#296 In which our hero thankfully doens't have to spend his Thanksgiving in the hospital.

Since I’m all about being timely with this blog, I’m updating my Thanksgiving vacation nearly a week after the fact.

The big news is that we didn’t have to celebrate the holiday in the hospital with mom. It went down like this:

Mom saw a bunch of different doctors while she was in the hospital: an oncologist, a pulmonologist, the doctor on rounds, and her regular GP. The oncologist (as mom tells the story) was very eager to biopsy the spot in her lung. Mom wasn’t keen on the procedure, as you can expect, and was sure the doctor was only pressing the issue to get more money from mom’s insurance company. I rolled my eyes at this notion, but still, sticking a needle into what may be a patch of pneumonia didn’t sound like the smartest thing in the world.

Finally, mom’s GP decided that it may very well be just pneumonia (and not cancer) and chose a conservative approach. She told mom that if mom could remain fever-free for 48 hours, that she’s get to go home with oral antibiotics to knock out the rest of the pneumonia. Then they’d repeat the chest x-ray to see if there was still a suspect spot on her lung. If so, they’d formulate a new plan of attack then.

Well, mom kept the fever away for two days and was released. This was on Saturday, which gave her a couple of days to relax before my sister, Linda, arrived home for Thanksgiving.

Part of me thinks I should be happy about mom being out of the hospital. And I am… but I remind myself that mom was only given a reprieve, not a pardon. There’s still something going on in mom’s lungs and, given her history, it could very well be cancer. I worry that delaying a biopsy only delays treatment, which could be a serious thing. Then again, mom is 78, and you have to figure in how hard the treatment would be on her.

Sigh. This brings up all sorts of topics that I wish I could just ignore and have them go away.

But, as for Thanksgiving itself, it was very nice. The girls and I drove down to mom’s house (The Scientist ended up having to drive to Columbus that day to fetch her horse from OSU Vet Hospital which is a different and much more expensive story).

I think it was killing mom a little bit to sit on the couch and watch my sister and I cooking. But I think is really starting to understand her limitations; plus, she has confidence in my ability as a cook (maybe more so than my sister’s).

Everything was delicious, especially the 20-pound bird that mom got.

It was a relaxed visit, and even the girls were good for the most part. My 5-year-old did have to sit in time out at one point during dinner, but I think that was mostly because she didn’t think I’d actually interrupt Thanksgiving dinner to do it. She was sadly mistaken.

Mom spent a lot of time on the couch, and she dozed after dinner. Which I can’t criticize, because I wanted nothing more than to take a nap myself. Mom’s just slower now, with less energy. She seems to be in decent humor. But she seems old. At 78 I guess she’s earned that right, but it’s just not a way that I’m accustomed to seeing her.

I hate thinking that this might be the last Thanksgiving I have with my mother, but it might be. Or she might stick around for another decade. She’s certainly a tough old broad.

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