Last night, late, after work (about 9 p.m.), I went to see mom. Claudia had called to say that mom was crying and crying and couldn’t stop. I drove over to be with mom so that Claudia could get home, she’d been with mom all day. Mom grabbed my hand as I sat down beside her. She said she just felt very weepy and couldn’t explain why and she cried as she spoke. Mom was soooooooo normal, typical…so OK. I hadn’t seen her like this in so long. She was back fully and just like she always was. Mom kept crying and saying she didn’t know what was wrong with her and why she couldn’t stop crying. I explained that there was nothing wrong with her but that she is just getting better and as she does, she is realizing so much more. In between strong crying and sobbing, mom would wipe her nose and make some comment about how lovely my clothing was or my jewelry. She would just turn off her emotions momentarily and focus on me.
As mom cried, mom talked about wanting to come home so badly, about wanting to be with dad… At one point, mom cried and said, “I’m afraid to go home!! It’s going to be so overwhelming!!! What will I do? How will I cook and clean?? I don’t know if I can do everything.” She also said that she wanted things to go back to normal. I told her that things would go back to normal very soon. I also told her that, when she gets home, she wouldn’t need to cook or clean or do anything other than live life with us all. She said she couldn’t live at home and do absolutely nothing. I told her she could. I told her that we all love her for who she is and not for what she can do for us. She calmed down after that.
Mom asked how Aunt Carol was and that she missed Aunt Carol so much. Aunt Carol is mom’s oldest friend from childhood—they are friends for 72 years! I called Aunt Carol (she was up still). They had such a normal conversation. Totally normal. Mom was sooo present. She asked such relevant questions and maintained the topic and focus of the conversation. She did so well. After she spoke to Aunt Carol, she asked how Nancy (our cousin) is and we called her next.
Mom asked me again what happened to her…how she had the aneurysm and stroke. What happened to her the day that it all occurred. Then she asked me to tell her about the coma and the respirator. Mom cried again then and said, “Oh my poor daddy [meaning my dad]. This must have all been so hard on him. I feel so bad that this happened to him.”
Mom then asked me why people say that she is a miracle. She looked at me and said, “Kathy, why do people say I’m a miracle? I don’t understand.” I explained that she almost died and that, when we knew she would live, she was very, very sick and couldn’t walk or talk or even stay awake. I told her that she has come so far now that everyone sees her as one of God’s miracles. I told mom how the kids all took care of her while she was in a coma and also while she was recovering. I told her that, when all this first happened to her, Lenny one day said to me, “Mom, Nonny will be OK” I told him we couldn’t be sure of that and how Lenny replied, “Mom, you and Aunt Claudia are going to get Nonny better. You guys will make her come back and get healthy again.” I told mom that I told him he was crazy and that Aunt Claudia and I didn’t know the first thing about strokes or what to do with someone who had a stroke and how he said, “Sure you guys do. You’re special education teachers and God will show you what to do.” Mom smiled at this and said, “My Lenny had faith even then.” The weird thing is, Lenny was right back then. God did indeed show Claudia and I what to do for mom. God healed mom and taught us how to be a part of that process. Who knew?
Mom said she felt better then, so I anointed her with oil, and we prayed together. Mom has become quite the prayer warrior. I surrounded mom in bed by all the piggies we bought her over the last year and a half and gave her the remote control and left.
Claudia and I came to mom this morning. Mom had an early shower which is good because mom had an appointment with the urologist this morning. Mom was concerned that she was going to miss her shower today. We talked and laughed while mom ate breakfast. After breakfast, mom made some phone calls again and she was sooo excited that she remembered Aunt Carol and Florence’s phone numbers (we gave her the first number)!
Mom is now under the care of a new doctor at the facility. Dad asked for a different doctor because the doctor mom had been assigned to was not very efficient in our opinion (never caught the fluid on the brain, still insists mom has to have the feeding tube even though she has been eating normally since July, won’t stop the heprin injections mom had been given in the hospital, won’t prescribe medication for the severe eczema on mom’s face…). Hopefully, this doctor will be better.
