Sunday, January 13, 2013

Changes

 

This image may not have anything to do with this blog, but I thought it was beyond amazing--
it looks like a phoenix or thunderbird to me.

As many of you reading this know, my mom has been in the hospital this past week since Wednesday. She has severe COPD, and when she gets a cold, she cannot breathe. For a couple of days, she was really confused, talking about friends who have passed on being nurses and roommates, thinking she was going to move up from the 6th floor where she was staying to the 5th floor, thinking when I left I would take her home (and getting really petulant when I said she had to stay), talking about "morons" waking her up at 6 to go to the deer stand (and being upset about their activities because "you can't hunt on hospital grounds"), and so forth. I've never seen her like that, and it scared me; the woman I'd brought to the hospital on Wednesday was gone, replaced by a petulant, confused person.

Thank god she was very lucid yesterday with only a little bit of confusion as to how she'd arrived at the hospital.

Her doctor calls this cold's effects a "setback". A friend says that her friends are visiting because she's getting ready to pass. Another friend says this isn't her time. Me, I don't know what to believe, other than things are going to change...I feel that. They'll have to change, at least: Mom will need more support to stay in her apartment, and my family will need to visit and call more often.

Part of the difficulty is she's lonely because she's essentially homebound. She doesn't drive much. She can't shop (and is too proud to cruise around in the carts some store provide for that purpose). I'm the only regular weekly visitor. She doesn't drop by others' apartments (never has), so their visits to hers aren't very frequent. It's sad, and it sometimes makes me angry. Never at her, though.

Today or tomorrow, I will take her to a transitional care facility, where she will recover with supervision and support for two to three weeks. Then she will go home. I'm grateful for the support I've had, and I hope that continues, because it's very scary going through this on one's own. Just writing about it has given me hives, so I'm going to leave on that note and go scratch my itches. Thank you.

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