Archive | April 17, 2021

A Year…Part 4

We’re finally up to Christmas. We started going all out because we thought that any minute Mom would be back – she went into the hospital November 15th to have a blood clot – caused by an angioplasty – removed. From there she caught covid, and was put on medication she is allergic to. I’ll give you a hint how that went. After she was over covid, she was kept in covid wards because she “could not catch it again” and the hospital was full, except the two floors they had set aside for covid patients, which were practically empty. Because of that we did not even get to see her in person until just before Christmas, and of course because of covid, only one person could see her a day, which meant we did not get to celebrate Christmas with her.

As I said, they kept telling us she would be back any day, so while she was gone we kicked it in gear and redid her room in a little over a week total, from hauling stuff out to saying, “It’s all done”. We stripped wallpaper, did drywall, patched, painted, and even decorated it for Christmas. Just shows we can do it if we have to!

But, on to happier parts of the season. As I said, we decorated the heck out of everything. Part of this was because Mom had been convinced clear back in October that this would be her last Christmas, and part of it was because we didn’t get to do a theme (hubby and dad voted against it and demanded a “normal” Christmas) so the bro and I said said it would be normal…so, so normal…

We had a cookie making party with Mel, Monica, Jen, and Harlie

As I said, I did get to see Mom on Christmas Eve, and though we discussed us waiting Christmas on her, she said instead that we should go ahead and have it, and we agreed to have a second Christmas when she came home.

We had our family Christmas Eve Party

We had our family christmas

There was a blizzard on my birthday, so we stayed home and watched all three Extended Edition Hobbit movies in one day! And hubby got me an ipad and a pen so I can start drawing on it.

We went to Mel’s for New Years where we played games and yelled Jumanji at midnight in hope the world would be better afterwards.

New Years Day we watched all three Extended Edition Lord of the Rings in one day, which was a pretty big accomplishment if you ask me… The bro had his birthday which we spent watching Surf Ninjas, Wrongfully Accused, Spaceballs, and Biggles Adventures in Time

Oh, and Mel and Monica got married! it was impromptu event in our dining room, but it was awesome! The bro actually got ordained just to do it. Sadly I have only a video but I think it’s one of the few things that are public on my facebook.

Mom came home very briefly – just for a weekend – in January, so she did get to see her kitty and her brand new room and the Christmas decorations, though we never got to have the second Christmas because she had to go to ER because her oxygen was low… and from this point on I have a lot of nasty things to say about Red Oak emergency room and the Jenny hospital in Council Bluffs. I did take her Christmas presents to her in the hospital finally, so she was able to open them, and we did manage to finish watching Supernatural (it was our show that we watched together). Mom ended up coming home on hospice (her kidneys had stopped functioning thanks to test after test that the doctors continued to do on her, knowing that each test made her kidneys worse and worse, the final one being a heart cath for a surgery that her primary cardiologist – had she been permitted by Red Oak to be transferred to the hospital he practiced at instead of the one he did not – would have stopped in its tracks, but since he wasn’t here, he couldn’t do anything about it, and despite us having medical power of attorney they would not listen to us, either, because despite Mom not being coherent enough to sign for permission to receive care – they seriously made my brother do it for it – she was coherent enough to say “sure”, even though she told me that she never really agreed to anything.), and the doctors had predicted it might be weeks – well, it wasn’t. She was coherent for exactly one day which was spent checking her into hospice, and from there she declined quickly and died a couple of days later.

And now you’re caught up.