That’s what was going through my mind on Sunday morning. Actually, my first thought was “Are you f***king KIDDING me?” Because after all the stuff with Mom’s surgery, and she’s doing great, BTW, I felt like life was a whirl of crazy craziness.
I had walked down to the dock late Saturday night, the 4th of July, to watch a few fireworks even though I wasn’t sure I’d have the energy to make it back up the hill, and I felt at peace, with the lapping water and the cool-ish breeze and the fireworks exploding in the distance. I was content knowing I’d be able to sleep in on Sunday.
At 6:32 Sunday morning I woke up, I guess because my CPAP had stopped working. I couldn’t understand why Kevin had turned off the window unit air conditioner; maybe it was cool enough to not need AC, but what about the fan function? And why wasn’t the ceiling fan spinning?
And the answer…no power. Are you f***king KIDDING me???!!! I finally got back to sleep after Kevin remembered that we have two little bitty battery-powered fans and pointed them at me. It wasn’t that cool, but enough that I was able to conk out again.
After I got up later, I started muttering to myself, “Cue the plague of locusts,” pretty sure that who knows what other things were going to occur, and thinking that’d be a great title for this post.
But because I haven’t had a chance to sit down much until right now, there you have it. The power was only out til 11:00 a.m. and luckily it wasn’t so very hot, but there was no reason for the outage.
And now it’s Thursday already.
But anyway, here’s Mom at 5:32 a.m. on Thursday, July 2nd. So very very early for both of us.
Of course Mom was stylish even at that hour, about to have surgery for the first time in her life. Pre-op stuff all happened pretty fast and soon they were wheeling her out of the room.
Amy joined me and they told us they’d started surgery at 8:15. We sat in a nice cafe on another floor when the buzzer suddenly alerted us that she was already out of surgery. Whew, that was pretty dang quick. The surgeon came into a special room to talk to us, and he said everything went great. He put a plate in her shoulder along with eight big screws.
He told us a bunch of other stuff and luckily Amy remembered it because she’s used to remembering things while being sleep-deprived.
We went to Mom’s room and she was very very groggy of course and she said, “Did he come in and do the surgery?” and “Is it over?” and “What time is it?” and “Did he already do the surgery?”
9:39
And at 10:21 they were wheeling her out!
They sure don’t mess around. We got back to her house and after a while I went home and napped a little, then that night we all had dinner at her place.
Darling Pumpkin was happy to curl up on the guest bed where I’d be spending the night.
Mom woke up at 2:30 in the morning with all kinds of pain so I gave her more hydrocodone. But she was pretty OK on Friday, and I spent the night again that night and she was better still.
On the 4th we all went to Amy’s for horseshoes. Mom kept dozing off while sitting there and later we realized we’d been giving her too much hydrocodone, probably.
But by Sunday the 5th I went to her house after all our power outage kerfuffle and she’d already fixed herself some cheese and crackers and a Bloody Mary mix with no alcohol, but plenty of olives!
She continues to recover at an astounding rate; last night she took a Tylenol at 4 a.m. but hasn’t had any drugs at all since then. One time Mom got a fortune in a cookie that read, “you have an iron construction,” and we laugh about that a lot, but I’m telling you, she does. For sure her construction is of high-grade steel.
Amy put a pillow on Mom’s couch so she’d be more comfortable because the couch sags in the middle, and it is Pumpkin’s favorite perch whenever Mom gets up.
And…and…photos of New York! We had a great time despite the unfortunate shoulder break and I solemnly resolve to sit down here again very soon and write about it…
Ok then,
Mrs. July Already! Hughes.