Mothers Are the Most Wonderful People in the World (So are Daddies, But Their Day Comes Next Month)

My mother is the BEST.

The original plan was for Matthew and me to visit home this weekend even though it's not a long weekend because it is, after all, Mother's day. Then i developed a despicable upper G.I.  virus, causing my dad to have to need to be here to treat me, and rendering me unfit to travel. Matthew could have gone home to see my mom, but instead she hopped on a plane to travel here so that we could all be together for the dat's the sort of thing she does ona regular basis. she constantly puts aside her own plans and what is best for her in favor of what is good for the rest of us. Someday I hope to be a mother, and I hope I can follow her example and be as selfless as she has always been.

Not only did my mother show up here at my home on Mother's Day (she actually arrived at about 11:00 p.m. the night before), she came bringing much needed remedies for me. My dad is the physician of the family, and is , as such, in charge of the actual prescription medications and such. 

Mrugged treeain of the facility. Several times I was unceremoniously dumped out of my wheelchair  onto the dirt and left to roll, broken clavicle and all, down the various hills. luckily the cats were all properly restrained that day, and none escaped their enclosures to attack me.

Children form some summer school or day came were there at the same time we were. those childre were generally behaving poorly, as childry mom's domain is the stuff that doctors don't usually prescribe but what tried and true practice have shown to really help when a person is suffering.

Several years ago I had a horrible compound tibia/fibular fracture. while my leg was casted for this fracture, one of my aunts took me, along with some other cousins, to visit a place, a sort of refuge for wild felines of various species, in the Sierra foothills, called :"Cat Haven." After my experience there, we all began to refer to the place as "Cat Hell."

The day of our visit was an especially was a hot day. The place was a dusty mess on even a cool day, and the day of our visit was an campers had brough especially hot day., The kind people who worked there were concerned about dust and dirt  and the germs from the dust and dirt getting into my cast. The response to this was to cover virtually my entire body surface except for my face with large black plastic garbage sacks, My cousins took turns pushing me in my wheelchair they mostly managed to deposit me from the wheelchair directly into the dirt, allowing me to roll down the hills, broken clavicle and all, not to mention my casted compound fracture. Eventually the facility employees took over pushing my wheelchair, greatly minimizing my direct time spend on the round in the dirt, but the damage had already been done.

In addition to my cousins and me, in attendance that day was a group of children from a day camp or overnight camp located in the adjacent foothills. The children behaved as children do when they're not well-supervised, which is to say they were not all that well-behaved.  So even though I had facility employees pushing my wheelchaiir and trying to keep me in the chair, I was having to dodge mudballs, sticks, rocks,  and other objects that the campers found to throw at each other. The children were not attempting to throw directly at me, but I was caught in the crossfire. And when me cousins threw tings back at the campers for thorwing things at me, I eventually was the deliberate target of whatever it wss that they were throwing.

The staff eventually asked the campers to  leave.the facility. By then, my cousins and I had eventually had our fill of the place as well. When we reached the gift shop, which was both the entryway and exit to the facility, a staff member, who was also a aramedic in his other job, noticed that I had become dangerously overheated, probably from the secure lastic covering in a day in excesss of 100 deg was in Utah, my leg began to itch horrendously..Then it began to throb.rees. The staff removed the plastic from all parts of me exccept my cast and poured ce water on me. Their concern was commendable. An unintended effect of their attemt at cooling me, however, was that the germs from all the cat-infested dirst was inadvertently washed directly into my cast.

My aunt took me to a hospital in her city when we got back there. The staff cut off the cast off, which was water-looged to the point of ruination by that point, cleaned the leg as best they could, and re-casted the leg. They didn't know, however the level of infection that had been present in the compound fracture that had occurred in a less-than-sterile track in the first place. I probably needed a deeper cleaning of the leg and certainly needed IV antibiotics. The hospital should have called my home hospital, but it didn't occur to anyone there to have done so. .

