Mom ~ Saturday

First of all, thank you all for your love, thoughts and prayers. It means a lot to me. I'm still in awe of this whole blogging world and so grateful for the relationships I've been blessed with.

Mom has always been a super tough cookie and she's proving that by still holding her own. No one expected her to live past Thursday night and that's obvious every time one of her care providers comes into her room.

"When she came in on Thursday, I though, Oh boy, she's got a whole lotta stuff going on."

"We were pretty concerned about how things would progess when she came in. She was in pretty bad shape."

They're shocked at her progress. Now, she'll never rally back to where she was because her heart was damaged and CHF (congestive heart failure) is never far away. Best case scenario would be to move her to a hospice facility where she can get 24 hour care. She'll never go back home again.

She's been on a BiPap machine which is basically a constant flow of oxygen with a breathing treatment combined. Today when I came in, she was off the machine and only using oxygen in her nose and her level was at 98%. That's probably better than my oxygen level!

I think she's afraid of being off the BiPap and having another awful recurrence so she keeps asking for it but they're only putting her on it every four hours.

I've had a horrible sore throat and laryngitis since Thursday night so I went to have a strep test this morning. Even though Mom doesn't have much time left, I don't want to be the one responsible for shortening her days. Every time I try to sleep, I cough like crazy so I'm completely exhausted physically as well as mentally.

This morning, my friend Michelle went with me to one of those drugstore "Minute Clinic" facilities and the test was negative. Thank goodness.

We ventured on to the hospital and were making the trek down the looooooong hallway to ICU when I tripped and fell.

I know. Shocker, right?

And guess what knee I fell on?



Yep, this one that never quite healed from my fall 6 months ago. This is what it looked like back then.

I was so startled by the fall that I staring laughing and swearing, "Son of a bitch...what else can go wrong?" and then just started crying. Kudos to the hospital because a lot of people came running to help. Security wanted me to to fill out an incident report and go to the ER but I explained that I didn't have time for that and all I needed was an ice pack.

He said that he would call ahead to ICU to have one ready for me but he still made Michelle wheel me over in a wheelchair.

These things only happen to me.

When I got to ICU, the nurse said that she was required to call her supervisor and that she would bring me an ice pack.

FOUR HOURS LATER....the nurse came back to say that she paged her supervisor again and that they were still looking for an ice pack. Really? The world renowned Cleveland Clinic couldn't find a freakin' ice pack??

I told her not to bother since we were getting ready to leave. Mom has trouble communicating because she's still so weak but she knew who Michelle was (Michelle was my very first friend when I was 4 years old and she grew up down the street from me) and Mom's strong enough to tell nurses and doctors how to do their jobs.

Right now, we're just grateful for every day we have. Please keep your prayers coming. You guys are the best~