula for my growth shakes. I immediately felt very sorry for PseudoAunt when I learned of this. I have been plagued with having to drink the disgusting growth shakes for several years, and I wouldn't wish the experience on my worst enemy, much less one of my two favorite relatives in the entire world. PseudoAunt says it's OK and I don't have to feel sorry for her in that regard. She says the shakes are not THAT disgusting and that they are a quick source of major calories and nutrients. I still feel sorry for her. I try to be a positive influence on her by drinking the shakes without excessive whining when I am with her, but I don't always succeed.

This may seem out of the blue but, for what it's worth, smoking is really stupid. Anyone who would consider taking up the habit now in the face of all the available information of just how harmful the practice is has to be a total moron.