Hasta Luego and Goodbye to Buffalo Party (Number 2)

I'm not actually leaving today, but as of.. somewhere between 3 and 5 today, I am officially going offline until such a time as I figure out how to connect through Dial-Up AOL (ugh ugh ugh) in Maryland.
I've still got stuff to do.. do and pack up my laundry, get all the directions between hotel and other locations, reburn my road mix CD, do a few last minute trips and... yes, pack everything into my car (or have it ready to be packed in case of things like bathroom essentials and alarm clock and lamp I'll still use tommorow). Also, I'm waffling back and forth on whether it's worth it for me to get a car wash or not. My new car is salty! ;(

Yesterday was... mostly fun. It was great to see everyone (thank you all so much for coming out to be here for/with me :) ) and we all had a good time. Here, in a nutshell, is what we did...
For my own records, more than for those who know they were there.. the attendees were kareila, alierak, coderlemming, dawnstar, kolys, blackfelicula, ecwoodburn and, of course, me :)
Everyone converged on Le Casa de LITE by about 1:00 and we all wandered off to IHOP for lunchstuff. This was my idea since pretty much every time kareila and alierak come into town, we go into IHOP. Also, I wanted to be at that particular IHOP once more before I left because that was the location of my first date with ecwoodburn (As I said to Jen, it's amazing how many memories the strip of Maple between North Forest and the Boulevard Mall hold. :) ). From there, we went to UB for a few hours and played an evil little game called Bethump'd with words. I LIKE this game. It was like Trivial Pursuit meets Scrabble and it was just cool :) It was also a long game, especially with 8 players, but that's OK. After that, I had to run home and feed the poor pathetic starving cats (or at least they still seem to think so.)
After that, we went back to UB to play a round of Fluxx, some Evil (Stackable) Uno and My Word! All fun games :)
Then I had to go home and help mom with her IVs and everyone was getting hungry anyways, so we were going to all converge upon Subway, but.. we got there and it closed at 8 (Doh!). So I suggested John and Mary's Sub Shop instead, which is close by and I thought had more non-fattening and veggie choices than there actually were. Jen drove me home to help mom and everyone looked at the menu. Kristen called me to say that the choices sucked and that they were planning to go to Denny's instead. OK. No problem :)
Get mom going on the one drug and we all go to Denny's where we play a round of Pass the Brain (or is it Give Me The Brain) and start to eat..
The night turned a bit sour (for me), a few minutes after dinner had started. Mom called frantically to apologize for having to call me, but she kept getting the same error message (air bubbles in the line) 3 times and she needed my help to get it taken care of. Scarfed my burger down and got a ride back home from dawnstar and kolys. True enough, there were air bubbles in mom's line that would not get out.
So.. we were both shaken by this and I made the mistake of closing the one clamp and trying to shake the air bubbles out while the IV was still connected to her arm (we should have taken the IV out first).. and.. blood starts coming up the IV towards the medicine. EEP! Full stop! Turn it all off.
So.. mom is like "Should I pet the Heparin (a blood thinner to prevent clotting) in now?" and I suggest we wait and call the VNA and tell us what is going on.
So we call the VNA (Visiting Nurses Assocation, the people who come out to help get the pick in mom's arm and occasionally to help out during the week) and.. get put on hold for somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, getting further and further steamed. Somewhere in this, I send Dawn and Oli back to Dennys and suggest I'll drive myself back as soon as I can, if I can. And then Kristen calls a couple mintues later and I'm panicking and frantic and she's trying her "Calm, but firm" voice which I'm having none of.
Finally get out of being on hold on the VNA hotline to talk to some guy who is obviously not from the city (They outsourced the emergency hotline when they were closed!) who said he'd call the nurse on duty.
Another 4 or 5 minutes later, said nurse calls. As per his instructions, we send a dosage of saline and heparine into the pick line to make sure it has not clogged and luckily it has not. So we grab a new line and a new pack of the drug and start the pump up again. At this point, we're both rattled and not thinking wonderfully and I manage to put the IV line into the pump (mom has a pump to pump the drug into her) the WRONG WAY IN.
And so we turn the pump on again and blood is coming back up the IV again. So we stop the pump again and are freaking out even worse. Part of me figured and tried to explain to mom that I think we just put the line in the wrong way and we should flip it and start again, but mom won't have anything to do with it, so I back off. At this point, everyone else shows up to say goodbye and what they were saying goodbye to was a freaked out LITE.
So I go through caller ID and get the number of the nurse on duty we'd just talked to and called him directly. He tells us to get saline and at this point, Kristen runs upstairs to get it, because she's taking charge of the situation since I'm panicking. A minute or so later, Jen climbs up to help, but unfortunately, I'm really the one who knows what we're looking for, so I go up, get the extra salines plus an extra heparine and go down with them.
Mom cleans her pick line out with saline and heparin again, meanwhile I test the drip line to make sure it's still flowing and it is. Kristen grabs the phone and takes charge from that end (I did end up having a discussion with Kristen afterwards. She was doing what she thought was best, but in the end, I don't think it helped any to feel like I wasn't trusted to follow fairly basic instructions on a process I knew better than she did. No hard feelings, though. It's talked out.) and we ended up figuring it out in fairly short order.
Long story short, it was scary and it completely killed my mood for the night, but it ended up turning out OK in the end.

So that was my day.
Today I have a busy day ahead. Tommorow a long drive and then Tuesday.. well.. Tuesday will be interesting.
I AM excited about starting a new life. I'll miss what I have here, being close to my family (I won't miss living WITH them, but being within close distance) and my girlfriend. I'm a little anxious and scared about starting the new life, getting an apartment, getting my stuff down, dealing with a long distance relationship with Kristen.. but I honestly believe it'll work out for the best.
This is my time to shine. Shine on, dear LITE. Shine out.
*beam*

... OK.. that was a really bad pun :)
Hee :)

Edit: And if I was looking for proof that things will work out, not only did my check from mom clear already, but I got my taxes back! I'm not going into Maryland rich, but I should have enough money (especially after I deposit my check next weekend from kareila (thank you, thank you, thank you again)) to put money on a new house, pay for the U-Haul and still be able to work on setting up the new apartment.