Trouble Last Night

For the past couple of weeks I've been having nightmares. At first I thought it was because my friend Colm is coming to visit me in a couple of weeks time, and that always puts the fear of God into me.

The nightmares always involve a creature that I think is crawling along the floor. Last night it was a giant, and I mean giant, insect. This time my reaction to it was quite violent, screaming out loud and running to the doorway to turn the light on [note to self: buy bedside lamp, so can have girly screaming fit without getting out of bed]. I'll look up what 'giant insects' mean in nightmares one day, but I know already it aint good. I don't think there's anything worrying me, work's going great and I'm sufficiently sexed.

Adding to the stress of last night was receiving one of those messages we all dread:

Can you give me a call. It's about Dad.

It was from my brother, Keith. He'd just been up to visit my dad in Liverpool. A year ago or so when I last visited him he was in a bad way, he was very immobile and unstable on his feet. I was only there for a while, but we sorted out some care quickly and was hopeful that the rot was stopped. It seems as if it hasn't. When my brother arrived he found my dad in a pretty bad state, I won't go into the details. He took him to hospital where eventually they found some fluid on the brain. Apparantly this is affecting the the flow of fluid to the spine and therefore his mobility. Maybe this crisis will mean that the root cause is diagnosed and we'll see some improvement afterwards.

I must say though, the overwhelming feeling I had after hearing this is anger with my dad. I know it's a generational thing not to ask for help, to be stoic and hide the real problems because you 'don't want to be a burden', but in actual fact the burden is much greater. Not being honest and addressing the problem has meant it's gone undiagnosed for several years and who knows if it's now too late to fix it. Plus, you can never trust what he says about how he's feeling. So now, rather than listening to him, the only reports I'll believe will come from my own eyes or my brother's, and I live 6000 miles away.

Old people suck.

UPDATE: just looked a couple of things up. The distance between Macau and Liverpool is, in fact, 5992 miles. Bloody good guess I'd say. And, yes, insects in dreams...not good, not good at all.