Sunday night, July 26th

Today, my cousin Antoinette text-messaged me, "Why is Bob always right?"

Remember Bob said that my mother's recovery will not be linear. Remember me writing that my mother was herself and feeling better yesterday. Well-------------
cue dramatic music--she's where she was about two days ago--not in the real world--talking about making sauce for her neighbors from her hospital bed, thinking that the window is another way out for her visitors (6 stories up), and sure she was in a nursing home. There's a possibility she has developed two abscesses but we won't know for sure until a doctor looks at her wound tomorrow (remember, it's the weekend). So, will they look at it at the exact moment that the nurses have to change her dressing--three times a day, or will she be submitted to this horribly painful ordeal a 4th and separate time when the doctor shows up and wants to see it. Could they maybe "coordinate" and do something that is better for the patient?

I was with her most of the day but I know that she needed her rest and didn't think she would sleep while I was there. She needed the bedpan and when she says that, she needed it three minutes ago. Even though the Nurse's Call button was pressed, no one was coming and I knew that my mother had been mortified the six other times she had diarrhea in her bed, so I got the bedpan and I manipulated her so she could go--which she didn't. Anyway--sorry for venting. I should've trusted my very trustworthy and brilliant husband and NOT assumed anything in the way of an optimistic outcome or recovery for my mother based on one good day.

She had visitors today who I know had to have been shaken by her bizarre behavior and answers to their very simple and caring questions. Many left bug-eyed and confused since I had told everyone how well she was doing the day before.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my poor husband watching me when my eyes teared up with each moment of realization that my mother was not making any sense. Without an "I told you so," he continued to support me and made me list the positive things in my mother's present situation: the pain medication was helping her pain (but making her crazy), the wound was healing (though two possible abscesses had formed), she was getting good care (did I tell you it took a tech 20 minutes to answer my call when my mother had to poop?!).

I walked home from the hospital (about a mile or so) and tried to be in the moment, looking at the beautiful old houses and remembering my childhood and teenage years in this now dying city. I couldn't shake my mother's laughter when she told me that she and I would make sauce and meatballs together for her neighbors and that would be my reward for being so good to her.

Tonight, I drink--tomorrow, I fight the fight again and won't take a good day as a sign that it's all downhill from there. Don't put those rosary beads away just yet and thanks for reading.