late, late, late

I was wrong: Mom didn't wake up at 11AM. She was asleep until well past 2PM, and got out of bed sometime after 3PM. She seemed fine; Dad didn't notice any temperature or any other signs of illness; Mom shook her head "no" when I asked her whether she had a headache.

She'll be out of the bathroom soon. I'm not sure what to call the meal I'll be fixing for her. Linner? Dunch? I hope Mom will be able to sleep normally tonight; she needs to wake up in time to receive a visitor tomorrow at 2PM. Then again, if Mom isn't up in time, we'll simply call our visitor and cancel. We've done it before-- just ask our pastors!

UPDATE, 4:46PM: Mom's showering. We're so close to dinnertime that I'll just be making her a bowl of oatmeal or something to tide her over.

UPDATE, 6:57PM: Mom came out of the bathroom way late, probably around 5:30 or 5:45PM. She had enough strength to climb up into her barstool by herself, even going so far as to reject my help when I offered it. I ended up giving her a bowl of plain yogurt sprinkled with a bit of brown sugar, then topped with some applesauce and muesli-type cereal.

UPDATE, 11:19PM: Dinner involved the use of leftover ingredients in the fridge and freezer. I made some spaghetti bolognese, mashed potatoes that included some Korean goguma, and salad from whatever I could scrounge from the dark corners of the fridge. Making this sort of food without the benefit of smell or taste wasn't impossible, but it also wasn't easy. David came over this evening, so I enlisted his and Dad's help as tasters, just to make sure I was on track. Everything turned out fine, according to them, and Mom ate her entire serving.

Mom's feet also became quite swollen as she sat at the bar, feet dangling. I propped her feet up on an adjacent bar stool, and Dad came by a few minutes later to slip pillows under her feet. This sort of elevation does Mom's feet a world of good, but it also puts strain on her knees, which are locked into a full extension. In the bar stool situation, there's no way to prop Mom's knees so that they can bend slightly. Tonight, as it turned out, Mom figured out a way to help herself: she let down one foot at a time, allowing each knee a chance to decompress before putting it back up on the bar stool next to her. The end result of all this knee and foot care was that Mom's feet were far less swollen by 11PM than they had been around 8PM. What's more, I was impressed by Mom's ability to raise her feet to the level of the adjacent bar stool without any help.


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