La Vida Roja with Crazy Red

Crazy Red

How I Spent 24 hours in a Spine and Joint Hospital Without Killing My Mother
or
as I like to call it
Tuesday...

My mother had informed me that I was to be at her front door Tuesday morning at 7 AM in order to make it to the hospital by 7:30AM. We live in smallish large town and when I say that I drove across town to pick up my mother we are talking a trip that takes less than ten minutes from my driveway to hers. Cut the time in half for the trip from her house to the hospital. However, it is her knee, she is nearly 80 and I did as I was told.  But, the night before there was a huge thunderstorm that knocked out all the power on my side of town and screwed up my alarm clock causing it not to go off at 5:30. Consequently, I did not wake up until 6:38 AM and began to reenact the scene from Seinfeld when Elaine oversleeps and has to scramble to get her detested boyfriend out of her apartment and on a plane... (not the Van Wyck!). I arrived at my mother's front door at 7 AM sharp. Of course, I was sans makeup and had not had a drop of coffee (if you know me you also know I have issues with mornings..I am a true night owl and have forced myself to adapt to a daytime world and I DON"T FUCKING LIKE IT! NOT ONE FUCKING BIT! until I have had at least one pot of coffee and can begin to see the world through caffeinated glasses.)

So I get her, her walker, her suitcase, her totebag of medications and instructions (hers, she printed out a  file folder full of instructions for me to hand to the nurses filled with information on how she likes to have things done.  And if you think that's bad, you should see the size of the file she gave me) and then SHE drove us to the hospital.

About 9:30 AM I begin to wonder why she has yet to be sent to surgery mainly because if they don't come and catheterize her soon I am looking at yet ANOTHER trip taking my mother to the bathroom down the hall and believe me, getting a little old lady in a gapebacked gown on a walker with a rolling IV pole out of bed and 20 feet down a slippery hall and back again is not NEARLY as funny as I make it sound.

I ask the nurse about the delay and I am informed that her SURGERY is not until 11AM, we weren't even supposed to be there until 9:30 AM.. and the answer to my catheter question was another trek back down the hall to the bathroom. I asked her, as I was getting her out of bed, adjusting IV's, handing her her walker, "Mom, did you know we weren't supposed to even be here until 9:30?" And she says "Oh yes, I thought they might work me in ahead if I got here early". As we walked back from the bathroom, my mother slightly ahead of me on her walker while I rolled the IV pole along behind, said to me, "Red, I hope you are keeping my gown closed back there, I wouldn't want the whole world to see my naked bum".  I gently let go of the back of her back free gown where I had been holding it closed and said "Oh yes Mom, I have it closed.  Don't worry about a thing".  Eleven o'clock on the dot, they came and wheeled her off to surgery. Just in time too, guess who had to go the bathroom again.

So, to those of you whom have asked about her, I thank you.. She would LOVE knowing that she was the center of attention. And since she has yet to master the intricacies of logging on to the internet, I will LOVE knowing that she will NEVER read this.

Crazy Red is:

Still Crazy
Super duper Red
and Super duper tired

— Crazy Red
Email
StumbleUpon

© 2008 Crazy Red

Today's Theme Song:
Tom Jones — ``She's a Lady"