Saturday so far

[susandennis]

The routine is now that every morning about 6:30 my time, I call Mom. Generally, I'm walking from the bus to work so I have to fight the traffic to hear. This morning it was in my bedroom which was nice and quiet so we had a long talk...

After I get off the phone I send a report of the conversation to my brother, sister and sister-in-law. Here's the note I sent this morning:

I had a long talk with Mom this morning. She sounded good and she says she's feeling better but she has a long way to go. I told her that I had talked to Caroline [note for LJ - Caroline is the physician's assistant]. And that Caroline says it will probably be 2 to 3 weeks before she's well enough to go back to the apartment. Mom was shocked. 2 or 3 weeks??!!! She said she only needed a week and her week was up. We then walked through how many weeks she had been there. I told her she had been there three weeks and she said no that she had only been there one week. So I outlined each week for her... (one before Nancy's visit, the week of Nancy's visit and the week since) and we had to walk through that a couple of times before she got it.

She said she could walk a lot better now and I said 'but can you walk from your apartment to the dining room and back?' She was thinking maybe her bedroom to the marble table [in living room where she reads and watches out the window] - not even her bedroom to the computer. I pointed out that until she could walk to the dining room, she was probably going to stay right where she was. And I also told her that she was not going to be allowed to go back to her apartment and hole up there. That if she was going to live in her apartment she was going to have to be seen in the dining room and seen around in order for them to let her stay there.

And then we talked about eating. She said the milk was hot and the meat was cold and she was doing the best she could. And I said 'well, did you tell any one that the milk was hot and the meat was cold?' no ... So, all they know is that you didn't eat again. If you don't eat, you aren't going back to your apartment. "well, I'm not just not hungry and I don't feel like eating a lot of the time" ... Well, that's going to be a problem then.

It wasn't a bad conversation and she did say when we got to the end, 'I'm sure glad we had this chat.' I told her to enjoy her tennis and practice complaining... We'll see.

I really don't think she's ever going to be strong enough to go back to her apartment. And I also think that's going to be ok.

I'm off to get gas (never did get it a couple of weeks ago when I said I would) and hit the road for Target. If I fall into a grocery store on the way home, ok. Oh and I need to go to the fabric outlet and find decorations for my Croc.

That's the plan anyway...