April 2024 Recap or Healing is slow and why it feels like I’ve lost a quarter of a year

Blog Posts:

• “I tried to pick my battles ’til the battle picked me” … Miss Print will be back soon
• Poetically Speaking: hunger by rupi kaur
• Poetically Speaking: On a Pink Moon by Ada Limon
• Poetically Speaking: you are worth spoiling by amanda lovelace
• Poetically Speaking: Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Read:

1. Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake (audio)
2. Yona of the Dawn Volume 8 by Mizuho Kusanagi*
3. Masquerade of the Heart by Katy Rose Pool (TBR since Sept. 2023)
4. Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin*
5. Yona of the Dawn Volume 9 by Mizuho Kusanagi*
6. Yona of the Dawn Volume 10 by Mizuho Kusanagi*

Project Zero TBR:

TBR at the start of the month: 187
TBR at the end of the month: 205
Owned books at the start of the month: 373
Owned books at the end of month: 380
Books Bought: 0
Books Gifted: 0

TBR at the start of 2024: 195
Owned books at the start of 2024: 365

Find more details on @princesschapters‘ Instagram.

Diverse Baseline Challenge:

4 books by BIPOC authors read in the month (minimum 3)(indicated by *)
Find the full challenge details including monthly prompts on Instagram thanks to @bookish.millennial and @themargherita.s.

How My Month Went:

I have been saying this every month but it’s been a hard one and, sadly, I think 2024 is just going to be a hard year. Even as I update this at the end of April, there have been more setbacks. I have talked a little about some of my year in recaps here and in stories on Instagram but I realized it’s all been a bit disjointed and thought this would be a good place to get everything in order:

The first thing you should know is that my mom has been disabled for my whole life. I never knew the version of my mother who walked to and from her apartment in Greenwich Village to her job in the garment district every day. I never knew a version of my mother who didn’t walk with a cane. I think a lot about that because my mother being this version of herself is intrinsically tied to my being here–I was born almost a year after my mother was hit by a motorcycle that ran a red light while she was crossing the street. Both of her legs, one arm, and one jaw were broken in the accident. Now, so many years later, it’s becoming clear that the damage from that accident is farther reaching than the initial broken bones.

As some of you might recall, my mom fell and cracked two ribs in early March. She was also diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called pemphigous vulgaris where the body attacks the skin–this results in blister sores all over the body and skin sensitivity and fragility. There is no cure and treatment is … intensive. In late March my mom had to go to the hospital because the skin condition was not improving and we had moved beyond the scope of care that her primary care physician was able to provide through home visits. At the same time as all of this, Mom had a large scrape on her shin that would not heal.

The hospital stay was hard. Hospitals are always hard but they’re scary as hell when the patient is 76 years old and doesn’t usually leave the house for anything. The doctors put Mom on prednisone to help the skin condition and I had a productive conversation with a wound care nurse to better understand how to care for her leg. (If you ever find yourself in this position: wounds need to be covered and kept moist to heal–this is how new skin grows.)

In early April we went to a horrendously bad follow up with the medical team who will be managing her care for the skin condition. They were rude and obnoxious, did little to instill confidence, and acted as if they had never interacted with a person in a wheelchair or a person over the age of 70 before. I’m not sure how I come across in these recaps but I am really not quick to anger but let me tell you I was snapping at these doctors by the end of the appointment.

Which brings us to late April: Mom needs to get her vaccinations up to date before starting an immunosuppressant infusion which will treat the pemphigous and allow her to get off the prednisone (an incredibly noxious medication). Except healing is slow and, in retrospect, Mom was losing mobility along the way as we struggled to put out the different fires for her health conditions.

I had to take time off work for the second half of April when Mom developed severe pain in her knee and could no move safely around our apartment. It’s hard to see it in the moment, but this kept getting worse until five days ago when Mom couldn’t move and we both realized she needed more help than simply resting in bed. Mom’s been in the hospital since then. She has severe arthritis in her leg along with osteopenia and osteoporosis (bone loss and bone thinning). These are conditions that come with aging. But I also know in my heart that they are also directly related to all of her previous injuries–something that I hope haunts the man who hit her but I wonder if he even thinks about it anymore.

Healing is slow and it takes time but it’s hard to know what that means when the person who needs the healing is 76 and wondering if going into the hospital this time means she won’t come out. Healing is slow but I’m reminding myself that it is happening. Mom is still in the hospital but she stood up by herself after five days of almost no movement, she’s eating again. We’re in a holding pattern waiting for her to be placed in a nursing home for further rehabilitation.

Healing is slow and I’m still not sure if back to normal is a thing that we are allowed to hope for but I am hoping for it all the same. I have been spending a lot of time scared or tired or sad. I keep telling myself this will pass. I keep reminding my friends who are also going through it that it can’t stay like this forever. But it’s still hard to remember. I feel disconnected and isolated and I can tell some people are over it because this has become my entire personality–how can it not?

I started writing this recap in mid-April and it’s been one thing after another. Almost every day I would say to myself “things have to get better” and almost every day things would get worse in some unpredictable way.

I look back at 2024 so far and I feel like I have nothing to show for it. Am I still a librarian if I have to take so much time away from the library? Or do I need to push back more on the capitalistic societal standards that we have to be our work? Am I still a book reviewer and blogger when I am barely reading and haven’t made any progress on review writing since early April? Does it even matter? If I am a caregiver, what does it mean when I can’t even take adequate care of the person in my care? I know the last one is negative self-talk but also I keep asking myself what’s the point and sometimes it’s easier to find an answer than others. But I keep reminding myself healing is slow but it is still happening.

I think we’re going to get through this and I think my mom is going to get home. And that feels good to type when it didn’t feel true even a few days ago. But at the same time I sit her confronting her mortality and in some ways my own as I think about what my life will look like when she’s gone. It isn’t a pleasant thing to consider but it’s the reality of aging. I can already see the shape of the hole that my mom is going to leave behind. It’s horrifying and impossible to imagine it ever being filled. But what choice is there but to try?

Some bright spots in this ongoing dumpster fire so that we might end on a brighter note:

I am slowly getting through some reviews and hope to have more consistent content again starting in May. It’s good to have a backlog of books to review because I’ve been reading very little since there’s never any time. I think I will be able to stick with the Diverse Baseline Challenge (reading 3 books by BIPOC authors every month at minimum) but Project Zero TBR is probably carrying into next year–especially since I think the only reason my to read numbers have been going down is because I stopped adding eARCs and ALCs I get. One day …

I love the new Taylor Swift album. I expected great things from The Tortured Poets Department and it doesn’t disappoint. My favorite song is “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” but I genuinely think the whole album is a gem. The themes of aging and regret alongside threads of resilience and transformation speak to my soul feel like the energy I want to take away from this horrible year.

I dealt with all of my ~feelings~ this month by buying things including but not limited to: more Taylor Swift merch (album cardigan and TTPD signet ring because why not?), a new bag in cornflower blue with a bunch of interchangeable straps, new toys for Bella who still prefers cardboard or my slippers, and more books that I do not need.

I’m 70% through Song of the Six Realms (which is why I’m counting it for this month) and it’s lovely. It’s a music infused fantasy with Chinese mythology and a gothic sensibility.

Next month maybe I’ll be back with more positive news instead of another series of maladies. Until then rest up and go make sure your orange juice is fortified with Calcium to take care of those bones.

Update May 10: I’ll post more about this in my May recap but did want to say my mom moved to a nursing home for sub-acute rehab on May 1. Healing is still slow but we just have to keep trying.

You can also see my recap from last month.