"They're tryna make me go to rehab
I say no no no"
Amy Winehouse (may she rest in peace)
*****
The Quadrangle is a somewhat fancy senior living community with a rehab facility and a memory care unit in the middle of Haverford, PA, a somewhat fancy neighborhood in the middle of the fancy Philadelphia Main Line suburbs. Haverford College is right up the street. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and I'm here with my mom in the room in the rehab facility, where she was admitted yesterday. She's less than happy about this whole situation but there's not much we can do about that. She needs professional care, at least for a few weeks.
My mom has a ton of health issues but the big problems now are a very painful hip injury and lymphedema that keeps worsening because she doesn't move enough because of the pain. She had symptoms of an infection on Sunday so my brother took her to the hospital, and they kept her overnight. We brought her here yesterday. Rather, an ambulance brought her here, and my sister and I followed in my car. And now she's here, and hopefully on the road to recovering her strength and mobility.
She was at my house a few weeks ago, and I could see that she wasn't well. Mobility has been a problem for her for a long time but she had a much harder time than usual getting up and around, getting in and out of the car, walking between the car and wherever we went, which wasn't very far. I took her for a haircut, as I always do, and she almost had to skip the wash, because she couldn't get comfortably settled in the chair. But she finally got her hair washed and cut and then we met my husband for dinner. Had he not been there, I would not have been able to get her back in the car to go home. So it was a situation
*****
There are a lot of things I don't miss about Philadelphia but there are some things that I do miss, especially food. The DMV has its own special food culture, of course, and it's pretty great, but different. And of all the things I miss, I miss Wawa, the greatest convenience store on Earth.
Yes it is. No I don't want to hear about Bucee’s or Sheetz or some weird Midwestern gas station that offers strangely good pizza. I said what I said.
Wawa hazelnut coffee tastes like my young adulthood in Philadelphia. I'm drinking some right now in my mom's room at the rehab. She seems a bit more reconciled to her situation, but she hates the coffee here and wanted a Wawa coffee. I'd have been happy to oblige in any case, but it was also a great opportunity to get my own Wawa coffee.
You pour your own coffee at Wawa, and then you add milk and sugar or whatever you want, and then you pay at the register. The coffee station is always busy but it's large enough that there's plenty of room for everyone. And I do mean everyone. The Wawa coffee station at 845 in the morning is a town square. At least five other people were making their coffee as I made cups for my mom and me. REM’s “Man on the Moon" was playing on the radio, and I sang along. I do happen to believe that they put a man on the moon.
*****
I drove back home on Wednesday, late afternoon, so that I could get home before dark. My night driving is not good. And my daytime driving isn’t much to brag about either but I have to say that I had no trouble on this trip - no unwarranted panic, no major wrong turns, no car trouble, no fear, really. I drove to Philadelphia on Monday, and then drove all over the Main Line and Chester County on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then drove back home, and didn’t have a single bad moment other than some sun glare on Tuesday night. I felt free and at ease, much as I used to when driving. I quite enjoyed myself.
Traffic in the Philadelphia suburbs can be heavy at times, but the volume and the driver aggression don’t compare to the Thunderdome that is driving in the DMV. Pennsylvania’s roads, on the other hand, are just silly. If you have ever driven in the Main Line suburbs of Montgomery and Chester and Delaware County, you will know what I mean. The term “rolling countryside” was invented to describe this topography, and the narrow two-lane roads bob up and down and back and forth, twisting and winding over blind hills and through little one lane bridges over creeks and railroad crossings. And it all came back to me - how to navigate those winding roads, and how to crest those little hills and bridges without being able to see what’s coming from the other side and most of all how to drive up and down Green Lane in Philadelphia. IYKYK. It wasn’t just OK. It was fun.
Of course, the perfect weather was a big help. Green Lane would not have been fun in the rain, I tell you what. Wednesday was technically the last day of winter, and it was glorious - warm enough to wear a skirt without stockings, warm enough to leave my jacket in the car, warm enough that I remembered what it’s like not to be cold for five minutes. When I left my house on Monday afternoon, our forsythia had just started to bloom the tiniest bit. Now they’re in almost full bloom. Our cherry trees are budding now. In a few days, they’ll be bursting with pink blooms, and we’ll have a few days of forsythia/cherry blossom overlap.
*****
OK, that is enough of the weather and traffic. Back to my mama. On Tuesday, we saw the chief occupational therapist, who did an evaluation and explained how the OT and PT would work. She asked my mom what she hoped to accomplish, and my mom snapped right back “To get out of here.” The OT did not take the bait. “Yes,” she said, “of course. We know you don’t want to live here forever. But what do you want to DO when you get home? How do you want to FEEL?”
That gave her pause, just for the briefest moment. From her brief hospital stay last weekend through her arrival and intake at the rehab facility through the first day of adjusting to the routine and schedule, she was completely resistant to everything. She didn’t need to be in the hospital (she did), she didn’t need rehab or PT or OT or any of it (she does) and she was perfectly fine on her own at home (no she absolutely is not). But when the OT director looked at my mother, completely serious and earnest, and asked that simple question - I could see her attitude changing, just a tiny bit. Seeing an opportunity, I chimed in, reminding her about our trip to Ireland, and our beach vacations, and the shopping and lunch excursions that she loves so much. “If you do the therapy,” I said, “and I mean REALLY work at it, then you can do all of those things again.”
She didn’t say anything. But when the OT came to collect her on Wednesday, she went without complaint, and when I asked her how it was, she said “not too bad.” The activities director invited her to come hear a DJ who spins oldies on Wednesday afternoons, and she went. And the PT came to get her as soon as she returned from the DJ’s performance, and she didn’t even try to talk her way out of it.
My mom actually did agree to do physical therapy last year. It was not successful. This was partly because she resisted it at every turn, and didn’t do any of the follow-up exercises. And it was partly because she cancelled more appointments than she actually kept. I’d call her to ask her how her PT went. And she’d say “Oh, I missed the appointment, and now I’m playing phone tag with the guy.”
Translation: “I cancelled the appointment. The guy is calling me to reschedule and I’m dead-ass ghosting him.” I had to explain to my mother, more than once, that “phone tag” describes a situation in which BOTH parties are attempting to reach one another. Hence the word “tag.” If only one person is calling, and the other person is avoiding the call, then there’s no game. No tag can occur.
*****
Anyway, it’s been almost a week now, and although she is not likely to admit it, I think she’s enjoying herself just a tiny bit. And she will get daily therapy whether she likes it or not because they come to her, and there’s no place to hide. She’ll be in the care facility for two to three more weeks and will then have home therapy and a visiting nurse. She’ll spend weeks at my house and weeks at my sister’s house to give her a change of scenery and to give my youngest sister, who lives with her at home, a break from taking care of her.
I’ll be there again next week. Stay tuned for updates, including full reports on traffic and weather conditions on the Main Line.