Where have you been?

I apologize for how long I have waited to update my blog.  My mother is now at home, in her new first-floor apartment.  She came home in the middle of November.  Her wounds from surgery are completely healed, but she is in need of further surgery to fix some bones in her foot which are broken.  She will have that surgery in January, followed by several more weeks in rehab.

Thanksgiving was wonderful.  We drove to Maine and enjoyed spending time with family and lots of eating and shopping. My mother spent the holiday with my brother and his family.

I feel like I am getting better every day at handling the situation I’ve been placed in.  Once I stopped focusing on myself and what I was going through, I was more able to see and delight in what was going on around me. 

The staff members at the nursing home where my mother stayed really were lovely.  They had boundless optimism for their patients.  The activities leaders were young, vivacious ladies with enthusiasm and joy.  They held fun parties for holidays (I got to see their Halloween party decorations which were quite something) and played games with the residents every day.  They not only led games of cards, but also games designed to keep the residents’ minds sharp.  One rainy day while I was visiting my mom, they were in the activities room with a huge white board with the word PRECIPITATION written at the top.  The residents had to see how many words they could make from the letters in that word.  I think they had come up with over 80 by the time they had to depart for lunch.

Another bright spot at the nursing home was a woman names Gale, a Certified Nurse Assistant who helped my mother and the other residents get dressed each morning (among other duties, some of which were not fun). Gale was a peppy, positive woman in her 50s who was a very hard worker. She worked all day as a CNA and then worked each night cleaning office buildings. Gale raised two boys on her own along with another boy whose mother left him at her house one day and never came back.

One of the things Gale did without recognition was find clothes for residents. Many of them came to the facility straight from the hospital and had no family (or any family that visited them). Gale found them clothes from a closet she kept in the back of the laundry room filled with donations – which usually came from past residents.

My mom and I saw Gale in action firsthand when my mother got a new roommate who didn’t have any clothes. Gale kept coming in with different things for her until she found items that fit. Here was someone trying to make the best of a situation while maintaining a very positive attitude.   I decided that helping Gale was something I could do.  So I did.  I cleaned out my closet of sweatshirts and sweatpants I don’t wear anymore.  Then I asked several friends through a mom’s group I used to be in if they had anything to donate.  Bags of sweats came pouring into my house, and Gale was thrilled when I dropped them off with her.  It was so funny in the last days of my mom’s stay to see a resident coming down the hall in a wheelchair wearing some of my clothes, but I was grateful at the same time that they were being put to good use.

This journey has definitely given me an appreciation for medical personnel who are good at their jobs – and there are lots of them.  They show compassion and care in very difficult situations.  And it has taught me about trying to look for the good in any situation.  It’s always there – sometimes you just have to look a little harder to find it – and that starts by stopping thinking about yourself.