Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Back to Oz

It's now a new year and time for us to head home. We are in San Francisco and will catch the late-night Sydney flight this evening. As much as we love to wander around the world, it's always a good feeling knowing we're heading back to our own bed.

We had a great time in Pittsford. Sandy and Dave were wonderful and found plenty of time for us, even though they were so busy with the return home of Christopher and his fiance Laura as well as Jordan's imminent trip to France for four months of study.

Not to mention frequent visits to Peg who is recovering from a broken leg at the Living Center.  This will be a short post (and who can fault a short post on the day after New Year's Eve?) My mother-in-law is one of my favorite people in the world, and it was great to see her. Despite still not being able to put weight on her leg, she is looking stronger and better every day.

Two moments stand out from our visits to the Living Center.

On our last visit as we were heading to the airport, the social worker was in the room doing a mandatory Q&A.  She asked memory questions and then some others to indicate the mental attitude of the patient.

LK and I listened as Peg answered the questions. And we both agree that we would have had a fairly difficult time answering the memory questions ourselves, so we were pretty impressed that Peg did so well.

On the series of questions about her emotional state, the answers were fairly predictable. But Peg, who is 93 and has a broken leg, couldn't help rolling her eyes when the social worker asked, "Do you find yourself moving more slowly than usual?"  I think they might consider adding some intelligence questions for the social workers.

And the other moment came on another visit when Peg was telling us that they had taken her in a wheelchair to dine with other patients in the Center. She told us how most of the people didn't say much and many of them were having troubles feeding themselves.

Perhaps my favorite 93-year-old said more about herself than the others when she summer it up:  "They were so old!" she explained.





Keep getting stronger, Peg.  And a happy, healthy 2013 to all.