Hi all. Yikes, lots on the go.
Mum: After my last post at Easter, Mum came home but was rushed into hospital again after a fall at home. She was so weak that Dad and Anton (my brother) had to carry her to a car to get her to hospital. Turned out that she had a stroke, with all the symptoms (left side weakened, could not walk, slurred speech etc.) I flew up to Jhb with Jessica, and spent the following weekend with Dad, helping round the house and visiting Mum. The nurses were super-kind and allowed Jessica in, something which is normally not allowed in a medical ward. We had some special moments with Jessica practising her crawling on Mum's bed and charming all the other patients in the ward.
I came home last week Wednesday, and Mum had recovered to the point of walking, being mostly with it and looking quite chirpy. She did have adjusted medication for her previous brain injuries (encephalitus and a car accident) and resultant previously-undiagnosed epilepsy. But her great progress after the stroke stopped abruptly when I left. After an anxious week where Dad watched Mum deteriorating slowly, she had a bad turn on Friday night this weekend while he was visiting. She was rushed into ICU with a pulse of 40, bp of 70/46 and it didn't look too good. To be honest, I was preparing myself for "the" phonecall. Saturday was also not great, and the doctors did some scans while working on stabilising Mum. Dad says that the ICU staff were fantastic and on the ball, and Mum recovered enough to ask one of them if she was "the mother of crocodiles?" It brought a light moment to a rather dark day :)
Today Mum is much better. Her vitals have stabilised, and the staff got her up and sitting in a chair for some time. She's more aware of her surroundings and making sense (mostly) when she talks. The scans revealed that she has a hiatus hernia, stomach ulcer and "oesophagusitis" (I think that's what Dad called it - basically an inflamed oesophagus). So, more to treat, but she is feeling and looking and sounding like a very different person to Friday night. She will move out of ICU back to a general ward tomorrow (Monday). We're all feeling encouraged and positive!
Adam and I fly up at the end of the month to spend a week there. Hopefully Mum will be out of hospital and in rehab by then.
Home: Otherwise, not too much else to share on the CT front, other than Jessica's taste in books is very literal (rather than literary) and that I caught Adam and Jessica having a rock'n roll session this afternoon during sleep time.
Picture it: After putting Jessica down for her sleep at 1.30, I sneaked off for a treasured Sunday afternoon kip. Just dozing off, I kept hearing loud squeals, so I eventually got up the energy to investigate at about 2pm - ok, it took a while to levitate and excavate my went-to-bed-late-was-proofing-work-argh-I'm-zonked-body from my delicious bed! With stern mommy look in place, I opened Jessica's bedroom door to find Jessica standing in her cot bopping up and down, Adam rocking and the music blaring. Big bust! They'd shut the doors so I wouldn't hear them partying on, but my mommy ear is super-tuned to the little person.
I felt like the party-pooper and disciplinarian of the family as Adam slunk out with a sheepish but very unrepentant grin leaving me to get the smily-look-I'm-cute-and-dancing Miss Boppy back lying down in bed! She finally dozed off at 3.00. Hmm. The hardest bit (after getting out of bed) was trying to keep a straight face when I bumped into Adam at the kettle a bit later.
Oh, and finally, our veggie garden is laid out. It now needs some compost, extra soil and plants, but we've started. Can't wait to grow our own tomatoes and spinach and yummy stuff! Will post pics soon.
Sleep tite, K
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