After worrying through the night and most of the morning Dana and I were able to leave work at lunch today to visit my mom. When I walked through the doorway of my mom’s hospital room I was greeted by a sight I just didn’t expect to see this day. My mom was sitting up in bed watching the bustle of activity in the halls on the seventh floor of the Rhoads Pavillion and she smiled as I walked into the room with Dana and Helen. She looked relaxed and almost content with her surroundings, her hair was clean and shiny and her eyes were lit up like they haven’t been in weeks. I went to her bedside and told her how wonderful she looked and she started to fuss with her right hand. I figured she had it tangled and when I removed the covers I was confronted with the sight of a white mitten about the size of a boxing glove, it looked like a huge q-tip on the end of my mom’s arm. I started to laugh, I couldn’t help myself. “You got yourself a mitten, huh?” My mom smiled and patted the side of her stomach that holds her feeding tube with the big, puffy mitten. “Yeah,” I said “it’s because you pulled that out! So, don’t do it again!” My mom smiled at me again and waved the mitten at me and clearly said the word “off.” My mom hasn’t even tried to say a single word in the past week and the excitement I felt at hearing that one word was indescribable so after I made her promise not to pull at her feeding tube I unhooked the Velcro fasteners on the mitten and removed it from my mom’s hand. She stretched her fingers slowly and then proceeded to reach up and pull the oxygen hose from her nose. “What the hell mom!” I said “Those nurses are going to come in here and put those mittens on me for Christ’s sake!”She smiled again...
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