Slowly but Surely we move forward

Just a quick update and then I am off to see my mom.

(This part was written on Friday):

Progress has felt very slow, but then again when you are there day in and day out for hours upon hours, it is hard to step back and look at the big picture. And up until yesterday, I wasn’t.

Yesterday, my mother finally had a nurse she’d had before but much earlier in her hospital stay (if I had any complaints at all about her care at the hospital it would be lack of “continuity of care”. With a different nurse every day, it is impossible to get to know a patient and gauge that patient’s progress). When she walked in and saw my mom she was shocked and very pleased at the progress she’d made. Her reaction sent seismic jolts of happiness through my whole body. I’d been so entrenched in the day-to-day minutia that I’d lost sight of the big picture.

Sunday:

I am now back up in the Phoenix area. The Neurosurgeon released her later in the day on Friday with a bed secured at an in-patient rehab facility up closer to where I live. I cannot tell you the relief. First, knowing now that my mom is now on the mend and that this 2-3 weeks of rehab will be that bridge back to a normal life and second, being back on home turf and closer to my husband and daughter and brothers.

They keep telling me it will be a slow and frustrating process but they don’t know my momma. She is a fighter and it doesn’t hurt that she was extremely fit when she had this accident. She was a star basketball player in her younger years and has worked out at a gym 4- 5 days a week for decades (and we won’t even talk about her competitive spirit). The physical therapists all say the same thing: “Wow, you are strong.” Truer words have never been said. She is the strongest, most optimistic person I have ever known. And that will all play into her recovery.

I don’t need any more predictions on her prognosis. I know she is going to get better because she wants it so badly. I walked into her room yesterday after she was all done with her physical and occupational therapy for the day figuring she’d be exhausted, which she was, but the minute she saw me she told me to grab the walker in the corner so we could go for a walk. This may not sound like a big thing, but a mere 3 or 4 days earlier she was so confused and hallucinatory (is this a word?) that the nurses had her bed surrounded my mats rigged with alarms that would go off if any pressure was put on them. They did this because she was so confused and out of it that she did not know where she was or why she was even where she was and thus kept trying to get out of the bed even though she could not yet walk.

So now I’m completely focused on the big picture and it is slowly looking better and better. Head injuries are a scary thing because it makes prognosis a difficult thing to predict, but I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that my mom will make a full recovery and be back to her normal lifestyle very soon. And I will be back to what I was doing very soon as well: Seething over the very same things I was before this accident happened. And unfortunately, I don’t think the prognosis for all of that is going to improve any time soon.