The Warlock Rewritten

Hey there, Ortho here, also known as Christopher Stasheff's son Edward.

As you may have noticed, this website has been dead for several months—since early May, in fact.  We've had pauses of weeks before, even months, but never a six-month stretch like this.

Well, there's a reason for that.

First, I have to back up a bit. The story starts well over a year ago, when my father's Parkinson's Disease was getting progressively worse, and our mother wasn't really physically, mentally, or emotionally able to take care of him.  So us kids discussed what to do amongst ourselves.  Of the four children, my youngest sister Eleanore and I were the only two with jobs we could take with us, and no spouses or children to uproot, so it was decided that the two of us should move back home to take care of dad.  For a while things went more or less smoothly.  Chris had a reduced lifestyle (he couldn't drive anymore, for example), but he could still get around and more or less enjoy life.  We were even able to take dad to Atlanta for Anachrocon this past February, where he was Guest of Honor.

Then on May 5^th, 2017, everything changed.

I remember the date, because it was Cinco de Mayo.  I awoke in the middle of the night to hear my mother crying and shouting for help.  I jumped out of bed and raced across the house to find her clinging to a bookshelf for dear life and babbling something incoherent about the bathroom and a stroke.  She had no balance and could barely walk, but I managed to wrestle her into an armchair just in time for her to start vomiting.  Sensing that something might possibly be wrong, we called an ambulance.

No one got any sleep that night, what with all the confusion, worry, and unanswered questions.  By morning the hospital could at least answer our basic questions: mom had a stroke, and a bad one.  While the doctors did an emergency tracheotomy and installed a feeding tube, Elea and I sent up the Bat Signal for the rest of the kids to come ASAP.

It turned out mom had a hemorrhagic brainstem stroke.  The bad news is that it's the type of stroke most likely to kill you... but the good news is that if you somehow manage to survive it, it's the easiest stroke to recover from.

For several weeks mom lay in a hospital bed, barely able to move, breathing on a respirator, being fed through a tube, and only able to communicate by shaking her head yes or no.  The situation was bad, but at least it was stable.

That's when the other shoe dropped.

Possibly due to the stress of his wife clinging to life by a thread—or possibly because it was Tuesday, who knows?—dad's Parkinson's suddenly took a turn for the worse.  Like, WAY worse.  Before the stroke, although he was prone to occasionally tripping and falling, he was still able to walk (occasionally using a cane, if we nagged him hard enough).  Today, though, he's pretty much stuck in a wheelchair.  On a good day, he can walk from his bed to the wheelchair.  On a bad day... well, let's just say it pays to have a strong, six-foot-tall son.  He needs help with just about everything.

So now we had two disabled parents needing attention in two different locations.  Thankfully my out-of-town sisters were able to help.  My middle sister Genevieve was teaching a summer course at the University of California, and could only come for a few weeks at the beginning and end of the summer.  Luckily, that worked out nicely with my oldest sister Isobel, who is currently getting her PhD at University of Arizona, and had the summer off, so she was able to come out of for six weeks around July.  Of course, she brought her two kids with her, one of whom had ADHD, and although I was happy to see them again (for the first time in years), taking care of two bored children on top of two invalids was... chaotic, to say the least.  During this time, we were also essentially remodeling the house, rearranging the furniture to accommodate two wheelchairs, and installing everything from ramps and grab bars to hospital beds and pneumatic lifts.

Mom gradually got better, and dad gradually got worse.  Mom had the breathing tube removed and was able to talk again... sort of (she can only use the right side of her face).  Dad started using a walker.  Mom regained the use of her right arm and leg... sort of.  Dad started using a wheelchair.  Mom got moved from the hospital to a nursing home for inpatient therapy.  Dad started needing help dressing, bathing, and using the restroom.

Finally, in early September, mom came back home after being away for four months, just in time for my other sisters to go back to their respective universities for the new semester.  Today, Elea and I spend most of our day talking care of our parents, cooking, cleaning, feeding, watering, and medicating them, and coordinating in-home therapies, doctor's appointments, and paperwork.  We're essentially on-call twenty-four hours a day and sleep in shifts.

So... yeah.  Updating dad's website was not exactly a high priority on my to-do list.

Still, that's only half the story as to why this website was neglected.  The other half is Cthulhu's fault.

And I'll explain that story in the next post.