People Please, One at a Time

There should be a red carpet outside my mother's room. She needs a social secretary. This is insanity. The woman is practically booked through Thanksgiving.

Mom has been at McLean for just 10 days now, and although it has not been without a hiccup here and there, her strength improves daily, her appetite is intimidating, and she is even conducting and business meetings! The woman is out of control.

It has taken a while to adjust to her new surroundings, especially learning the system, but the staff is very eager to get to know Mom as well and each day is an improvement.

The greatest of all, is perhaps, the bedpan situation. If this is TMI (too much information), you're reading the wrong blog. Since Mom's last hospitalization, the ordeal of getting to and from the commode can be a painful hassle, so it has been bedpan city. Go ahead and grab plastic mixing bowl and sit on it for 5 minutes 5 times a day and see how good your butt feels. Exactly.

Mom's good friend Tom V. got wind of this situation and showed up the next day with a variety of bedpans from which to choose. She went with a lovely wide-brimmed model. It never ceases to amaze us to what lengths friends and family will go to in order to make Mom's life just a little bit better.

As for the traffic, Mom has taken control by scheduling one social visit a day. So if you have emailed or called and not heard back, fret not, you will. One a day seems to be the magic number, because it allows to enjoy her time with people but not spread herself too thin. Believe it or not, I even had to pencil myself in on Sunday. True story.