Just Thinking...

I'm sitting here puttering around looking at various things on the net from scrapbook supplies to different terms I've read in the brain scan report. There's a reason they tell you not to look up medical stuff on the net. It can be some scary shit. But I did it. I've wavered between this is MS to a type of stroke back to MS and back to stroke again. At one point I've even thought it's both. This is the bad thing when you have too much time on your hands. My conclusion? Try to be patient and above all relax. Take some deep breaths and find something else on which to focus. All things I know but putting it into practice is a different thing.

And the scrapbook supplies. Suddenly I'm seeing all sorts of things for mother's day. Afterall, it's just around the corner. And then I think of all I'm dealing with at the moment and I wish mom were here. Just to feel some comfort. So I try to focus on all she dealt with and went through and how she did it with such grace and positive attitude. I can vividly remember her saying she was gonna live till she died.

If she ever felt sorry for herself she never showed it. And I can only recall a handful of times when she uttered that she was scared. And truthfully it was never when she was totally lucid. Only in times of distress. The one that comes to mind was just before the hospitalization that culminated in her deciding to stop chemo. She was really having a hard time breathing because her lungs were so filled with fluid. It took days for her to agree to go to the doctor and by that time I think she may have been a little delirious. It was early on a Wednesday morning and I was to take her in to see her lung doctors. It was the end of February and it was damp, grey and dreary. In the early morning the electricity went out and the house was suddenly very silent--something it hadn't been in some time--because the oxygen concentrator was off. Which also meant her already difficult breathing was growing worse with each minute. The total silence and her call for help is what woke me. It was pitch black and she couldn't breathe so I was fumbling in the dark to get her hooked up to the portable oxygen tank. Thankfully that happened fairly quick but not quick enough to keep her from being frightened. I still remember her asking why it was so dark and that she was scared. Fortunately the lights were only off a few moments but it was long enough. I threw on some clothes, loaded her up and off we went. She was admitted and stayed till that Friday but there several low periods during that stay. She did not want me to leave her side and I seldom did--not even to shower (I was real ripe by Friday). But she got through it, we both did. I wish she were here now.

But I know I will get through this. I just hope I can do it with a fraction of the same grace she had.

I miss you mom....