familial update
So we made it home - around 11pm-12am Wednesday night. B got Dad home on Mon in hone piece despite the 1.25 hr trip from the hotel/hospital area to his house in Katy and back. Tues we got him to his car and were blessed to find both of their glasses in wearable condition(!) as well as his cell phone and a pile of other personal items ... including the tickets to the play they were en route to see.
I decided at the last possible moment to /not/ walk to the car and help look for things with them. Go go gut instinct. Not only was it a bit overwhelmingly emotional for Dad and somewhat for Brian, but given my weirdness with cars anyhow and the fact that they drive/drove the same car we do I think I would have likely lost it - especially since I didn't feel like I had anything productive to do to distract me.
Late Wed we finally got news from an actual medical professional regarding Mom's condition. Her lung drainage tube was removed on Wed morning. It was no longer draining ... we've decided this is because there is nothing left to drain. (we've been told it's also a possibility that her body simply 'sealed' it off and is preventing draining but we've decided that it's the first option because we can do that) Her spleen cauterization is holding well as far as we know, and her broken ribs, fingers, vertebrae, and pelvic bones are all of inoperable and non-load bearing types so will just have to been owie and heal slowly. She can be moved from intensive care once the pulmonary specialist is convinced her breathing exercises and other things are showing consistent and sustained improvement in pulmonary function.
Ala was a champ. I can't imagine how I would have handled 3.5 days of hanging around *waiting* and spending /hours/ in the car everyday with only a DS gaming handheld, one book, and some of Mom's blank index cards and pens to keep me occupied when I was 10. Wed when we knew we had a couple of hrs while the menfolk went to visit Mom (Ala can't go in the care ward she is in - 14+ only), we skipped out just before the parking garage and strolled the just under 1/2 mile to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We grabbed a snack and a drink (since *strolling* in downtown Houston in May around 1pm in jeans and a navy t-shirt is a bit of a damp prospect) to cool off then picked up tickets to the Cockrell Butterfly exhibit. The 3 story atrium was a bit more humid than outside, but the thousands of butterflies everywhere were unbelievable!!! We got to see Zebra Lacewings laying eggs, as well as their caterpillars, on passionvines, Tawny Owl butterflies were *everywhere* and so were Rice Paper butterflies and lacewings galore! Our rarer glimpses included several Blue Morpho butterflies (with the blue stripes on black wings not the solid blue wings), a couple of Mosaic butterflies, and an Orange Tip Sulphur butterfly. We also got the treat of spotting an Atlas moth which was *huge* and is rarely out in the daytime.
All in all it was a nice break in the monotony for Ala and I both. We don't know yet if we may be going back in the next few days/weeks and are calling twice a day to keep up with how both B's Mom and Dad are doing. For now, I'm so totally braindead I can hardly process to get anything done!
One small consolation though - seems keeping B from flipping out under the stress a couple of times, insisting that his dad *would* in fact be accepting /some/ form of assistance and that it in no way was a reflection on his ability to be self-sufficient should that be necessary, and general family-running, craft-making, idea-supplying roles that I filled were more productive than it felt like. Add to that the very clear picture that things between B and his Dad (where the bulk of the residual family tensions lay) are about damned near perfect now and all in all while it was a busy, crazy, sometimes frustrating, often tedious and stressful week - it was more than worth it 100-fold.