Where's Mom?

I had a bit of an adventure with my Mom this morning, and I didn't even go to Olympia!

About a week and a half ago my mother stepped wrong and hurt her leg. Her physical therapist (for her back problem) thinks it's most likely a pulled thigh muscle. It's really painful and has surpassed her back as the biggest impediment to walking.

The pain comes into play when she steps down on her left foot. Just to recap, that's pain in her back when she steps on her right foot and now worse pain in her leg when she steps on her left foot. She says the back is getting better but I'm not sure if it's just that the new pain has surpassed the old.

On Monday the physical therapist said if her new injury wasn't getting better in a couple days I should make her an appointment to see someone in her doctor's office (her regular doc is on vacation). The pain has been consistent and is not letting up so yesterday I made her an appointment for Friday afternoon.

Last night (Wednesday evening) when I talked to her on the phone she said she could barely stand to step on the left foot and the pain was really bad. I started wondering if it was getting worse. The doctor's office advised that if it did get worse I should bring her in as soon as possible. So this morning I called her just to check in and see if she is hanging in there or if I need to arrange for a quicker appointment. At least I tried to call her...

I dialed her phone number and the phone rang and rang. I let it ring 15 times but she didn't pick up. She's very hard of hearing so I thought "well maybe she's in the bathroom and can't hear the phone ringing." I waited 15 minutes and tried again. The phone rang and rang, 15 more times. Now I was starting to get worried.

Mom's walking is bad enough that she's not even going outside. She's confined to the house so where could she be? I called her next door neighbor's house. No one was home there. So I called my brother-in-law Bill who lives about 15 minutes away from Mom. He was just on his way out the door to go to the store so said he would be happy to stop over and check on Mom. He promised to call me as soon as he got there.

I tried Mom's house again with no answer. I called Walter and he tried calling with no response. I was sure that something was wrong. But I live an hour and a half away and so I just have to have patience and wait for Bill's call. Of course I was at work at the time and had a busy day of meetings and tasks that took me away from my desk.

We have a great feature of our phone system that allows you to forward your calls to another number like your cell phone. So I forwarded my work line to my cell phone and headed off to take care of some things. Over an hour went by with no word. I was pretty much freaking out. Finally, my cell phone rings. It's Walter.

Walter tells me that he has been trying to reach me on my work number but only gets voice mail! So he tried my cell phone to reach me. Oh no, the phone forwarding didn't work! I later discovered that I had forgotten to type in a "9" with the forwarded number so that's why it didn't work. Argh.

I immediately had visions of Bill trying to reach me and not being able to. Walter quickly set my mind at ease by telling me Mom was fine. Bill couldn't reach me by phone so he finally called Walter to give him the scoop.

As it turns out, Mom wasn't able to sleep last night. She said it wasn't because of pain because it only hurts when she steps on the bad leg. She just couldn't turn her mind off. (I understand Mom, it happens to me too sometimes!) Since she didn't sleep and because her pain meds make her sleepy she decided to take a little nap.

I've mentioned that Mom is very hard of hearing. In fact she is pretty much completely deaf in one ear. Well when she lay down for her nap she happened to lie on the side of the good ear and she couldn't hear the phone at all. Wow.

When I got back to my desk and checked my messages there was one from Bill saying he had gone to her house and could see that she was lying on the bed in the bedroom. But all his pounding on the window didn't cause a stir. So he went to a pay phone and called me to tell me that and since he couldn't reach me he didn't know what to do. Fortunately, he went back to Mom's and by then she was up from her nap. Whew!!

I called Mom and talked to her and she started apologizing all over the place for making everyone worry. She swore she would never lie down for a nap again. Oh my. Well of course she can take a nap when she needs one! I'll have to talk to her about that when I see her tomorrow. Maybe she can just lie on the other side. On the other hand, I really don't want her to wake from a sound sleep to the sound of a ringing phone and then try to "rush" to the phone while still groggy. That sounds like a recipe for a fall to me.

Well that's the Mom adventure for the day. Everybody laughed about it, and we're all just thankful she's safe and sound. She told me her leg is still the same and not worse, so we will stay with tomorrow's appointment.

Since I will be leaving early from work to go to Olympia tomorrow it will probably be Saturday evening before I will have time to post again. Have a good weekend everybody!