Despite hurricane craziness in the south and the fact that the west is burning, here in in the midwest, we are getting a firm dose of fall temperatures, sunny clear days that top out in the 70's and drop into the 50's..it seems more October weather than September, but then again, August seemed more like September.
My mother is back in the hospital, and I am pretending things will, as her doctors seem to think, be okay and moving in the right direction, but am ignoring the little voice at the back of my head that tells me she every well may not be. Her heart appears to be fine, but a wound on her heel from a fall earlier this year resulted (despite precautions and wound treatment) in an infection that resulted in a terrifying bout of delerium--hallucinations, aphasia, general weakness and confusion. She had surgery on the foot Sunday, and seems to have good days and bad days since. It kills me that a woman who can survive a heart attack without batting an eyelash, has been rendered to nothing by a cut on her foot. When I was home the weekend before last, before she finally was hospitalized, she kept obsessing over certain things, my sister's husband's whereabouts, their dog, another dog that doesn't exist and that she worried was all alone somewhere. Dorothy's ruby slippers, the neighbors, tiny bugs on the carpet, strange people on the ceiling.
While I teased her that I would be reminding her of all the crazy things she said when she was better, it was impossible to watch at the same time. She also was barely able to eat, barely able to stand. would get confused when we instructed her to move her feet. But then I realized it had perhaps, though less severe, began a few weeks back when she'd occasionally lose track of day vs. night. When she laughingly mentioned on the phone she said it seemed like people were coming into the house and moving things around while she slept. We worried, before the diagnosis of the infection that she was having a breakdown, she'd had alot of pain with her legs in general (a latex allergy had blistered her legs earlier in the spring). She'd gone in for two heart procedures, nothing invasive, but still requiring short hospital stays. . Shed been cooped up since February, and add in my aunt's death in June, and who know's what the mind can endure. (and the family history includes a lot of crazy in general on her side of the tree.). Even so, when I was home in early July, she was good, and getting around better, and in a little pain with the foot, but not incapacitated. We even went out on a couple trips and restaurant outings. But it seemed every time she seemed to be getting better, she would have a setback, and this seems so much the story of so many elderly parents (she just turned 70 this year.)
So I've been going back and forth on the weekends, manaicly trying to balance, keep to my routines and structures to keep the entire house from falling down but also to spend some time with her, even though sometimes she might be confused as to who I actually am. . If I keep myself occupied, I can keep certain thoughts at bay, but only for so long. To even write them here seems gut-wrenching. No matter how prepared you feel you are for these things, you realize that you are so very not.
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