Mama News on Saturday the 28th. . .

Well, it wasn't pretty, but its done.  It took two large policeman and an afternoon of rerouting her worldview, but we got Mama moved yesterday from the Big Hospital to what she has already decided is the first circle of Hell. She is now in a shared room at the James H.and Cecile C. Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital parked on a knoll just above, it turns out, Laura's and my favorite Escape Restaurant.  We were there last night, PTSD, and when they didn't have a table, we fell into cushy leather seats at the bar.  They felt sorry for us and fed us. We took our shoes off and balanced our plates on our laps.

Yesterday afternoon was our second try at figuring out why when the rehab representatives came by her room at the Big Hospital Mom was determined they were not going to sell her a car.  

"What are they trying to sucker you into now?" she would say in a loud voice, each time she found out it was a Quillen representative in the room.  She would refuse to answer any of their questions, turn them over unilaterally to me or to Laura, then afterwards, every time, there would be at least thirty minutes of her telling us nobody was on her side, everybody was making decisions for her, and that we were essentially fools for buying what these people were pushing on her.  "If you don't want the car they are selling, you don't have to buy it," she would say.  The analogy worked for her far better than it worked for us, but we finally got it.

She didn't quite understand (or didn't want to accept) that rehab (translation:  exercise) was the next stage in All This.  Part of the problem is that All This is not one reality, as one might hope, but rather a collection of realities, varying according to when she had her last pain med and how recently we have both sat by her bed, one on each side, holding her hand. Regardless of how she is constructing How Things Are in the moment, what she unilaterally has yet to remember is that she was in excruciating, uncontrollable pain for weeks before this emergency spine surgery was scheduled.  She doesn't remember the years of back pain before that.  She told us day before yesterday that she was just a "little fatigued" and then they came and made her do this surgery, without her permission, that no one has consulted her, and that now she was in pain.

Bless her.  It must feel out of control, this life of hers.  It is, in a way.  Periodically, after we have been talking for awhile, she will admit that Dad made all her decisions (true) and that maybe she just got out of practice (also true).  This is after Laura has pointed out (again) that she turned over the decisions to one of us, and that we were just doing what she asked.  She can't drive anymore, she can't hear, she hasn't even been able to step down the few steps to her back patio to feed the birds she so loves.  She hasn't been able to go to the library or to church.  (Abby, the Minister for Seniors let it slip the other day when she came to visit that the Senior Minister, the Big Kahuna, is a little scared of Mom, so Abby comes instead .My guess is that she has told him one too many times, that no thanks, she didn't really want to pray with him.)

What we are finally getting is that all this is about choice, somehow, and about having some control over basic parts of life that are slipping inexorably away.  Quillen is not about choice.  Quillen is about getting her better so she doesn't have to spend the rest of her life in a nursing home.  That piece of the whole thing, regardless of how many languages we've used to try to translate it to her, is not sinking in.

We are all scared.  She is allergic to exercise and Quillen is all about exercise.  They are positively perky about exercise.  Mom is a Taurus; a 183-pound, 5 foot 2 Taurus with an attitude.  

I have already called over there to talk with her overnight sitter.  It is now 8:30 a.m.and supposedly my mother, who doesn't get out of bed - ever - before 9 a.m., is supposed to already be thirty minutes into occupational therapy, followed by physical therapy, followed by occupational therapy. . .you get the picture.  

Well, I guess I better quit being such a chicken and get my clothes on and get over there.  Maybe with all the dear prayers you have been sending, Laura and I will discover the Other Mother, the one who joked with the big policemen who came to get her yesterday, who waved like the queen as they were wheeling her out of her room on the transport stretcher. Mama Number Two who charmed the intake nurses at Quillen and agreed with them that yes, this was going to be a very nice experience indeed, that she had been looking forward to it. . .

Lordy. . .

We come home tomorrow and one of my brothers takes over, while we sit and stare into space for awhile.  I'll keep you posted. Thank you so much for doing the same.  I have appreciated the groundwire. . .