Last Rites of Passage

I love these pictures my brother took while he was here visiting.  Mom, dressed and ready for physical therapy.  She loves going to physical therapy!  She likes to feel strong.  Her eating has been pretty good too - a huge difference from when she was refusing to eat anything but hard-boiled eggs and applesauce.  she's been eating  mashed potatoes, chicken, veggies, fruits - and loves pudding for dessert! Look at that smile.  That twinkle in her eye.  Mom is a beautiful soul living in a body that isn't cooperating.  She's had an amazing month of clarity.  Of expressing herself.  Of engaging and being engaged.  Storytelling.  Sharing memories.  This is the Mom I've known my whole life.  We are at once total opposites and exactly alike.   I admit, I allowed myself to be lulled into the thought that maybe she just needed some attention.  That the brain fog was a result of the infection and big toe trauma....

  It’s been an eventful week!   Mom has started attacking physical therapy with avengence.   Her appetite is great and she’s eating almost everything.   Andy came to visit the day after John and Mary left and spent most of that evening and most of the next morning with her.   He’d planned to stay until Wednesday, but Idalia changed those plans. Idalia was a low pressure area hanging out by the Yucatan for a while, then in quick succession became a depression, then a tropical storm as it moved into the Gulf.   It kind of hung out in the gap for a while, then began moving north towards us.   It quickly blew up to a Cat 1, then Cat 2 before bed last night. Andy, seeing which way the wind was blowing (haha), decided to leave Tuesday afternoon to get out ahead of the storm.   He’d been a huge help, getting Dad ready to weather the storm alone by getting him a UPS to power his chair, iPad and cell phone if the power went out (IF?).   Also got...

With John and Mary here to spend time with Mom, I'm freed up a bit to take care of MY life a little.  A couple of days ago, I literally spent 10 hours at my desk working to get caught up and a little ahead (holiday weekend coming!) while they tended to the parental needs.   That evening, I was sitting in my recliner with my feet up, and I really looked at my feet.  They looked like spiky balloons at the ends of my legs, weirdly swollen up.  I'm familiar with swelling that comes from too much sitting, but this was like nothing I'd ever seen before on me.  We've been eating out some, which means salty food.  I also had been eating Factor 75 meals at night for a while (no time to cook) and once I discovered the sodium counts on them, had to stop.  My normal diet doesn't have much salt at all, and I drink A LOT of water, so this was quite the surprise for me! Last night, I was feeling... big.  Waistbands digging in.  Slow.  When I laid ...

Hospital discharged her on Saturday.  She didn't get the rehab place she wanted, but was pretty happy to be back in the one she was in before.  She gave the floor nurse a big hug when she arrived.   That said, the beginnings of the slow fade that started in the hospital on her last day seem to have bloomed full force again.  While she was eating everything in sight at the hospital, after a day in rehab, she's back to the hard-boiled eggs and applesauce refrain.  "I can't eat that - I'm allergic"...  six words that make me want to scream.  She actually turned down eggs this morning, which is a bad sign.  At lunchtime, she relented and ate the scrambled eggs they brought her after she turned her nose up at lunch.  She's having a difficult day. John and Mary are with her today, our priest will be visiting later, and I will show up in time for dinner, armed with back-up soup.  She has more visitors than anyone in rehab, save her roommate, wh...

The deed is done.  Mom's toe is amputated and ONLY the toe.  The doctor was able to restore enough blood flow that the foot and leg got to stay on.  She's been in remarkably good spirits, though she says her missing toe hurts, her heel hurts, her thigh hurts.  I told her that I imagine that was from having to hold her leg still while taking the toe - it's not like Legos... it doesn't just pop off.  A few days later, she doesn't mention those things at all, but her back hurts her a lot.   She's had scoliosis and spondylitis her whole life, but the pain of it seems to have kicked into high gear in the last couple of weeks.  Matt brought her a back brace, which she has been wearing religiously.  It helps, but she still has pain. The taking of the toe seems to have had a lot of ramifications on the rest of her.  Was it the infection or the pain that made her eating habits so bizarre?  She declared herself allergic to everything back in ...

Mom checked into the hospital this morning.  It was determined a couple of weeks ago that the toe had to go.  It just wasn't healing, had a MERSA infection that wasn't backing down (we have one antibiotic in our arsenal now), and bone was now showing through the wound.  None of this is good news.  So the toe has to go. She'd gotten x-rays and ultrasounds.  We had one last consultation last Thursday, but really, it was a formality.  The doctor wanted to make sure Mom knew what was going to happen and why.  There were tears and a little bargaining, but in the end, I think she understood. The transit company picked her up on time and we got to the hospital very quickly.  The driver was wonderful, pushing her all the way upstairs to the large waiting room.  In no time, the nurse called us back to pre-op. Mom is ALWAYS freezing.  The home is kept at 75 degrees, but she is always decked out in her watch cap, shawl, gloves, sweater and various ...

  It's been a little while since I posted last.  Things have been BUSY.  Mom was not doing well, refusing to eat or cooperate with nurses.  Hospice came to do an assessment, but as soon as Mom realized she wouldn't get physical therapy, she balked at hospice and decided she didn't want to do that yet.  I told her that if she was going to do physical therapy, she would have to EAT.  If you have no fuel or energy, you can't do PT.  She's been better, especially since there's a lovely young man named Joe in the kitchen who does "special" dishes for her now. When things were looking dire, I called the brothers and told them that if they wanted to see Mom, they should probably come and do it.  And they did!  The two in Atlanta came.  The local brother who is always working came.  And my brother in New York and his husband came for several days.  Matt and I kept up our visits too - so Mom had LOTS of stimulation.  She was more w...