Yesterday when I arrived at Northwoods Mom had just been returned to her room after lunch in the dining room. She was lying on her bed, looking very tired. I asked about her lunch. She said it was "delicious" but that she hadn't eaten all of it, that they always gave her too much. I didn't check with the speech pathologist, who has now included Mom at a table of patients with eating difficulty, but I would bet that she ate no more than a few bites of whatever the delicious food was. Mom nodded off soon after I arrived. Since her roommate, Clara, was gone to a doctor's appointment, it was quiet, except for the noise in the hallway. I was going to go with Mom to her doctor's appointment at 2:15, so I had brought a magazine to read and that's what I did while Mom slept. I knew she was going to need sleep if she was going to have the stamina required to go see the doctor. I watched her face as she dropped into REM sleep, twitching, grimacing, making tiny noises and then relaxing again. I remembered watching my babies sleep, wondering what their dreams were. It was the same feeling.
At 2:05 the day's aide came in to get Mom ready for her ride in the Northwood's van. She woke up pretty quickly and was helped up and into a wheelchair. I helped Mom adjust her wig (she wanted her wig on if she was going out into public) and helped her put on a sweater. The van driver came on the dot of 2:15 and I grabbed my purse and we were off, Mom to the van, me to my car to meet them at the clinic. The traffic in Silverdale was heavy--must have been because Easter is this weekend.
The van driver delivered Mom to the second floor of the clinic, handed her paperwork to the receptionist, and parked Mom in the waiting room. Mom leaned against her right hand, looking exhausted. The last time I was in a waiting room with her was her last appointment with the heart rhythm specialist, several weeks before she went to the hospital. I realized she had been much more alert then. That's when the doctor had said he couldn't really do anything for her, her heart was regular, though fast, and there didn't appear to be any other problems with her heart. He said, "Your weight loss and fast heart beat are symptoms of some underlying problem we haven't found yet. Now we have to wait until the problem manifests itself." My theory, as uninformed as it is, is that her face neuralgia (numbness in her chin) is at the bottom of all of it--the problem that was dismissed nearly a year ago by a neurologist as a "pinched nerve".
Mom had her meeting with her doctor, pretty much an overview of what had been going on with her since her admission to the hospital. The doctor checked her swelling feet which looked like pink sausages and decided she wanted an ultrasound to make sure there was no blood clot. The doctor had her concerned face on, and she probably was concerned, she has known Mom a long time, but I wish she had been more concerned last year. To be fair, Mom has always downplayed any problems she's had and, indeed, often forgot she had any problems at all.
The nurse came in to announce that she had made an appointment over at Salmon Center for the ultrasound and that we could go over there right now. She read the look on my face correctly because she amended that with, "Oh, you can't do that?" It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was that I didn't want Mom to have to go to another appointment. She is 89, she weighs 91 pounds, she hasn't walked more than 100 feet without a walker in weeks. I couldn't make her endure it. I told her Mom had arrived in a Northwood's van and she understood then. Northwoods had to make the appointment and arrange for van service. She gave us our freedom then.
We didn't have to wait for the van--a different driver was there delivering someone else to his doctor. When Mom got a look at him she perked up, because he was a very handsome fellow, black curly hair, sultry eyes, beautiful skin. I had seen him around Northwoods but Mom hadn't and she zeroed in on him, smiling with delight. I left her to her fantasies and her ride back to Northwoods with her easy-on-the-eyes van driver. I arrived at the same time they did and followed them into Mom's room. When he asked me if I thought Mom would like to be put into her bed, I nodded yes. I knew that she would be very happy to have a fellow as fine looking as this one help her. When he had gotten her into bed she piped, "Thanks, Goodlookin'!" Even through his caramel-colored skin we could see the blush.
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