Best Laid Plans

 

The plan.

The plan was to spend Christmas with Captain’s family and assist his mom as she transitioned from independent living at home to an assisted living facility. The move was scheduled for December 28. Our plans included making our winter base in College Station with short trips to explore Texas. Perfect planning! Not only would we be available to assist Captain's brother and wife with mom’s care but we would have fun exploring.

 The reality.

We arrived in College Station as planned, went as a family to Christmas Eve church services as was tradition, had the traditional Christmas dinner, attended church with mom on Sunday and went out to lunch. On Monday, mom didn’t feel as well as usual but chalked it up to being tired with the preparations for her move. On Tuesday she moved to her new home. The move went well and we were able to join our “book club” friends on Tuesday evening.

By Thursday she was feeling a lot worse and agreed to go to the ER. And that is where reality checked in.

After five days in the hospital with pneumonia, with help from all of us mom returned to the assisted living facility. By having caretakers during the night, the four of us have been able to attend to her during the day. (Well there was one week when brother and wife were exposed to a COVID positive person and we stayed 12-15 hours a day until their COVID test results came back negative.)

The good news is Mom is getting stronger and her mind is very sharp for her 94 1/2 years. She is not back to her pre-hospital self but she no longer needs around the clock care and  is making improvements every day. She is doing her Sudoku puzzles, plays Pinochle every chance she gets and doing most of her personal care. She is starting to get more involved with the assisted living community. We will stick around a few more weeks to give brother and wife a bit of a respite.

Our winter home; nice but not interesting.

One of our biggest challenges is ABN’s lack of competent driving skills (with which many of you are familiar.) Unlike our small town, College Station is a city of about 120,000 residents plus 60,000+ students. That’s a lot of cars! And a lot of distracted drivers. Not to mention a complicated highway system (ABN refers to as a spaghetti system) near the assisted living, brother’s house and the church.  What do do? We have found a back way of country roads!

The family home for the past 58 1/2 years will soon be listed with a real estate agency. ABN will miss the location that allowed her to walk miles on the many walking paths and sidewalks that lead to a nice shopping area (that includes Hobby Lobby ) and around the Texas A&M campus. There is a nice Greenway Trail near the assisted living facility and walking paths in the Veterans Park and Athletic Complex near the RV Park.

 As Mom often says, “That’s life”, at least in College Station this winter. 

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