Update on Mom

Being busy at work is fun and not so fun.

It tends to take away from blog-updating time. It also makes it hard to visit Mom in the hospital.

My sister Erin and I took Mom in (finally!) for her cancer surgery on the 26th. We got her all checked in and settled, and then we helped to get her prepped for surgery. The Nurse was so great, we even had some laughs before they took Mom in. The nurse had to find the pulse in Mom's foot and mark it so they could monitor it throughout the surgery, and she wasn't having any luck finding it with her stethoscope, so she went and got one of those portable machines that you listen to baby's heartbeats with. I whispered to Erin it would be funny if a little voice came over the speaker saying something like "no habla espanol...", and I was laughing so hard after I said it I had to leave the room. Erin was so disgusted with me. She doesn't like hospitals much, she spent so much time in them when she was a kid.

They took Mom in about 9am, and said they would call us when she was out of Surgery. So we went for breakfast .... downtown. We left the car at the U of A and took the LRT to Edmonton Center. I can't remember the last time I was downtown! When we got back to the hospital, we checked in with Admitting to see if Mom had a room yet, and she did so we went up to the ward. She hadn't come up from Surgery yet, so we waited in the visiting area just outside. And waited. And waited.

She didn't come upstairs until almost 3:30, because she kept falling asleep in the recovery room and making the monitors go all funny. She had a spinal aenesthesia, so she was awake throughout the procedure. At least she wasn't sick afterwards, which usually happens if they put her right under. (If I was her, I would have said "ouch" sometime during the operation to see if they were listening.) Tee hee hee.

She had a basal cell carcinoma removed from her lower right leg, and a skin graft from higher on the same leg to cover the area where the cancer was. It looks really cool! (I know -- how could I say that?) I remember before the surgery her legs were always so swollen, afterwards her blood pressure has levelled out and her legs look back to normal! She even has ankles!

She came home on Tuesday after 10 days, and she has a walker to help her build up her strength, and home care comes everyday to changes her dressings. I'm so glad this is all over with !! The cancer was really starting to pollute her system, it hadn't spread, but Mom says she feels better now overall. And I know she'll be around a lot longer now ... :-) !

The busy at work part ?? Oh my god! It's been a zoo! Our free underpad carpet promo was over on Oct 22, and it helped us have our biggest week EVER! We had a day where Flooring did just over $40k, and it helped us finish the week at $140k ! (So I am now on the plus side for sales YTD, erasing the negative Numbers we were in. Yay!). Installs for the week finished just shy of $80k. YTD we are over $100k. I think we may make $2 million this year in labor sales. Can you believe it ?!