Comfort Fish

Some times all you can do is just keep putting one foot in front of another.

At this point, that's all I'm doing. 

The year started with a cold with a nasty cough to go with it; two days after I stopped coughing so much I woke with the pinched nerve; the day after I finished my course of physical therapy and felt good -- I came down with the flu.

All of us have had it -- Bernie is the last one. We had hopes that with the warmer weather, we'd be done with illness drama for the year, but no, that would be too easy. Monday night I was massaging a sore spot on my arm, and asked Bernie if he thought there was a lump of some sort on the bone. He felt my arm, and the next day insisted I make an appointment with the doctor.

I saw the doctor this morning; within an hour they'd gotten clearance for an MRI to be done tomorrow. 

This week I also filled out applications for nursing homes for my mother. What I'm hearing from her 24-hour caregivers is not reassuring to me; Mom is starting to do crazy stuff like stopping up the bathroom sink  and sneaking into the medicine cabinet to take extra doses of her pills. She also sprained an ankle, and WOULD NOT stay off it. Add in that the caregivers are having some kind of conflict with Mom's doctor, and that the caregivers are working double- and triple- shifts because they're short-staffed ... I guess it's time for her to move out of her home.

Am I stressed about all this? I don't even know. I feel like I've gone beyond stress and am just sitting here waiting for someone to say, "You have to do this, and then you have to do that, and so on, and so on.

Having taken all the steps I was ordered to do today, I'm good. I've started carrying my rosary with me all the time, so that when things start to feel overwhelming, I can remember to let go of the problems and just rest in God's grace. While I was waiting for the doctor's office to call me, I took a nice walk with Howie and let everything flow past.

And rejoicing that there still are love and happiness and humor and play in the world, I share with you one of my Christmas Fish that Alex and Lillian made for me.