Our Own Parade

Every year on the first Saturday in December the City of Hemet has a Christmas Parade. It’s always a really big parade with around fifty floats, entries, and marching bands and thousands of spectators lining the street. (Ken Fournier & Co. faithfully pass out stacks of gospel tracts. Once, when attending the parade years ago, he handed me one and I said no thanks, I liked the fellowship I was attending, thank you. )

Since the staging area for the long journey down Florida Ave. begins on Palm Ave., the police dept needs to barricade all adjacent roads, including the block of Acacia Ave. between Palm and Lyon: my street. Most years I’ve forgotten all about it until I am sitting at work wondering where all my clients are. I usually go to work before the barricades are up, so it doesn‘t sink in. This year I was deliberating whether to go into work at all. I could get stuff done, I think. No pesky interruptions. So I did.

About an hour after I get there, Mom calls me to ask how things are going….”Oh, so-so,” I say, “It’s quiet, but that’s good. Some clients have called and some have made appointments.” I yap on about this and that and then finally ask her how she is doing. “Well, I am sitting on the kitchen floor where I fell about 30 minutes ago. I spilled some maple syrup and I was trying to wipe it up, when I fell.” ACK! She doesn’t sound too distressed, but I drive home as fast as I can. Sure enough, splat on the floor, holding her clip-on phone and in pain. Making sure that I am as calm as I possibly can, I get our neighbor to come help me lift her back to her walker, wheel her to her recliner, gave her some liquid morphine and then I called hospice. I wanted just to be sure that nothing was damaged or broken. The nurse came and checked her out and did some arm maneuvers and determined that Mom has seriously injured her right arm. Possibly broken her upper arm. She had limited lower arm rotation, very limited grip, and deep soreness all around the elbow area. There was no obvious signs of a fracture, but something was definitely damaged. Since she still had some use of the arm and the trip to the ER for X-rays would not be worth the trauma, and that all they could do was put it in a sling with an ice pack and give her pain medicine, the nurse suggested that we do that at home; immobilize the arm and increase her regular pain medicine, adding the morphine. The nurse would come back tomorrow (Sunday). We can always go to the hospital later, if we wanted.

I got up and got dressed for meeting. Mom had slept in her recliner. The nurse came at 10:30 L The arm was still sore, but her grip was better. She was retaining fluid in her legs, her lungs are not entirely clear, her blood sugar was up to 218, and she was really groggy. No fever or high blood pressure. The nurse stayed for more than hour. No meeting for me. When I asked for some guidelines about when it was safe to leave her home alone now, she said the rule of thumb is if she can get herself out of the house if it was on fire. Oh.

The rest of the day was very quiet. Sue and Tom came and brought lunch. Mom slept. I made her a turkey sandwich for supper. She slept some more. At 7:00 she asked to be put to bed. I helped her lie down but told her it was early for her bedtime pills just yet. Now she is asleep again. I very much felt your prayers for me today. The Lord was with us in a very real way. I felt an unusual calmness, and peacefulness amid all the turmoil.

Her regular nurse come tomorrow. We will decide then what to do next