What a week so far...

I spent most of the day Monday trying to unpack and get organized at work. Trying is the optimal word, because it didn't seem like I got a whole lot done, between the phone ringing etc, but it is finally starting to look like my office again, except three times as large! Woohoo!!! Then Tuesday we are learning how to use the new phone system when I get a call from Hearthstone Assisted Living where my Mom lives (she is 85 years old) to tell me that she fell and that she is on the way to the hospital. Well, by the grace of God I didn't get a speeding ticket, because I made it from Exit 238 (Saginaw) off of I-65 South to St. Vincents East in about 25 minutes.

I lost my dad to Parkinson's disease back in 2002 and my mom and I are very close. Sometimes I tend to take it for granted that she is always going to be here and then I have a wake up call like I had yesterday. Praise the Lord she had no broken bones and the fall wasn't caused by a stroke, she just bruised her knee cap really bad and has to stay off of it for a few days. So instead of using her walker (she broke her hip back in 1996) she gets to ride around in a wheelchair for a few days and get pampered.

It is hard watching Mom getting older and having a hard time getting around. It is especially hard watching her deal with the loss of my father (she still misses him so, they were married for 58 years) and the starting of beginning Alzheimer's. She hates that her memory is going. My sister and I have noticed that her confusion has gotten a little worse these past few months and it really frustrates my Mom when she is having a "bad day", but then she'll laugh it off and tell Janet or myself that our memory is worse than hers and go about her day. I have a lot of great memories with Mom like at the beach when daddy was at Guard Camp (we would stay for two weeks and he would come over on the weekend at Gulf shores) Or the time she took me to see "Born Free" at the movies, just her and I right after I had my tonsils out. I still wasn't feeling that well, but I really wanted to go, so off we went.

She loves living at Hearthstone and especially loves the minister there Joel (he was our children's minister). She trys to stay pretty active, but does have alot of aches and pains. I tease her alot, because now I have a hard time keeping up with her. It's me who is always leaving a message on the machine for her to call me because she is never in her room, she is quite the social butterfly!!!!

So today, Wednesday, I am very thankful to God, that my Mom has just a very swollen bruised knee and that she still has her wonderful dry sense of humor that kept my sister, the nurses and doctor all laughing yesterday at the hospital.