Long drives in the car and emotional roller coaster trips.
11:19 p.m.
It was a nurse from my mother’s retirement home informing us that she had been taken by ambulance to a hospital. She’d collapsed after lunch, her speech was slurred, and she was even more confused than usual. When my shift was up, 250 km. later, I called the home back and spoke to a different nurse who had no news. As we approached the city, another two or so hours later, we called again and found out which hospital she was at and headed downtown to see her.
Apparently the home could not reach anyone. They called my brother in Israel, who gave them my cell phone number and that of my other brother, but when we got the call, they hadn’t been able to reach him. Once we were at emergency, however, the nurse on duty told me that my sister-in-law had been there for about an hour late in the afternoon.
We spent a half-hour or so with my mom. She looked like a broken bird in the hospital bed, and kept complaining of a headache. Her short-term memory span was 15 to 30 seconds, and while she knew who we were, she didn’t know where she was or how she’d got there. Her speech was indeed slurred and she was very weak.
When we arrived at my in-laws’, I just sobbed on Hubby’s mother’s shoulder. The next day I took an inter-city bus back to T.O. and met Little Princess at the bus station. We walked to the hospital from there and spent an hour and-a-half with my mom. She’d been moved to a room on the eighth floor just before we arrived and looked fine. There was colour in her cheeks and she was just as she’d been when I’d seen her a few weeks ago. The nurse said that they were calling her episode a cardiac vascular accident, as she exhibited no aftermath of a stroke, but they wanted to do some more tests just to makes sure.
Little Princess and I took the bus back to Hubby’s town together and the next day was spent at my brother-in-law’s for the annual July family party. It was a much quieter affair than in previous years, just the family, and it was quite pleasant. My sister-in-law is recovering from laser eye surgery and her daughter, the one who got married two months ago, mentioned to her mom that her period was two days late. Oh boy! More babies!
This morning we drove back to T.O. and visited my mom again in the hospital. She seems perfectly fine again and was complaining bitterly about the food and about being bored. We stayed with her for an hour-and-a-half, then kissed and hugged goodbye, dropped Little Princess off at her place, and then hit the long and dusty trail, arriving home around 10 p.m. to find scaffolding up around our house and roofing supplies everywhere.
Hurrah!
<~~~ * ~~~>
