The First Day I Didn't See My Mom - Saturday, January 22nd - Day 18

Today was the first day since she was admitted to the hospital that I didn't see my mom. Last night I was correct...I was getting sick. When I woke up this morning, I felt like I had a mixture of a cold and the flu...typical cold symptoms but magnified.

I HATED not being able to go see her. I promised myself I would go see her every day while she was in the hospital. At first I thought blech, but after a while, like I said before, I looked forward to our visits and didn't mind being in the hospital at all. So the whole day didn't feel right.

I did call her though. She told me that her visitors no longer had to wear the paper gowns and latex gloves. Great. Just when I can't go to see her, we don't have to wear those silly outfits anymore. The string to tie the gown went around me twice, and the gloves made my hands all sweaty and my hands felt weird when I took them off.

Anyway...

Interestingly, my mom said that her surgeon had stopped by to see her the same day he saw me in the hall by the pharmacy (Friday the 20th I believe). She said he told her that I always look so sad when he sees me. He must see me more than I realize.

She also said she was told that she was going to be discharged to a rehabilitation facility soon. She didn't know when though. As usual. We were never notified about anything until the last minute. Great. A new place to go. But that's good news I guess...it means that she is well enough to be discharged from the hospital. Unless she was right and the people running the hospital were just hurrying her out so they could have her bed.

Oh, we also finally took our Christmas Tree down today. YES, today, January 22nd, over a month since we put it up. I was holding out hope that my mom would get well before the thing became a fire hazard. It was SO dry. I was so proud of our tree this (or I guess last) year. Taking it down was kind of sad because it signified that Christmas 2005 was the first year that I "celebrated" Christmas without her, if you can even call it celebrating. It really didn't feel like Christmas at all to me honestly. However, the decorations around the house are still up (stockings and such) and the tree decorations are temporarily stored in a box until I can get around to putting them away. So it's still looks like Christmas in our apartment while Valentine's Day decorations are all over the stores. It's getting kind of annoying actually.