Making the best decisions will likely continue to be a challenge
When I was caring for Evelyn at home, every week was punctuated by decisions with no clearly right answer. Should we go or stay? Should we run to the ER tonight or just call her doctor in the morning? Should I fuss over main dish, vegetable, and salad or settle for grilled cheese and apple sauce?
And at the end of most weeks, I worked to ignore the chorus of “should haves” reminding me of decisions I got wrong or problems I hadn’t anticipated.
I thought the pressure of making difficult decisions would end with Evelyn living in residential care. Saturday morning I realized that end won’t likely be anytime soon.
Another fall
Evelyn fell Friday night. It was the second phone call that week from a nurse at Artis telling me she had fallen. The nurse had examined Evelyn and reported (as had happened with several calls in the last weeks) that Evelyn wasn’t injured.
But this time Evelyn had hit her head. Thirty minutes after the nurse called me, I called her back and asked her to check Evelyn again to assure me there were no signs of concussion.
I was five hours away, visiting family in Knoxville, Tennessee, for the first time since Thanksgiving 2022. If I’d been home, I probably would have driven straight to Evelyn’s bedside. I certainly would have done so the next morning.
But when I woke up in Tennessee Saturday, I asked a friend to go check on Evelyn in my place. Soon she was sending me pictures of the large, ugly bruises on Evelyn’s forehead and under her eye. I called again and spoke with the Saturday nurse on duty who said he had already checked Evelyn and she appeared to be completely normal. But he agreed with me that X-rays would be a good idea.
“I can be there before dinner time,” I told him, but he assured me her condition was not critical.
Before the fall: The folks at Artis snapped Evelyn enjoying various activities there last week, including a visit from two goats who spent quite a bit of time allowing residents to enjoy them. (By the way, the brace from an earlier fall and broken wrist has now been removed.)
As it turns out, he was right. A mobile X-ray service took pictures and sent results within two or three hours. No broken bones, no concussion. I breathed a sigh of relief and decided not to hurry back to Ohio.
Some readers may think I made the wrong decision not to go. Others might say I shouldn’t have even considered rushing back home. Each choice had something to say for it; I had faced another case of no clear wrong or right decision.
Blessed respite
I don’t plan to be away overnight again till July, but I must say I was very glad for the chance to hit the road. It was my second trip since Evelyn moved. Earlier in April I spent almost five days in New York City visiting my son and his family.
Since the first of the year, I had anticipated making both getaways close together with the notion (now discarded) that Evelyn’s move would be only a month-long respite stay.
This time I enjoyed lunches with friends in Kentucky, overnights with my daughter’s family in Knoxville, and almost four days with 50-year friends in Lanett, Alabama. It was wonderful.
Blessed time away: Wye Huxford, a contributor to this blog and constant encourager, on the campus of Point University in West Point, Georgia. Matt, Nina, and Miles Johnson posing with me in Knoxville. Katie and Byron Cartwright, lifetime friends who live now in Lanett, Alabama. Another pose with the Johnsons, this time including daughter Jennifer.
Evelyn seems to be fine, and she wouldn’t be any better if I’d been home all this time. So, in this case, I’m not burdened by a “should-have.”
Unless I want to consider “I should have never moved her away from home.” I play that song in my mind once or twice every week. The bottom line is always the same: This was not a wrong choice, but it was surely not a problem-eliminating decision, either.
It seems certain that, even with her move, I won’t soon run out of things to write about.
The journey hasn’t ended; it’s simply a new path through unanticipated territory.