I'm Back

More or less.

I got back from Fort Lauderdale a week ago. But I had computer issues, namely the lack of a monitor. It got fried even before I left for Florida.

But first an update on the family situation

My mother had a mild stroke. Before I left for Fort Lauderdale, she had left the hospital and was already in a rehab center. When I got there, she was able to speak, though her speech was slow and somewhat slurred. However, she could be understood. On a telephone, it’s still sometimes a little difficult to comprehend all her words, but in person it’s easier to make out what she’s saying.

She also can walk with the aid of a walker and the therapist. There is a great deal of improvement and the staff continues to work with her. I’m not sure when, or even if, she will be able to return to her home but she is coherent, has the ability to make all her wishes and needs known, and has some mobility.

I have two things to say about this experience.

The first is that I am convinced that the remarkable recovery of this 90-year-old woman is due to the fact that medical intervention occurred so quickly. She woke my father up in the middle of the night because she needed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t stand up on her own. He tried to help her but she collapsed anyway. As she was falling to the floor, my father realized that she was having a stroke and immediately called 911. As he was hanging up, after having described her symptoms, the operator told him to open his front door. No sooner did he put the phone down and head for the door than the paramedics were right there. They immediately began working on my mother as they rushed her to the hospital.

This is not the first time my parents have experienced such rapid response from Broward County’s paramedics in the middle of the night. For all that I laugh about South Florida, the one thing they do right is emergency response. I am profoundly grateful to those people who showed up. They, and my father’s quick thinking, saved my mother’s life and made it possible for her to walk and talk again.

I am also amazed at the quality of care she has gotten in both the hospital and the rehab center. Every one of the people who work with her are dedicated, hard working and very caring professionals. I am profoundly grateful to all of them.

After returning from Fort Lauderdale, I still had the computer issues to deal with. Hence, no blogging. I now have a new monitor. It’s a flat screen that is half the size of my old monitor. It’s amazing how much of a difference this has made and how much more room I have on my computer stand. I’m still going to need to replace the CPU soon. But rebuilding slowly, first the keyboard, then the monitor, and then a new CPU seems to be the way to go for those of us with middle class pockets and time to do it gradually

It’s good to be back. I will be blogging about politics, the economy and all the good fights of the day in the future. For now, I’m sorry if I bored you with my personal rambling. But for today, it just felt right.

Namaste.