The Freaks

What a difference a day makes.  Case in point.  Two days ago, my mom and my little sister and I went to the zoo. There are baby pandas at Zoo Atlanta and this is the first week that the public could possibly see them.  I kept explaining to my kin that I was going to freak out if I got to see the baby pandas.  I didn't want to have high expectations because the web page said we would be "lucky" if we saw the panda babies.  So I told my mom to keep praying that we would see the pandas as we zipped around looking at binturongs, bustards and bush dogs.  When we got to the panda exhibit, we could see proud PandaMOM showing off one of her twins. It was crowded around the exhibit but because my mom's in a wheelchair, many people stepped aside and let us get up close.  SCORE!  I was shaking inside as I tried to take the photos of the panda baby.  I'm not kidding, I was hyped.  I felt like everything on earth was going my way.

Fast forward to yesterday.  My poor mom takes a fall in her bedroom.  Sister and I take her to the emergency room.  CAT scan. MRI.  3 stitches.  Everyone at the hospital was friendly and professional and actually made me wonder about trying to get a job at a hospital some time. But on the bad side, it took several hours to get the stitches into my mom's head and she continued to bleed profusely.  They had to change the bandages on her head several times, but the blood just kept pouring through. I worried that she was going to bleed out.  I decided to take some pictures because how often do you get a photo of your mom with blood all over her head?  After my mom got stitched up and an all clear report from her tests, I showed her one of my photos.  She stared at it for awhile and sighed, "What a freak."

We're all home now, doing our best and forgetting the rest.  But we're keeping in mind that a day can make a big difference and I'm hoping that today is kind of in the medium zone.  Nothing too exciting, nothing too horrid.  Just basic same old same old.  Let's stay calm and carry on in 2017.