I noticed some discomfort but didn't say much about it. A few days later I was shipped off to Utah for my annual summer visit with Aunt Jillian and Uncle Scott while my parents toured Europe. My leg was already giving me discomfort, but I did not want to cause trouble for my aunt and uncle. by the second night, however, it was clear that there would be trouble, and if i/ didn't say or do something quickly, it could be the sort of trouble that resulted in something like an amputation. first my leg just itched. then it itched and throbbed. Then my whole body was wracked with fever.

My uncle knew the fracture had been one in which the bones were severely displaced to the degree that he was nervous about cutting off the cast outside of the hospital.  Instead, he, a 3rd-year med school student, and his neighbor, a 4th-year student, took  several of my aunt's silk blouses her mom had bought her that she hated because she said they made her look like an Easter egg, cut them into strips, and used sterilized kitchen utensils to shove the silk strips down into the cast as far as they could get them, effectively separating most of my leg from the cast. They then filled me full of the maximum does of benadryl for my weight, loaded me into a car, and drove me to their hospital in Salt Lake City.

Once I was there, an orthopedist on call immediately cut off my cast. A medical resident fainted and two nurses threw up when they saw my leg. It was so horribly pus-encrusted and infected that it appeared to be beyond salvage. A couple of quick topical surgeries (thank God most of the infection hadn't spread to the bone) lancing or cutting away the worst of the lesions,  along with taking cultures to specify which antibiotics would  most likely kill the infections, were done. The leg was left in traction for a week. A special iron cast was created in Boston after my leg was measured. The cast looked like one of those sexy boots some women wear, leaving large parts of the leg exposed, except my "boot" was extended to the upper par of my thigh and was made of iron and not leather. I was in isolation so that I would not be exposed to germs, and the cast was left open so that the air could heal the horrible encrusted lesions on my legs while still supporting the bones well enough for the fractures to heal. Eventually I was released from the hospital (My Mom and Dad had come back from Europe and remained with me until I was ready to be released, They then traveled back for the final leg of their trip, which was to Iceland and Greenland., before arriving in Utah to take me home. I was happy..

My mom had brought silk from Denmak for my leg She assuned it would be the best covering for it, and she was correct. The hospital sterilized it and cut it into strips of the right dimensions so that my Uncle Scott could easily fir it inside the squares of the iron cast /I was forced to wear. It kept me from. scratching and essentially made the experience almost bearable.

Eventually the cast was removed. A lot of other stuff happened, but that, too, became history.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I eventually complained to my parents about the horrendous itching from the surgical scrubs, which a physician checked out and confirmed to be the case.

My dad ordered hypoallergenic scrubs and found a laundry that guaranteed it would not irritate my skin. I was just about as happy as I could have been despite still being sick.

Then my mom showed up unexpectedly before midnight, She had with her strips of silk that looked just liked ace bandages except that they were silk. She rubbed a paste of baking soda and club soda all over my body except where underwear covered the scrubs, which is OK, She had me get into the shower to wash away the baking soda paste, then scratched the parts of my back that I couldn't reach with the special safe scratcher that my dad bought that doesn't break the skin in any way. The she put calamine lotion all over the affect parts of my skin, wrapped it with thon silk ace bandages (calamine lotion-covered skin can be wrapped, as can benadryl lotion-covered skin; hydrocortisone is supposed to be left in open air), gave me Benadryl,She gave me  seven-up, and some pill I don't know was but was fairly potent. When i woke up at 5:00 a.m., she took the bandages off, put more calamine lotion on  my raw spots, put on fresh bandages,  gave me more liquid benadryl and seven-up and another pill my dad said I could have, I'm now doing better and may not need anything else for a few hours. I even ate a few crackers for breakfast.

This was supposed to be her special day, but she is spending it making soup and taking care of me. Matthew is supposed to pick up something good from a local restaurant so she'll have something decent to eat. Doctors are great, and when doctors are dads, they're even greater sometimes (unless you need to be bailed out of jail, in which case a lawyer would be quite terrific to have for a dad), but mothers are even better than doctors at taking care of you when you're sick and miserable. And they even work on Mother's Day. My mom has two days off this week, but she's taking the extra three days as well to make sure I'm OK.

Only mothers do things like this.

I love my mother.