Documenting my journey through the mental health system

The boat was so cool the first time. Classy and elegant. Now it was looking like Carnival as Princess seemed to be making a turn toward accommodating kids. I find this grotesque.

Mom got pneumonia after spending just too much time outside on deck, smoking. Literally exposure is what got her. No one else on the boat was sick, considering all the brats, the boat was quite clean. But I saw her fading fast by the last night, when we had to pack and get our luggage outside our door for the porters. I didn’t have any symptoms yet.

At the hotel in Vancouver, on Saturday, she just crashed. Sleeping and not even smoking, and nothing gets into the way of her cigarettes. I bought more time at the hotel, and rearranged the flight. Two more nights. And made plans to ship half our luggage home. I also got sick.

That first night, in a really nice hotel suite, I got the pukes real bad. Coughing and really sore throat. I was pissed. But after advil and tracking down some other cold medicines at the Rexall pharmacy in Canada, including the over the counter tylenol with codeine, my issues largely went away except for the cough and sore throat. But mom was really, really sick. After I shipped the luggage on Tuesday, I took her to the hospital up the street from our hotel, St Paul’s. We handed over a 1000 bucks and they did everything – Xrays, labs. The doctor checked her out and diagnosed her and wrote a bunch of prescriptions for antibiotics and prednisone and a new inhaler. She almost admitted her, I saw it. But mom was able to get her O2 to a 93% after a deep breath, where it had been sitting at about 90%. That was the only reason she let her go.

This was supposed to be the good summer part of our vacation – a few days in Vancouver checking out the zoo and aquarium and whatever else. But we spent it miserable and me anxiously assessing mom for suitability for travel. We only had till Thursday.

The codeine was a godsend. I packed our bottles of it in the shipped luggage. Really helps with the cough. She’s not really getting better.