Just Thinking about Teeth

Today is another day that begins after another restless night. At midnight, I was roused out of a deep sleep by a phone call from my mother, who is in the hospital. Since she couldn't get the nurse to do what she wanted, she called me and wanted me to call her doctor.

I only had his office number. All it would tell me is that if this was an emergency, call 911 and then, most likely, they would take her to the hospital, which is exactly where she was.
So, although I couldn't do anything about it, I lay there contemplating all of the things I could do, might do, for hours. In the morning, I called her to see how things were going.
She had received some relief she said, but not much.

"Is anyone coming today? I need my teeth. You can just stop over at my place and bring them here with a bag of things."

This is a question that tightens my stomach. It's a question that's asked almost every other month, for the past year and a half, which is how often she's been hospitalized during that time period.

As a humorist and mostly motivational speaker, I have abandoned this blog, along with other career projects because of such phones calls and questions and other interruptions related to the care of my mother, too numerous to count.

Today, I read about a women who blogs daily about her spouse's illness and I wonder if I had blogged about my struggles over the past year, would that have been helpful to others? Would it have been helpful to me? Just thinking. . . as I contemplate whether to cancel my meeting to bring my mother her teeth.