Of Cooking and CAT Scans: Thanksgiving 2010

My mom (that's her beautiful self to the left, with baby tree-climbing Moroccan goat) was supposed to come to DC to visit for Thanksgiving.  A few days after she returned to Boston from our girl bonding trip all over Morocco, she came down with pneumonia (that's her in Morocco, a day pre-pneumonia).  More on that elsewhere (and the goat in the tree behind Mom.  For real.  Not. A. Joke).  Our wonderful friends Mary and Stilly invited us to Thanksgiving at their house, very close to ours.  Hubby and I met on Thanksgiving Day and got engaged 15 days later so we consider it our true anniversary.  This year makes five years (eeee so cool!!).  Mom was supposed to celebrate with us.

Instead, the day before, she went to see her doctor at Mass General who promptly admitted her. My reaction to this is not to cry or scream or freak, rather, I felt overwhelmed with exhaustion and literally wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep on the floor of my office.  Ditto next day, Thanksgiving, 10:30 AM when 1.  I hear how scared she is, 2. CAT scan showed fluid around lung and heart and a problem with her liver.  This time I freaked.  Called hubby on golf course.  I thought.

Hubby is Jr. 

I called Sr. By mistake.

Who I later found out thought his oldest son had been in some horrible accident.  Smart man, handed phone to wife, my glorious mother in law.  She is not just an R.N. The woman runs hospital E.R.s.  Rides in choppers.  Medical and managerial badass.  Talked me off ledge.  Didn’t even bother hubby on golf course.  Set about to chopping.  Very therapeutic.  Before that, I went through over my entire iTunes library and every some I clicked on every song that made me smile AND made me feel good, like I wanted to dance.  If I could.  Even though I can’t. (Listening now, loooove it).

Played music, made Mom’s dressing with my tweaks, and her sauerkraut, also tweaked for hubby.  I eat the former, but not the latter. 

Yup, that’s the Thanksgiving story.  Finally spoke with Mom and her attending physician (so very Grey’s), who explained how they were ruling out all sorts of things (bad things, this is where I started rooting hard for infection, any infection, bacterial or viral; I’ll take it over lupus or rheumatism). 

Happy Thanksgiving!! (That's a shot I took of Mom in Morocco a few weeks ago.  Did I mention she's 71?  Just wanted to see if you read to the end, kidding!! But I bet you're going to check out that close up pic at the top ... I would.)