Day 115

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

I'm back in Texas and spending day two with Mom in the hospital. We do a lot of waiting in hospitals - waiting on the doctor, waiting on the surgeon, waiting on the test results to see what kind of infection Mom has (or had.) Waiting on the wound care nurse to look at Mom's wound and tell us why it isn't healing. Waiting on some peace and quiet so she can nap uninterrupted.

Waiting on some good news.

Status on Day 115

I am dumbstruck with how thoroughly the past weeks have knocked Mom flat. When I left her two weeks ago, she was sad to be in rehab still, napping at regular intervals, but she was eating well, working hard in therapy, and holding conversations. We could talk, look at photo albums and tell stories.

Now, two weeks later, the infection and who knows what else is zapping every ounce of her energy. Mom keeps her eyes open long enough to eat some of her meal or savor a few red grapes, but then she asks for her blanket to ward off the chilly hospital room and closes her eyes again. When she speaks, rarely and only a few words at a time, it's a whisper or a croak. Her cheeks have a little color, but her hands are pale. During a restless nap, she whispered numbers - ten, eleven, twelve - like she counted steps in physical therapy.

She's stoic during the many medical visits of the day, even today's visit when she refused pain medicine while her surgical wound was cleaned and patched with a new sponge and a tube connected to a "wound vacuum" to help her heal. A pump she'll wear 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for at least several weeks. Apparently she isn't healing on her own because diabetes and steroids impede the body's natural healing process. Talk about adding insult to injury.

I never knew what a high pain tolerance she has and resolve to never again whine when I get a paper cut.

Next steps

We are waiting (again) on a call from specialists at UT-Southwestern to tell us whether we can transfer Mom there. We're told her "numbers are improving," but it's hard to wait and have faith you're hearing the right message when it's coming from the doctors who told us the port would be a good idea. So we're grasping at UT-SW as a better path.

We'll keep everyone informed. Please keep those good thoughts and prayers coming.

Blessings

There are moments of grace, of course. Like Stella, the patient care technician (PCT) who gives excellent bed baths and real shampoos and always gently massages Mom's back with good-smelling lotion. The tomato plants put in by Daddy and Jennifer months ago are now providing plump, creased, deep red heirloom tomatoes to slice and serve with mozzarella, basil, sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil. The girl at the Starbucks drive-through window recognizes Jennifer on her daily trip, knows why she's there, and sometimes gives her a latte for free because, she says with sympathetic eyes, "You buy so much."

Then there's the beautiful artwork created by my niece that brightens Mom's room and some of the other patients' rooms, and there's the way my 3-year-old son said thoughtfully, "I don't know why Gramma is sick, Mommy. She needs lots and lots of medicine. But she'll be okay."

The yellow flowers growing in the chapel garden look like the wildflowers that bloom alongside winding Napa Valley roads.