Tuckered out...

I thought I might take a break from writing gloomy posts but this weekend topped it all. One thing for certain, I am exceedingly glad I never went into medicine after spending the better part of two days at the hospital. Methinks a reaction formation may lead many to chose this field. In others a repetition compulsion may be operational, like the woman who becomes an emergency room physician after the sudden death of her brother from cardiac failure. Regardless, I bless the men and women who do work in hospitals and am grateful to those who do their work not only well but with gentleness, good humor and kindness. But I digress....

My dear mother performed a revolving door routine on Saturday when she fell in her assisted living apartment not 8 hours after she was released from the hospital. Miraculously she did not break any bones but we are back to square one. She is currently on the medical floor, very sore and quite confused. She'll get moved up to third floor within a few days. The powers that be will decide whether she goes immediately to extended care (their name for the nursing home wing) or to transitional care for more rehab.

I awoke this morning afraid I might be getting sick but I think my body is just achy from tension and fatigue. I found myself thinking about the stupidest things in the middle of the night like whether it would hurt her partial to leave it in denture cleaner overnight. Now I've learned that when my mind obsesses over silly stuff, particularly something I can't do anything about at 1 am (as if I'm going to run out to the hospital to save her partial from certain death by Polident), that the real anxiety is my dread of her death and that somehow it would be my fault. Those fears are displaced and become a long mental litany of "what-ifs" followed by my famous toilet training based game of second guessing of myself: did I make a mistake or am I doing it right?

However I did find that a nap in the hammock this afternoon proved very beneficial. The current crisis has past so now it's time to rest and regroup. Why, I can think about the implications of North Korea's bomb or better yet listen to my CD of the week Amos Lee's "Supply and Demand". Yeah, I like the second option a lot better.
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