Normalcy

I'm in the cafeteria now and the occupational therapist just rolled mom by.

She gave me the Queen Mum wave.

She and Maura are off to the rehab building so mom can learn how to use a bench that will help her get into the shower at home.

I am waiting for Clancy, the discharge nurse, to talk to me about what we will need to put in place to bring mom home.

Dr. Picone (a.k.a. Dr. McDreamy) says that we may be able to bring her home before the weekend, so I have a lot of work to do.

What appeared to be fluid on her lungs in a sonogram was revealed to be collapsed portions of her lung by the CAT scan that she had last night. The bad news, of course, is the collapsed lungs. The good news is that she gets to avoid surgical intervention and will be able to come home sooner. We will try to bring her home Friday afternoon.

Things are starting to feel a little more normal. I know, because I have started to notice again that my sisters are, at times, driving me crazy. The fear has dissipated enough that I am no longer completely consumed by it.

Mom is sharing a room now with a woman who has never learned to share. If anything crosses the curtain line...the woman gets up and makes a stink and pushes things around. She calls the nurse if anything is touching "her side." It is almost comical. I might have to start charging her when she walks through mom's side to use the bathroom. Mom said I probably wouldn't be able to stay there last night...but I told her I'd sneak in and she'd never know the difference. It worked and mom’s roommate didn't realize I was there until she got up this morning to use the bathroom.

Part of me is annoyed...the other part of me recognizes that it is making mom fight all that much harder to get away from here.

When Dr. Smith told me a few days ago that the bone scan was clear...he said the bone scan was clear except for her hip and he thought that was because of the arthritis. He said he wanted to talk to her orthopedist to see if he had done an MRI of the hip. It turns out that the cancer has metastasized in her hip bone.

The good news is that she has been fighting and each day she looks exponentially better than she did the day before.

Dr. McDreamy said "months" yesterday instead of "weeks" and that is really encouraging.

Maura's baby is due in early January. I am hoping she can hold on at least that long.

It opens a whole new can of worms for me, as in "when do I go back to California?" and for how long? But those problems are akin to "i have so much money...i have no idea how i am going to spend it." Having to figure out how to manage an abundance of a good thing is a really great problem to have.

I continue to be bouyed by your e-mails and voicemails. Thank you for the long distance hugs. We can really feel them and they help more than you will ever know.