How I spent Mother's Day

I need to preface this with a little background on my mom. She will be 70 in August and has always been pretty healthy. Both my parents are young for their age. However, the Thursday before Thanksgiving in 2004 as my parents were getting ready to go out to see a movie on my dad’s day off, Mom collapsed and went into complete arrest. They wound up having to shock her back five times that day. In the span of one week we went from being told to expect that she had severe brain damage because of the posturing she was doing, to having her come around but with no short term memory, to her release on Thanksgiving day with her short term memory returned. Except for the pacemaker/defibrillator they installed to take care of the electrical problem they found with her heart, she has had no residual effects from that incident. It was truly a miracle as far as we’re concerned.


Fast forward to the past few weeks. Mom’s youngest brother has been going through some severe health issues and that combined with an absolutely insane next door neighbor has created a lot of stress for Mom. They live in a neighborhood where they are surrounded by mostly elderly widows and this neighbor moved in several years ago and has managed to upset the whole bunch. I could write a book about all the stuff this old woman has pulled but let’s just say that she’s given my mom and the other neighbors tons of grief. All this stress seems to have taken its toll on Mom because she, for the first time in her life, has been having elevated blood pressure and shortness of breath. We finally convinced her to make an appointment with her cardiologist but since he only sees patients on Thursday afternoons, she isn’t scheduled to see him until this week.


Now to yesterday. My parents live 90 miles west of us. Since Dad was going to be working, I suggested that Mom meet me in Lafayette (the half way point) and I’d take her to lunch. She was excited about our Mother’s Day out but called me just after 8 am to tell me she wasn’t feeling well enough to drive so she was just going to stay home. I decided I’d just drive the whole way to my home town and take her to lunch there. I didn’t tell her I was coming and just figured I’d surprise her.


When I arrived, she was standing in the front door waiting for me. She said that she was feeling tightness in her chest and she thought she needed to go to the E/R and maybe see the cardiologist on call. Mom’s cardiologist is in Lafayette, 45 miles away, so that’s where she wanted to go. I packed her up and off we drove. We tracked Dad down at work and he headed out to meet us. Somewhere on the road she looked at me and said, “I knew you were coming. You didn’t tell me but I just knew.” I swear she must have a connection on the Psychic Friends Hotline [wink].


So our afternoon was spent in the E/R. They did a couple of EKGs and chest x-rays. Everything checks out fine. Their conclusion was that this is probably stress related. A couple of hours after we got to the E/R, the tightness subsided and Mom started feeling much better.


My sister and her family had been an hour away at her in-law’s residence so they came to meet us on the way home. My brother-in-law went on home with the kids and my sister, Mom, Dad, and I went to eat at the restaurant we were originally going to meet at for lunch. It ended up being an early supper but it was a Mother’s Day that Mom got to spend with more family that she’d originally been scheduled to. In the end, it all worked out for the best but, boy, am I exhausted.

Hope y'all all had a great Mother's Day/weekend.