Today started out as a normal day around here. (As normal as can be.) Mom seemed to be in good spirits. I needed to go to the grocery store and I was dropping the kids off at a show that they had planned to see all week. My husband also had plans. Now I don’t usually take my mother to run errands because it can be straining on her. as I said, she was having a good day and I had no one to stay with her. So I took her with me.
I remember thinking as we got to checkout how well she had been doing and that we made it. Not a millisecond after my thought did my mother take a turn for the worst. Her skin turn pale and lips blue. Now we have gone through this before so I knew what would happen next. I grabbed my mother and headed for a chair at the star bucks but we didn’t make it that far. I held tight to my mother as she went limp and I carefully positioned her on the floor. I looked into her eyes checked her breathing and her pulse and asked someone to call paramedics. My mother was ok only a few seconds later; Wide awake and wanting to get up off the floor, but I had the paramedics take her to the hospital to have her checked out just in case.
To you I might sound very nonchalant about the whole thing, but like I said we have gone through this before. The first time I shook so bad I couldn’t fill out the insurance forms. The next time I cried myself to sleep wondering why this was happening to my mother and if it could somehow be my fault. I take my mother's sickness very seriously but I also know that when these things happen I can’t fall apart right away. All I can do is be there for her, tell the doctors what I know and listen to what they have to say.
So tonight she is resting at Saint Rose; well, trying to while the nurses poke and prod every hour or so. Tomorrow I will be there to bring her home with what I expect will be a hopeful and helpful diagnosis and as for me, I will finish this letter, publish it and then I will probably find a quiet place to sob before I go to bed.
