Mother of All Updates

Sorry I haven't updated lately. I've been busy having a life. For those of you who care anything about what's going on, keep reading. If not, pppbbbtt!

Parental Unit:
My mother is home again from the hospital. This time she almost had an experience opposite to her first trip to the hospital, except that in the end both seemed largely worthless.
To recap, she had massive blood loss due to internal bleeding which tripped a heart attack. Her doctor in Winchester (read: Podunk) had her shipped to Nashville, where she got the big hospital treatment - lots of unnecessary and repeated tests, no answers or concern for her concerns, and (with few exceptions) a large impersonal staff. She was told at times that they barely stopped the bleeding in time to save her, that the bleeding had stopped itself before the doctors saw her, that she needed more operations to survive, and that she only had a few years to live no matter what they did.
This time she went for more tests and made the mistake of telling the local doctors that something they had given her made her feel unwell. They sent her to a nearby hospital where a group of mostly caring people did nothing for her because they had no resources. It took two days for them to import the right blood and give her a transfusion. The doctor who was supposed to give her a second opinion on what was causing the internal bleeding and whether or not she had a terminal condition decided that whatever the Nashville doctors had said must be correct and she didn't see a need for further tests. My mother checked herself out this morning and vowed never to go to any hospital again. At least she's keeping her one remaining appointment, this one with a third doctor who is supposed to find why she occasionally bleeds internally and whether or not she has end-stage cirrhosis of the liver.
The good news is that she's now feeling better since she stopped taking most of the prescribed medications, one of which is supposed to be good for the heart despite the minor side effect of causing internal bleeding, something she's proven she can manage on her own. This reminds me of all the old jokes about how it's not in the doctors' best interests to heal people since they need the repeat business, only it doesn't seem very funny right now.

Satan Sue:
She continues to encourage me through my workouts, and has now added literary savant to her growing resume. I downloaded The Green Mile from iTunes which I've read before, but I missed the narration of Frank Muller, the best audiobook reader in the business whose career was tragically ended by a brain damaging motorcycle wreck.

Me:
The new job is not looking as promising as I had hoped. Management has postponed my pay raise for another week, so I'm still holding my breath. Hopefully they'll pay me before I pass out. To make matters worse, the help desk support portion of my job is overshadowing everything else I do. I knew this was going to be bad when they gave me a headset. Hopefully it won't be too bad. At least I have a decent title now (Database Administrator, even though this is looking like low-tech work), which may help when I look for my next job.