Long Time, No Blog -- The Mom Episode!

I can't believe it has been so long since I last blogged...when I started I really thought I had a lot to say...hmmm! And then there was Facebook!

I finally started to feel better, that was a plus!

My mother had to put her special Djiboutian cat DjiDji to sleep in April. It is very hard to see your parent so devastated by the loss. It seems that she has been dealing with many losses in the last three years, her mother, her brother, and her cat Smokey. Then last year was full of health problems, her heart, her brain, and then her foot, just one thing after another!

She took off to see my brother in North Carolina in mid-April and was to come home in early June. On May 5th, she developed SHINGLES...I went to NC to help out with her and we ended up putting her in the hospital after one of the doctors at the instacare said she looked worse than when he had first seen her and said she had "adult failure to thrive". Her heart rate was 161. (She has a heart doctor here and is on medication for it). When we asked him what he would do if it was his mom, he said admit her to the hospital. He arranged it and we took her to Wayne Memorial in Goldsboro. I spent the night with her. In the morning David came to get me to take me back to his house while they were running tests on her.

When David came back to get me they had determined that there was a "shadow" and she should have her heart looked at...because she had shingles she could not ride in the ambulance transport with another patient, so we had to wait around for another one to be dispatched from Wake Med in Raleigh. We left Goldsboro about 12:30 and got to the hospital about 2:00 am. Slept in the chairs in her room.

When they came to get her for the catherization, David and I went to the Heart Center Inn...a small, very nice "hotel" for those that needed a place to stay...mostly for patients that had traveled far from home so they had a nice place to stay prior to their proceedures and to recoup before going home.

I spent the first night in mom's room and David stayed in the room. Then she seemed to be okay enough to leave her at night, so David would go home and I would stay in the hotel room. I only spent two nights at David's house and extended my stay to Memorial Day.

I did get to see my aunt and uncle on the Friday before they left town to go to some car race...and my cousin, her husband and kids on the Sunday. And I finally got some NC barbeque on Sunday...I love the vinegar base and I soooo love hush puppies and sweet tea! We had tried to get some on the way to David's on Saturday as take-out and we got taken...there was no pork or coleslaw...I was so disappointed! We had stopped at a place that David had been to before and it was in the town (Wilson) where he works.

It was determined that mom needed some additional care after I left and David was running out of vacation, so the day I left she was transferred to a rehab. She stayed for about two weeks and then went back to David's. She finally came home on July 5th...David was doing the happy dance! He missed his annual trip to the beach in June, but he was a good caretaker while she was there.