My mom…. Part two.

The last thing I wrote about my mom was that she was in a coma for 6 days after a stroke.

Let’s start by saying six days is a long time to watch someone in a coma and wonder if there is going to be a positive or negative ending.  It was a long, long week. 

Thursday afternoon she woke up.  The stroke affected her right side.  Her speech, her swallowing.  This terrified me.  My mom was an amputee……. An above RIGHT knee amputee.  What was this going to do to her?  A right side deficiency along with a loss of a limb on the right side sounded like a disastrous situation to me.  Was she going to be wheelchair bound?  Was she able to regain a level of strength that would allow her to use her prosthetic leg?  These were all questions that needed to be answered.

My mom proved to be quite the fighter.  She worked hard to regain the strength in her right side to the point that she could use her prosthetic leg and a walker.  She also tried to regain as much of her speech as possible.  Although, that remained to be a telltale sign of her stroke. 

Oddly, when my mom was holding any of her great-grandchildren on her lap, she could have a perfect conversation and sing, and yes she would occasionally hum to them.  It was a treat to see and hear.

When my mom had any level of discomfort or pain, or there was a lot of commotion, she couldn’t convey her thoughts.  In most cases, she would simply repeat whatever she heard last.  This, mind you, did create laughs often.  My daughter walked into her room one day and my mom was watching Pretty Woman.  As soon as she saw Meg, she repeated one of the hooker comments from the movie to Meg. 

When she returned to live with me, I do believe that she sent me on at least one scavenger hunt a day.  For example, she’d want me to wash her hair and she would be pointing to the kitchen cabinets, where the crackers were kept.  I did get pretty good.  I could normally figure out what she needed in three tries.  She was a trooper though. 

I remember the day that she moved in with me after her stroke.  I remember being on the front porch and watching the ambulance make the turn down our street.  I was in a complete panic.  I wholeheartedly knew that I was in way over my head.  I was afraid that I was making a huge mistake.  I wasn’t a caregiver. 

The reality was that I recognized that my mom and I traded roles.  I became my mom’s mom.  Wow.  I knew it happened.  I knew why it happened.  I just didn’t know when it happened.  A side note from my mom.  When I became a parent to my mom, the most important thing for me was to never allow her to feel as though I would ever belittle her or treat her like a child, or with any disrespect.  I wanted her to maintain her dignity in every possible way.

It didn’t take long for us to fall into a schedule.  It was very hard at first.  My mom was a large woman.  When she was in a nursing home they had multiple people to help her up.  In a nursing home, physical therapy happened.  They certainly don’t work on patient stamina.  At one point I tore a muscle in my arm. At the last minute, decided she couldn’t stand up and went the opposite direction than I thought she was going to go.  We all lived though.

At home, I did.  A therapist would come a few times a week and help her.  In time she could walk a fair distance with a walker to her wheelchair.  It was somewhat of a game.  When she wasn’t feeling well, she’d just walk so far and look at me and say, “Go get it.”  When she said that.  She was not taking another step.

We survived falls.  We survived accidents.  That was a leap for me.  Cleaning my mom after an accident.  It happened.  I survived.  She survived.  A few times my daughter was here with my mom and she, too, survived. 

We all got into a routine.  I had a business in my basement.  I would be down there and would hear her, sweeping the floors from her wheelchair.  She would often go to the front door and open it, and watch the outside world from her wheelchair.  We would take her out and sit on the porch with her and have lunch.  I think she was happy.

I will write more about my mom soon.