Slowly but surely

I thought I'd write a new post for another update on my mom. She's a little bit better every day and soon they're going to be moving her out of ICU and into a regular room -- perhaps tomorrow, though the doctors have a wait-and-see attitude. Anyway, she's off all of the IV drips, eating more, doing her crosswords and Jumble, playing cards, and watching her favorite tv shows, including Jeopardy. All that really remains is for her to get stronger; all of her internal systems that were in critical condition when she entered the hospital (heart, lungs, kidneys, blood pressure) are now back to good or good-as-can-be-expected levels. And today the case manager/social worker came in to talk to us about a short term rehabilitative stay in a "skilled nursing unit" (aka a nursing home) to give her the therapy, especially physical, that she'll need to get strong enough to go home. So going home is the eventual goal, and that's very good news, especially to Mom, who likes her habits and her world to stay as regular as possible. (Seriously -- god forbid that one of us calls during Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune.) She's less put out by the idea of a stay in a nursing facility now that she's heard it's temporary and home is the goal. Hmmm...maybe I should tell her to think of it as a vacation from Dad, who is more or less the bane of Mom's existence. Really, I think half the reason why she survived this -- why she has such a will to live -- is because she wants to outlive Dad out of sheer spite.

Ah, family. As Tolstoy famously wrote, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Mom and Dad are definitely uniquely unhappy. But that's a different post entirely!