Mom went to the urologist this morning. All went well. The urologist said that mom’s kidney function is great. The urologist explained that, back in early September, mom had a STENT put into the tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder. This stent can stay in for up to 6-8 months but then has to be removed. The urologist said that the stone in mom’s right kidney is approximately 8 mm in size which makes it rather large. Since the stone is so large, it is unlikely it will pass without having it ‘blasted’ through a sonogram. Mom needs to come back to see the urologist in 6 weeks and she needs to have an x-ray done of her kidney in 5 weeks. A decision on how to proceed will happen then. The catheter was taken out!! Yahoo!! I held mom’s hand and we prayed while it was removed. Mom was anxious about removing it.
Mom had to stand again to transfer from the wheelchair to the examining chair/table. This time, we were smart and brought the walker!! Mom stood up almost fully, and on command. She became very anxious about standing and that prevented her from hearing any of our other commands…but she then swiveled her body and sat down on the table/chair. She was then able to push her body back further on the table/chair as well. When we practice having mom stand, we put the walker (from home from Grammy years ago) in front of her. Then we tell her to put her feet flat on the floor (this is challenging for her to do). Then we tell her to spread her feet apart a bit (if she can’t, then we do it for her) and then we brace our one foot (holding our foot sideways) across the tips of both her feet to prevent slipping and sliding. Then we tell her to look at my face and listen to my command. I then say, “One, two, three, STAND” and she does! She appears to have no control over her legs and feet from the knee down.
As I filled out the paperwork in the urologist’s office when we first arrived, I asked mom all the questions like: “What’s your birth date?” “What’s your address?” “What is your phone number?” “What is your social security number?” Mom knew ALL the answers!!! The only piece of information she forgot was her zip code!!
When we got back to the facility, mom copied some information about the new facility doctor into her note pad. This is a new activity for her. I straightened her room while she did this. Then mom and I did a simple maze. She read the directions and then she set about completing the maze---she got ¾ of the way through both times, then she couldn’t follow the maze path any more and cheated to the end by going over the line. An interesting observation was that both these mazes began to the right and then down and then right again and then down again, BUT when the maze shifted to the left, that’s where she couldn’t continue in the path. Following this activity, we did a word search. The word was DRIP and mom said, “OK so I need to find a D-R” This is so great! She found the word (it was written upsidedown) and she drew a line alongside the right side of the word from bottom to top—then stopped. What she had to draw was now going to the left again. Peculiar. Interesting.
Lunch came next and mom ate all of it—grilled cheese sandwich, applecrisp, peas and carrots, and a biscuit…how well rounded!! Hahaha! She drank a glass of milk and one of cranberry juice and then I gave her a FIBER ONE bar along with some FIBER ONE cereal in a cup.
Mom and I completed a worksheet next. The worksheet had a calendar on it with events already written in. The calendar was called, “Mark’s Calendar.” Looking at the calendar, you had to find the answers to questions like: “What day of the week is Jeff’s birthday?” Mom did GREAT with this activity. She not only knew how to find the answers, she also knew how to write them. When mom began the 2nd worksheet, there was a place that said name and date. Mom looked at the calendar hanging on her bookcase and figured out the date and wrote it on the sheet!!! She was “cooking with gas on the fire!!” One question was, “What is Rob doing on the 4th?” In the box for the 4th, there was written, “Watch sunset.” Mom wrote on the answer line, “He will be watching the sunset.”
I left to go home in the middle of the afternoon and dad stayed with mom through the afternoon until it was time for bed. Dad said he and mom watched the movie, “Pearl Harbor” and they played a game too. He said she told him she was very happy with her performance in physical therapy today too. They had dinner and continued to watch TV and talk and then dad left when it was bedtime.
“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom…but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” 1 Corinthians 2:6¬-7
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