Saturday, May 19, 2012

World Turned Upside Down



Only about a week and a half after B's surgery, I had to leave town and he was on his own for all the household responsibilities, including 3 daily walks with our two dogs.  He was in pretty good shape by then and was quite the trooper.  He did a great job of taking care of himself and our "life" when I had to unexpectedly travel out of state for nearly two weeks.

I was getting ready for work one morning (actually I was getting ready to drive about an hour away to attend a library conference) and I received a phone call from my sister.  She asked if I’d seen the texts she’d sent me during the night and I said no, I must have slept right through them.  Turns out my mom had gone to the hospital and had emergency surgery overnight!

My mother is diabetic and gotten a small scratch on her finger a while back, but it had healed over and scabbed just fine.  One day, she noticed that her finger was starting to feel achy, so she thought she’d better keep an eye on it.  The next morning it was starting to look a little red, but as she does daycare in her home, she couldn’t really do anything about it during the day but ice it during the children’s naptime.  By the end of her work day, the redness had spread all the way down her hand into her arm, so she knew she’d better go get it checked out.

Long story short, after being turned away from two urgent care clinics, she was admitted to Mayo Clinic with a severe staff infection and had surgery that night to cut out the infection.


My mom spent a week in the hospital and had a second surgery while she was there and a third one after she’d been home a week or so.  The entire time, her family took turns driving her to the hospital for follow ups, administering antibiotic infusions at home, cooking healthy meals for her, taking care of her house and yard, and here’s the kicker… doing daycare for her.

In my next post I’ll talk about what that experience like for a woman struggling with infertility.


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