Back at the Hospital

I took this at the surgeon's office
while we were waiting to be seen and
I just love it.
(I hope it's obvious that my smile
is not me relishing my mom's discomfort,
but joy that I could be with her when she needed me!)

Yesterday, C and I took my mom to her regularly scheduled follow-up appointment with the surgeon at 3:30, which led to her being sent to the ER for several hours before being admitted to the hospital.

My mom has been home for three weeks and her wound is definitely improving. We've had home health care nurses come several times per week to change the wound vac, but beyond that, it has just been us – her kids – who have been taking care of her. Sometimes it feels like for every two steps forward, we take one step back, but overall, she has been making progress. Her appetite has slowly begun to return and her voice has been steadily improving. Deep, restful sleep is still a challenge, but I know that this will become easier for her as she heals.

The emotional and mental pieces of the puzzle are less easy to identify and address because it is simply an exhausting process to recover from such an ordeal. Her life has been turned upside down and she just wants to feel better and when that's not happening as quickly as you'd like it to, it takes its toll. We all try to keep her spirits up and remind her of how far she has already come so focus on that instead of on how far she still has to go. Personally, it is very difficult for me because I would do anything to make things better for her. I hate to see her discouraged about the pace of her recovery and I wish I had a magic wand to fix everything.  However, even if she can't see how well she is doing because she still feels so awful, WE can see the incremental improvements and we are very, very proud of her.

So how did we end up back at the hospital?

This past week, I was co-teaching a grad class every day from 8:00 – 4:00. C worked from home and my brother came to be with her during the day. I am not going to lie…I worried about her constantly when I wasn't at home. It's not that C & G are not excellent caretakers; on the contrary, I think it is wonderful that they were able to spend that one-on-one time with her without me hovering around being a busybody. What this week showed me was that I absolutely made the right decision to resign from my teaching position, as heartbreaking as it was. If I worried constantly when it was C & G taking care of her and I knew I only had to be away from her for five days, how difficult would it be for me to teach full time and constantly worry about a stranger taking care of her while I was away from her for 195 days?!?

When I got home after class on Wednesday, it was clear to me that she was not feeling well. I felt like she got worse throughout the evening, and by about 9:00 pm, I suggested we go to the ER. My mom assured me that she would be OK, so we did not end up going (although I did sleep on the couch that night so I could be closer to her in case she needed me during the night). On Thursday, G was with her, and she was complaining of some abdominal pain, but was mostly just feeling run down and lousy. Weeks ago, we had bought tickets to go see "Christopher Robin" – Winnie the Pooh and company are a pretty big deal in my family – as something for her to look forward to while she recovered and it was going to be her first real outing since coming home from the hospital. However, she was simply not well enough to go. G kindly stayed very late to watch her because she insisted C and I go to the movies because she knew how much I'd been looking forward to it (side note: it was wonderful!).

Yesterday was the last day of my class and C stayed home with my mom. She did not seem great in the morning, but as a general rule, mornings are kind of tough and she typically feels better as the day goes on. C drove me to class because he and my mom were going to pick me up in the afternoon so we could both go with her to her appointment with the surgeon. Well it turns out she had a very hard day and when I saw her, she looked terrible. So terrible, in fact, that when we saw the surgeon, she commented on how unwell my mom looked and told us we needed to take her to the ER.

I cannot even express how overwhelmed
I am by how much C loves my mom
<3 <3 <3

We left the office and drove straight to the hospital and once we were called back, they spent several hours running tests trying to determine what was causing the abdominal pain. We knew this would take time and obviously none of us had been prepared for being away from home for more than a couple of hours, so we decided that C would stay with her so I could go home, feed the dogs, and get a phone charger and a few things for my mom and that we would have some answers by the time I got back to the hospital.

As I was driving home around 8:00, I got a text from C that she was being admitted. Not the news I wanted to hear. I did what I needed to do at home, including packing a bag for myself, and got back to the hospital around 10:30. C stayed until about midnight before heading home and I spent the night with my mom.

My glamorous accommodations! :)

As of right now, we have no answers regarding what is causing the abdominal pain, although they suspect it may be an abscess of some sort. Hopefully they will be able to figure it out soon, because she is not allowed to eat or drink anything until they do. She is currently on IV fluids and sleeping and I am sitting here feeling helpless. Not an emotion I enjoy. But I am very happy she is resting and I am going to focus on that and on the fact that she is in excellent hands at this hospital!

Happy Tails to you!