My Mama is Home!

FINALLY!   After about a 6 hour ordeal yesterday, I was finally allowed to bring Mom home.  She was so exhausted by the time we made it home that we just took her straight to her room so she could go to bed.

She's feeling a bit better today and much more settled.  She was pretty disoriented waking up in yet another strange room in the span of a month and a half.  She does like that we changed her to this room - sunnier and warmer.  We had a home health care nurse come in who was really sweet and very informative.  So we're going to try to move forward from here and do what we can to make Mom comfy and get her what she needs.

Thank you for all the heartfelt prayers, support, and well wishes.  We all appreciate it very, very much.  (Especially ME when you put up with my ranting and make me feel better with your lovely comments.)

Mom Update & A Rant

Sorry for the lack of posts, but we have been pretty busy with stuff  trying to get ready for Mom to come home - or not. She has now been stuck in the hospital since DECEMBER 2nd - is it no wonder she is going bonkers stir crazy?  We've spent the last couple of days rearranging the house so that Mom will now be in what was our guest bedroom.  We've found out in the last few months that it is much warmer and sunnier in that room than the one that Mom initially chose on the opposite side of the house.  I'm hoping she'll like the change (I did ask her about it before I did it, but you never know.)

Now for the rant:  I really am not bashing the medical profession again - as a whole, but I sure do wish this bunch of clowns here would get their act together. First they told us we would be bringing her home - you know, about a month ago? Then they say, nope - we are going to put her in a skilled nursing facility for a few weeks - 7 miles even further away for a total of 42 miles from our house one way. Well hmmmm, let's change that. Now we are going to send her home and have home health care come out to the house. Sounds great to me! Nope, let's hold off & we'll let you know. 

Fast forward to this week:  Monday, Jan 11th - we have a bed lined up for her at the nursing facility. Tuesday - well, why don't we just send her home with you tomorrow instead. OK. Wednesday - well, the nurses gave her a certain medication so she can't go anywhere today. Thursday TODAY - I am sitting here in her room trying to figure out if I am really taking her home like the discharge nurse who called me today says OR if it is like the nurses here in the room told Mom this morning and THEY ARE SENDING HER TO THE SKILLED NURSING FACILITY but NOT TODAY????

Please forgive my screaming in caps, but WTH? Can you feel my frustration? No one here writes anything down or fills anyone else in on what is happening. Who knows what they do at shift change? It's sure not briefing the oncoming shift about the patients.  The nurse in charge of Mom two days ago told me she likes this assignment because she only has two patients to care for. Whippy skippy! You have twelve hours to care for TWO whole patients and YOU CAN'T WRITE ANTHING ON THE CHART FOR THE NEXT SHIFT or fill in your relief??

Sorry again, but I don't want to wake up Mom - who knows if she will be travelling home with me or going 7 miles to the east to the facility or staying here or how about being moved from one private room to a different private room at 11:30 AT NIGHT?  I am so not happy right now.  And to top it off, I am trying to type this on my phone because I don't have anything to keep me busy while we she's asleep and we're waiting to hear which ring of the CIRCUS here she'll be starring in next...

If you stayed with me for the entire rant, thank you so much for listening.  If you didn't, can't blame ya for leaving.  I probably would too.

Our First Houseguests!

We're very happy to be welcoming the Hubby's Mom & Dad to our new home for a visit. They live in Arizona and we haven't seen them since July 4th. It's so nice to be able to share the new house with them as we didn't have room for guests in our old place (plus it was a pit so we would be mortified to even have anyone come in..)

It's doubly nice that they are up at this time because today is my Mom's 72nd birthday. We decided not to have a big shindig since she's not really up to it. So instead we're planning a nice lunch with cupcakes (remember the spice cake recipe here ?) and ice cream..yum. It'll be just close family with my Dad and my Ant Lola (another short aunt) also coming over. Beautiful day for a celebration and family visit!

(photo from our wedding which was also their 50th wedding anniversary! taken by Sara Deasy of DC Photography Studios)

House to Home

Please excuse the long absence once again.. We have been in the process of house-hunting, finding "The One", losing it, and then miraculously stumbling across an even better "ONE"! Yay, finally!!!!!

We found a lovely, large home to rent for the next year. (The thing is - I'm already loving this place big time and looking for a much longer, if not permanent stay!) It has a big fenced yard that is perfect for the dogs and the gardening. We had a great surprise this morning when we were informed by the farm foreman (our house is a lot on a 90 acre farm) that we actually have access to the 10 acres surrounding the house - it's included with our rent!!!!!!! I was so excited. He said we could do whatever we'd like - run cattle, bring our horses, FARM it! He will even bring over his big tractor and disc it up if we need him to.. I was excited about the house and the big yard - what a bonus!!!! (Sorry about all of the exclamations - did I mention I'm excited?)

We've been packing boxes and moving them to the new house. Then, it is unpacking things so I have empty boxes to do it all over again the next day! This has been ongoing since the 11th! I'm sure "normal" people don't have this much stuff (as in crap) to move from one place to another. (Thank goodness we're only about 5 miles from our old place.) It makes it harder that we're packing and moving Mom's house in at the same time as ours, plus two very large storage rooms/barns. We are going to have the yard sale of the century folks!

Mom's health hasn't been improving as we'd hoped. The doctor has decided to move her to a more aggressive treatment/clinical trial that she is very optimistic about. Mom and I are reading everything we can on this protocol and it seems to be a good option for her situation. She has beat this monster twice and we're working on the third win for her.

In the meantime, we are turning this new house into HOME for all of us. We have all the critters except for Mom's dogs settled. Her dogs Muttley and Xena will be home here with us in the next few days. Michael is building a temporary dividing fence so that those two and our two beasties can get used to each other before sharing both the front and back yards. We don't want any of them to get hurt while they become acquainted!

The Mooncat kitties are loving the new house. It has a lovely, long hallway that is perfect for 2am hockey games using whatever trinket makes LOTS of thundering noise. Poor Mom had to get used to living with cats again after many years of peace & quiet. Michael & I tend to sleep right through their shenanigans. They make up to Mom during the day though as they spend a lot of time loving on her and following her around the house.

My little herbie babies are suffering a little from the move and the lack of attention they've been getting. I've lost several plants this last week. I'm hoping to get the time this weekend to get them sorted out and actually find some of them a new home - my poor aunt is gonna love that! She will be the receipient of many little plantlings, whether she's ready or not..

I am really bummed about leaving the lovely garden that Michael slaved over this summer, but we'll soon be mapping out an even better, bigger one. (He's already dreaming of a new garden tractor, he's thinking that ACREAGE equals good excuse... I just might have to indulge him on that one..)


So, amidst all of the boxes and chaos, we're all adjusting quite well to our new HOME!