My mom's surgery

We got up on Monday morning at 4 a.m. to go to Abilene where my mom had her surgery. She was in surgery for three hours. I waited in the lobby with my dad, and an aunt and uncle who had come to be supportive. After surgery, she was in a recovery room for one and a half hours before we could see her. We camped out at her room waiting. She was so sick from the anesthesia and pain medicine for the entire rest of the day. She had trouble talking and saying what she meant. She got sick a lot. I had to keep putting cool wet wash cloths on her head. I spent Monday night at my aunt and uncle's house and my dad stayed in the room with her. They put an oxygen measuring machine on her which would beep every time her oxygen would get down below a certain point which kept her from sleeping. When I got there Tuesday morning, she was afraid to take anymore prescription pain medication because it had made her so sick. Imagine being in so much pain and being nauseous - the worst. She said the pain felt like the worst menstrual cramps she had ever had. So, she just tried to take Tylenol and the pain came back really hard. They finally figured out to give her anti-nausea medicine 10 minutes before giving her the pain medicine. That seemed to help a lot but she still couldn't hold any food down for the rest of that day. She was much more coherent though than the day before. I stayed in the room with her that night sleeping in a reclining chair. They let her come home on Wednesday. The ride home was extremely uncomfortable for her. The doctor is making her keep a catheter in until next week. So, now she is home. She has a bed in the living room and is not supposed to do any lifting, driving or strenuous activities for a few weeks. My job is to watch over her and get her whatever she needs and to make her comfortable. The hardest part of my job is to keep her from doing anything that might hurt her. My mom is a go-getter. She always thinks she can just do whatever she wants to. She is a very strong woman and not used to having to ask anyone to do anything for her. This morning I walked around the corner to find her with a brush in hand scrubbing around the base of the sink in the bathroom. Crazy! She just likes to be busy and taking care of what needs to be done and I supposed that is a very hard habit to break. She just saw that that area needed to be cleaned and thought "I will just do that real quick."

I am so tired! I have not been getting very much sleep and I am constantly running to get her something or make sure she doesn't try to shove a table over or move a plant. I am also just a little emotionally exhausted from watching her go through this process. I love my mother so much and I really admire what a strong person she is. It is also neat to see how my dad wants to take care of her and comfort her. One night in the hospital while she was walking around the room with my dad's help I looked over and saw him just holding her while she rested standing up and I thought, "that is real love."

Today she had a very good day. The pain level has dropped some but she still needs to take a little pain medicine. We walked around outside and looked at all her flowers and I moved pots around for her. She mostly rested today - and tried to clean the bathroom floor.

One very cool experience I had over the last few days was staying the night with my aunt and uncle. They have a little farm outside of Abilene where they have horses and goats. He had a goat that had lost her baby but still had a full sack of milk. The baby had been killed by a coyote. My uncle had a friend who had a goat who had stopped feeding her babies so they were having to be bottlefed. My uncle had an idea to "graft" one of the babies onto the mother to nurse. We picked up the baby goat on the way home. The next part is amazing and a little gory. My uncle skinned the dead baby goat and put the skin on the back of the baby goat we had just picked and put him in a pen with the mother. The mother goat smelled her own baby's scent on this other baby goat and they bonded. Isn't that neat? My uncle is a retired ag teacher so he know so much about animals. I really enjoyed spending time with him and my aunt. They are the ones who went to Africa last summer. They are such neat people.

I am not sure how much longer I will be here. I just really want to make sure my mom is okay before I go home. Sooner or later she is going to get sick of me bossing her around and send me packing!

PS: In case you look at my flickr account and wonder what the hell I am doing messing with that bird's nest, here is the story. My dad had to cut down a dead tree and the bird's nest fell out of it. They saved the nest for me to see.