September 2022

Heatwave tempers

Well, August came in and went out as a real scorcher and it left frayed tempers as a result. I used to think my brother and I got on fairly well after we grew up, childhood and adolescence was a different matter, but after losing my mother I learned just how wrong I was. He obviously didn't want to upset her by constantly sniping at me or complaining about something every time he saw me when she was alive as I was the one looking after her after she was diagnosed with a very rare late-onset type one diabetes.

It seems a flu she contracted in the late 1990's caused severe pancreatitis, which killed her pancreas so she was unable to produce any insulin herself. I didn't know a common flu could do that until the diabetic specialist who basically saved Mom's life 22 years ago told my father the cause of her diabetes. I am very pro flu vaccinations because of that. Started getting them back in 2000 and not a day lost to influenza since, pretty good especially as that disease killed more people in just 11 months of 1919 than the entirety of WW1! The things you learn about diseases when you start looking into their history prior to vaccines, like the fact that there was a time when the flu was looked upon as a death sentence back in the Middle Ages, as it was a guarantee the patient would die. 

There's been a lot of arguing in the family lately, especially as my father decided to officially place my brother and I on the title of my parents' house after Mom died, just to make things easier for us when he passes. Nice idea, but now Dad and my brother argue all the time especially as my brother now acts as if he's sole owner of the house and Dad is just there on sufferance to pay his bills. Hopefully everything gets worked out soon.

​It may just be this heat causing all the problems. I certainly hope so, all this dissension is wreaking havoc with my writing time. Still, I did manage to finish a fifth edit of the stand-alone novel I wrote about Feline's adventures in the Adlamar Spiral. Now all it requires is a publisher to like it.