Still Trying—Sometimes very trying!!

I have had a real problem sitting down to post recently.  It isn’t that I have nothing to write about.  When you are older than dirt, stuff comes up, and you fight it, surrender to it, or sometime just ignore it.  The health issues are the hardest to ignore.  We had a very pleasant Saturday until evening. Number two son was visiting and helping with some puttering around the house, and I was in the computer room beginning to pay some bills when his voice came loudly from the other side of the house.  “Father!  Come quickly, Father!!”

I detected an imperative element in his voice and yelled “I’ll be there in a second.”

To which, his reply was NOW, bring a chair from the office that has wheels.”

I dashed out into the hall way to see him holding Janet somewhat erect, but looking  very shaky and tear-stained.  I grabbed the chair from one of the desks, fought it through the door, and dragged it to where they stood.  Stuart pulled the chair close and carefully seated his mom in the chair.

“Mom bent over to pick something up and she suddenly had a pain in her neck, and lost  her balance.  I heard her yell a little and found her hanging on to the sink, unable to walk.”

Janet mumbled something about how badly it hurt and we wheeled her down the hall and got her up on the bed.  I was sure at the time that she had had another stroke, and started to call 911.  She was speaking clearly but weakly by then and she indicated (somewhat emphatically) that she didn’t want to go to the hospital. 

Somewhat foolishly I acceded to he will, got an aspirin down her (just in case the magic of aspirin was needed) and covered her up on the bed.  Stuart and I gave her a blessing which seemed to calm her, and she remained quietly on the bed.

  That was the beginning of a long difficult night for both of us.  After a while she felt strong enough to go to the bathroom (with a lot of help) and in that process I got her clothes off and got her under the covers.  We both woke up a lot (she really didn’t sleep and seemed to want to watch the TV through half closed eyes for a long time.  Finally  she went to sleep and slept most of the nest fifteen or twenty hours.  She woke up and told me she had promised to take some books to one of the sisters at church and wanted me to take them.  I refuses, telling her that I wasn’t going to leave her alone.   But she persisted to the degree that I felt better to do as I was told, so I took the books to church, gave them to the appropriate lady and rushed home.  Fortunately she slept all the time I was gone and in the evening got out of bed for a few minutes.

This morning her neck still gave her pain but the migraine type headaches that she had been having were still troubling her.   We went down to the city swimming pool (heated therapy pool)  and moved around in the water, and she felt pretty good by the time we went home.

It obviously wasn’t a stroke, (though, given the same circumstance again, we will spend the time in the hospital-just in case) and we are both a lot calmer tonight.  This is the type of thing that throws old coots seriously off balance, but the older we get, the more common they are.