Today is coffee and cake day. I meet Gertrude to make up for not being able to go for her dietician appointment. I had a bad night's sleep and I am tired. I put off calling her till almost 11 am. Finally after my first fake coffee (chickory) I am awake enough and brave enough to call. I brace myself and dial.
Mama answers with a weak voice. I ask her how she is feeling and immediatly regret it. I know that this question always leads to a lame discussion about the regular aches and pains of getting old. Today is special though. She gets quite excited as she tells me she has had a very bad incident. "Oh,oh!" this can't be good I think. She proceeds to tell me about her trip to the mail yesterday. Apparantly she couldn't push her walker and hold an umbrella at the same time, so she chose to take her umbrella to go up town. She forgot to use her cane though too. She made it o.k. to town and to the mail. On the way home however she ran into trouble. Just as she was three quarters up the hill, she got very dizzy. On her right was a concrete fence about three feet tall. Her dizzy spell got bad enough that she lost her balance and landed on the concrete. She now has a very big bruise on her knee and elbow. As soon as I heard I got dressed and headed over to her house to check on her. She was still wobbly on her feet, but refused to go to the doctor. She said nothing was broken and all she needed was some rest. I was upset that Heinz hadn't called me the day it happened and that he didn't take her to the doctor right away. Apparantly he only gave her hell for heading up town for the mail in bad weather especially without her walker. So I blew a gasket and told them that between them they didn't have an ounce of good sense. Then I left and felt bad for the rest of the day, wondering what on god's green earth I was going to do to keep them out of trouble. I realized once again that I am helpless.
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