On The Mend...

Thanks to everyone for keeping my mom in their thoughts and prayers ! Your collective good wishes and her tenacity has gotten her through the worst of this. She was released from the hospital yesterday and is back home.

I was really worried when we arrived at the hospital Sunday around 3:30, after the ten hour trip up there. She was very frail and was having a hard time getting enough breath to "get under" the junk in her lungs that was making her cough. Her puny little coughs would continue until she could hardly catch her breath, which made us hold our breath as if to help give her more oxygen in the room with which to cough. She was also running a fever, as high as 104 degree at times, that would have her sweating big time. She said she was "fine" but she didn't look it.

When we arrived Monday morning, she looked totally different. They had put her on oxygen all night and that must have helped immensely because she looked like her old self. She was sitting on the side of the bed and although she still didn't have a big cough, they were coming much less frequently. We left there feeling much better about her making a full recovery. They also did a CT scan of her chest and everything looked fine...no cancer. There is still some infection in her lung but nothing else to be concerned about.

Here is the hospital where mom was....and yes, it's a hospital. Linda flatly refuted that when we pulled in the parking lot. "This isn't a hospital !" I said "It sure is...this is where Becky was born". It's Troy Community Hospital and was started by the man who was my doctor while growing up and delivered my daughter. Back when small town hospitals were failing, the government created Critical Care facilities in small towns where people would die before they could get to a city hospital. There are certain criteria that they have to meet but that is what this hospital became.

This hospital is across the street from where I had my bakery in the town of Troy, PA. We also lived up over the bakery, in downtown Troy. The delivery area and nursery for newborns used to be in the basement of the hospital. In the early morning hours of September 8th, I walked out the front door of the bakery as we were opening at 6 a.m. Told them I'd be back in a couple of days and then walked across the street to the hospital and Becky was born a little after 8 a.m. A couple days later we walked back home...Becky was one of the last babies born in the hospitals obstetrics area. I remember that they had a lot of the new mother gift packs there (diapers, wipes, etc.) and we got quite a few of them since they were closing the area. It was a nice starter kit.

The last time I had been to this hospital was to say goodbye to my dad in October of 1987. All of these good, bad and ugly memories were rolling through my head as we drove the ten hours to get there.

On Sunday evening we spent the night at my mom's house. On the drive there, we got to see the windmills and gas wells. All of the windmills were turning and the pipeline for the gas wells, near my mom's house, is being laid in trenches. All of the truck traffic over her road has completely pulverized the blacktop. It is now a dirt road until all of the construction is done and then, I presume, they will rebuild the roads. Wow, what a big project.

Called my mom this afternoon to see how she's feeling and she said good...."I cleaned the refrigerator and did some other odd jobs". I told her that she better take it easy and rest. She told me " They said I could resume my normal activities" and I told her "Well your normal activities would rival that of most 20 year olds". You can't keep a good Woman down....