My plate runneth over.

Checking in while I have access to a computer.

I am on day 14 of dealing with my mom in the hospital. She went in for pneumonia, it was discovered that she had a mass in her neck large enough that it constricted not only her ability to eat but also her ability to breathe. The following day it was decided to biopsy it, to remove enough to insert a tracheotomy tube. I have been in her hospital room 16 hours a day as she has gone through three biopsies, remove of most of the mass and learnign to deal with the tube. I have dealt with the ups and downs of them coming to me after the first biopsy to say that there was a 99.9 % chance that it was cancer. Guess whaat, it was a tumor but a very rare one, it is 25% removed, they can not remove the remainder as it affects her vocal cords. She has had the trach tube removed and is learnign to talk again. She is still in the hospital learning to talk agian, and trying to gain weight. She has lost 10# in five days and it isn't stopping. They had inserted a feeding tube, she pulled it out. Now it is Ensure. On a light side I told her that she weighs a fether and I can pick her up. She is at 100# where a month ago she was at 125...a healthy weight for her.
On top of that my grandson was taken to a different hospital three hours from my mom on Sunday by Medivac. He has high fevers aagain, screams from pain in his head and they now want to take him off the antibiotics for his bacterial meningitis to find the new cause. It could kill him, blind him, or cause other deficits that i don't even want to acknowledge.
All these set backs affect my ability to handle food. While sitting in a hopital for the first ten days i ate one meal a day or nothing. then when my mother improved I ate everything in sight. I know that it is going to be a difficult journey now as I am three hours from home attempting to care for my 84 year old stubborn mother. I will be her primary caregiver as she has refused to go to a skilled facility even temporarily. I am away from my home, my husband, my daughter and family. I am staying in a hoarder's home and trying to change that would kill her. Her emotional well-being overrides my feelings. I sleep on a couch and that is very uncomfortable, I am sleeping less than 4 hours a day by the time I leave the hospital, fix even one meal, do laundry, feed the animals, and even attempt to shut my mind off.
I acknowledge that I need to gain control, I need to function and find that inner strength to take care of myself which enables me to take care of others. Right now i am crashing and just needed to get this off my chest.