Life Unexpected

Last week, I boarded an airplane in Montgomery to go visit Mom and Dad.  We all had plans to be together at their house, eat at one of our favorite restaurants, and celebrate the fact that Mom has completed six treatments of chemotherapy.   Not the fact that she took chemotherapy but that she is finished.

But while I was sitting in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport during a layover I received a call that Dad was taking Mom to the hospital.  She had been sick all night with nausea and vomiting, and was in pain.

So, instead of a weekend with family at home, we spent a family weekend here:

Not at all what we wanted or expected.

The doctors ran tests, poked, and prodded, but were never able to decide what caused Mom to be so sick.  So she stayed there until they felt comfortable letting her go home.

And while I would never say that the OU Medical Center is our home away from home, we did spend four weeks there last year.  So we know the routine.  We know where to get coffee and how to make it ourselves, we know that the cheeseburgers in the cafeteria are really good, we know how to turn the chairs in Mom's room so that the most people can be comfortable, we know to bring our yarn.  We know that nurses are some of the most wonderful people on earth and that doctors can be, too.  We know that on an oncology floor of a hospital there is a lot of living going on.

Even though we weren't together in the place we had planned, our family was together.  Mom got better after a couple of days and Room 765 became an okay place to be.  Not what we expected, but okay.

We celebrated, too.  Not at Mom's house, but in her bed.   And that was probably even more fun.