Mother dear, I love you so...

I got to spend a few days with mom this last week. I am supposed to be helping her, but I always feel like I am the one who gains the most from our visits. She has a very calming effect on me. I can put things in perspective and slow down when I'm with her.

The other night when I called her she said that she had a pain in her back that was really bothering her. She does not complain unless something is pretty bad so I took her into the doctor on saturday morning. This was a process in itself. We got up early and got all ready to go, then tried to get out to the car. There was a sheet of ice from the front porch to the car. just getting myself to the car to warm it up was not easy. I got ahold of her and we started shuffling, skating to the car. Five minutes later we are in the car! When we got to the doctors office, we had to take the elevator upstairs. We were waiting for the doors to open so we could get on, and mom started going down. I had a hold of her arm, but her legs just gave out from under her. It was like slow motion. There was a lady standing behind us and she ran up and helped me get her back on her feet. We finally made it to his office and sat and waited for a while. Dr. Stones examined her and asked her where it hurt. He asked her if she had fallen or bumped herself there. She said no. He said "well sometimes you might forget what's happened, I think you may have a cracked rib." She disagreed with him, but we went over to the hospital and had some x-rays taken. Dr. Stones said he would call and let us know what he saw.

We had a nice lunch together, then I met with Brenda and Leslie to talk about pursuing the home health care idea for her. With Angie (who was a great help and a lot of companionship for mom) moving, and Brenda (who has been consistantly there for her) not being able to be there as much as she had because she is not working in Providence anymore, We need to have someone check in our her a few times a day when we can't be there. We decided to try again to talk to Mother and get her to sign the papers that would allow someone to come into her home. She is very stubborn about her independence and wants to take care of herself. I think for her age she is doing really well, but just needs someone to help her with a few things...like remembering to take her pills, and to get up the stairs to bed. I hope she will go along with the idea...that would really ease all of our minds if we knew that someone was there to help her when we can't be there. I really hated leaving her that day. She has seemed kind of lonely lately. I was glad when I called later and found out that Kelsie and Steve had been by to visit with her.