Easter and Hips

Easter is a wonderful time. Lately it is especially so for me as I ponder the meaning of it as I haven't before. I feel quite tender about Christ and his amazing gift to the world.

We had our annual Easter Egg hunt in the yard. Layne and I are just observers now, as the rest of the family has taken it over. So I was free to watch and take as many pictures as I wanted. Here you see Scott with more than just his basket. Hum. Also pictured is Reed and Ben in our kitchen. We had a wild and wonderful gang of children running through the yard in hunt of eggs, and, later, we had a family gathering inside.

Things seemed to be going along pretty normally until Monday night. As I was preparing mom for bed, she FELL! We are not sure how it happened; perhaps her hip broke first, or perhaps last. But her hip broke. We didn't know that when we tucked her into bed for the night. And we didn't know it when we placed her on the potty the next morning. There she turned pale and sweaty, heaved and babbled and generally scared me to death. I lapsed into a bit of hysterical sobbing (me, the non-crying woman!) and then we called 911. Later we discovered that those frightening symptoms were a result of pain. So much pain that her mind went into overload. If we had only realized what we put her though we could have saved her from some of it.

She went into surgery Tuesday night at Washington Hospital. As it turns out, that hospital is known for its excellent hip surgeries. How blessed we are! Mom went through the surgery fine but is experiencing lots of pain in the recovery process. She chipped her teeth about feeling as much pain after the surgery as she did before and why did she bother going through all of that just to feel the same discomfort. Ah, Mom.

She spent Wednesday and Thursday in the hospital and today she was transferred to a convalescent home in Pleasanton that specializes in physical therapy. She will stay a month, then we'll take her home to Colorado for follow-up therapy. My prayer is that she will be back on her feet quickly and regain the strength that she worked so hard to achieve after the stroke. My week has been full of thoughts of Mom and how much I love her. I hope things work together for her benefit. We will work to make that happen as best we can. Time will work out the rest of this story.