{"id":214,"date":"2011-11-21T01:15:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T07:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2014-09-10T22:23:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T03:23:23","slug":"the-last-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"The Last Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas of 2009 was going to be different, we all knew that.\u00a0 Mom was nervous but wanted to make the most of the holiday.\u00a0 She wanted to have Christmas at our new house but she hadn\u2019t left Steinbach except for doctor appointments and tests since May.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure if she had been out to my sister\u2019s house 15 minutes south of town.\u00a0 So for her to think of going all the way to our house in Winnipeg she was very nervous.\u00a0 We assured her of how close we are to a hospital just in case.\u00a0 She was more worried about how to handle her colostomy away from home.\u00a0 She always made sure that she was home within a few hours where she was more comfortable. \u00a0I made sure that we had whatever she needed to take care of herself.\u00a0 She got a ride with my sister and her family on her 68th<\/sup> birthday, December 24th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

We had a big meal, of course.\u00a0 Mom played piano for what would be the last time.\u00a0 We had birthday cake with sparklers.\u00a0 We got a few really good pictures of her.\u00a0 She was the happiest and healthiest we had seen her in a very long time.\u00a0 Healthy is relative of course but she didn\u2019t have as many tumors in her so she felt better.\u00a0 She was tired but she seemed lighter and happier.\u00a0 She had really good color in her face for the first time in over a year.\u00a0 She commented that it was one of the best Christmas\u2019s we had had in a long time.\u00a0 We had tried really hard to lift her spirits and I knew that this could very well be her last one.\u00a0 We also wanted to be sure that the grandkids had a wonderful last Christmas\/birthday with Grandma to remember.<\/p>\n

After Christmas Mom was anticipating surgery again on January 14th<\/sup>.\u00a0 They were going to reverse her colostomy, do a hysterectomy and remove more tumors.\u00a0 She was nervous about it but so happy to get rid of the colostomy nothing else really mattered.\u00a0 I am not a doctor and I don\u2019t fully understand the intricacies of why the colostomy was reversed or how.\u00a0 There were conflicting stories along the way and it was just glossed over by the fact that she was so happy.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t care why or what, just that it would be gone.<\/p>\n

A week or so before her surgery I got a call from my sister that Mom had fainted again; this time in a restaurant.\u00a0 My Mom had gone out on her own to the restaurant where my sister works; she went there almost every day so everyone knew her.\u00a0 My sister wasn\u2019t working but her co-workers had called her in a panic and she had rushed into town.\u00a0 Mom had a piece of pie and when she got up to leave she felt funny.\u00a0 One of the waitresses saw her in the camera from the kitchen and noticed that she was staggering so she ran out to check on her.\u00a0 Mom came around the corner to pay and tried to get to the counter in time to hold on.\u00a0 The waitress came around the other corner in time to see Mom start to go down so she ran over and was able to help her lay on the floor instead of crashing.\u00a0 They then called my sister.\u00a0 When Mom came around she insisted that she did not need an ambulance or to see a doctor.\u00a0 The waitress agreed they wouldn\u2019t do anything until my sister got there.\u00a0 Rebecca agreed to not take her to the hospital because Mom had been thoroughly checked out for the fainting spells and there wasn\u2019t really an explanation other than low oxygen but not enough to put her on oxygen.\u00a0 I called a bunch of times to be sure that she was all right and home care doted on her.\u00a0 Mom recovered from it that evening and again couldn\u2019t figure out what the big deal was.\u00a0 The next time we got a chance we asked the doctor if it was safe for her to be driving \u2013 what if she fainted while driving.\u00a0 The doctors reassured us that driving in small amounts around town was still safe because the fainting was related to standing up.\u00a0 As long as she stayed sitting she was fine.\u00a0 So she gave us dirty looks, stuck her tongue out at us, said \u201cI told you so.\u201d and drove where she wanted.<\/p>\n

We were definitely reminded that even if Mom had the best color in her cheeks we\u2019d seen in months or that she was happier we still had to be on our guard.\u00a0 Every time we felt like we knew where we stood something would happen to shake us up again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas of 2009 was going to be different, we all knew that.\u00a0 Mom was nervous but wanted to make the most of the holiday.\u00a0 She wanted to have Christmas at our new house but she hadn\u2019t left Steinbach except for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}