Wednesday Afternoon/Evening

Today Mom is beginning to turn the corner. She sat up in a chair for almost 7 total hours today! Mom is absolutely wiped out, but she is starting to feel better. Tomorrow the plan is to move her into the Immediate Care Unit & she will be up and walking as well.

After the 12noon - 2pm visiting shift, I went into the waiting room so Mom would get some sleep. (She thinks she needs to entertain if anyone is in there.) I tried to take a quick nap and was slowly entering a bit of a twilight phase when my cell phone rang. It was Mom's work number, so I figured it was her colleagues calling to check on her. When I answered, I heard this raspy, whispery voice. "Hi. You need to call your brother and tell him . . . blahblahblahblah." Yep, mom borrowed the nurse's phone to call me and give orders! I asked her if I needed to come in there & she told me to come by later. When I told her I was in the waiting room, she said, "Oh! Come in here and sit with me." I also knew that Mom was starting to feel better today when she cracked a couple of jokes, wanted some mascara, said she was hungry, and complained that "this place is boring". She'll be up & running the hospital again in no time.

There were a couple of entertaining times today when my mom was having some dreams/hallucinations around 1:00 after a dose of morphine. One of her chest tubes was removed, so they gave her pain meds to get through it smoothly. She had dreams of a patient trying to swallow, thought she had a picture in her (empty) hand, and thought the sytrofoam cups on her table were "buckets". There will be some great stories that we can use for torturing her later. :)

The next couple of days will be especially difficult on my mom since she will be exerted physically. It will be hard for us to keep her relaxed and preventing her from overdoing it. Thanks for all the continued thoughts, prayers, calls, emails, pages, texts, and comments. They really mean the world to my mother, our family, and me.