It’s been a week. I’m not talking about time frame. I mean….Its…been…a week!!!
We brought mother home from the hospital today almost to the hour of the ambulance picking her up and pulling away 7 days ago. One just never knows what life is going to throw at you: my sister, Natalie ,here for a visit from Toronto. Me trying to have a rejuvenating spring break before going back to school for the final stretch before summer. And mom just minding her own 93 year old business and visit with her second favorite daughter. All of a sudden she’s slurring her speech and talking like a drunken sailor.. Actually aside from the seriousness of a stroke, listening to her talk was quite comical. Mostly because there is no way on earth my mother would ever drink too much let alone drink hard liquor.
Anyways, we called an ambulance and that’s how mom ended up at the Foothills hospital for a week. She wasn’t in the stroke ward but Foothills IS the stroke hospital. I joined Natalie in emergency Monday night since she rode in the ambulance with mom and I had to find my own way there. Later that evening they moved mom up to a bed in a ward after her CT scan. Mom had just turned 93 the day before. Happy birthday.! Finally they came and got her for an MRI so we kissed her goodnight with the promise of being back in the morning
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True to our promise we arrived every morning at around 10 with books, magazine’s, flowers, snacks (for us)…. phone chargers. We took a lot of FaceTime calls over the week much to the chagrin of her roommates. Sorry.
We brought tea every day and baking that I kept pulling out of my freezer. Banana bread, date squares, birthday cake…we had a tea party complete with lace tablecloth, real tea cups, homemade macarons, Madeline’s, and salmon sandwiches, crackers, pickles and cheese on Natalie’s birthday which happened mid week. I made fresh scones for our final tea party. I mean we had to have something to do. To keep mom’s spirits up. Every day she asked if she was going home today….and we shook our weary heads side to side like broken bobble heads. .Why am I in here, she kept asking. What happened to me? Am I going to be stupid now? Will I recover? We had no answers so we just poured her another cup of tea. Read to her. Instigated FaceTime calls.
Let me say at this point how eternally grateful I was that my sister was here. My sister… so gracious. So compassionate. So calm. So thoughtful. So ‘in charge’. She was a pillar for both mom and I…. As I kept having flashbacks of my own experiences in the stroke ward. And she added two weeks to her departure date to be with mom at home.
I, regrettably, do not have those characteristics. I’m working on them. Philippians 3:12. While Natalie was adjusting mom’s blankets and putting more sweaters on her shivering body, escorting her to the loo, and combing her hair and extracting her food from the sealed containers…. I was drawing pictures on the hospital’s whiteboard, pouring us tea and reading magazines. Monday night we all find ourselves exhaustified and relieved to be out of the hospital.
I actually felt bad leaving Shirley behind. Shirley was one of mom’s roommates that had been there all week and is still there. She was in the bed across from mom’s feet. She watched us with fascination and astonishment that we were there everyday with a party. She talked to us and lent us her extra chair, queried about how Natalie’s hair was a different color and length each day. She was usually in a lot of pain. Lying in her bed with pain killers. Natalie and I took Saturday off from coming to the hospital because, frankly, we were too tired to drive again. We arranged for one of moms friends to come instead. And Shirley told mom she missed us! She only had two visitors Friday afternoon the rest of the time she was alone.
Mom’s first kitty corner roommate was a very old Asian man that tried to escape more than once. He put all his clothes on and headed down the hall dragging his colostomy back behind him on the floor. When they brought him back to his room… he started yelling. Is this a prison? I thought it was a hospital. The nurse tried to explain to him it was for his own safety and then he yelled… you mean I’m not safe here. Hard not to Laugh out loud.
The doctor told us to go home and get mom’s apartment ready for her return home. So naturally…. We redecorated. I’m not sure that’s what the doctor had in mind but what’s done is done. We DID buy a bathtub assist chair, a bar to pull herself out of bed and a cane. And now she’s home with very few deficiencies. But a high risk factor. That’s why we have siblings lined up to fly in to be with her for the next 6 weeks. While we figure out how mom needs to proceed in the future. Of course mom thinks we are overreacting but we have decided to proceed with an abundance of caution. Did I mention she’s 93 and has outlived most of our relatives? She’s very feisty (a substitute word for stubborn.. lol). If she doesn’t want to be sick… she’s not gonna be.
We’ll not soon forget this weird, scary, memorable week.
The Red Plaid Apron 