Mom: Birthday And Medical

Today, my mom turned 89. Also, her follow-up visit happened to be today, just because it’s not easy to find evening appointments so that I won’t need to skip half of my workday. Since her doctor moved to a different office, the whole thing takes more than three hours, including my getting to Mom and getting back from her to my house.

I sent her a birthday email in the morning, saying what I knew would make her happy. I was not lying in this email. She, indeed, does an amazing job living on her own, with all the relativity of this “on her own” and “living independently.” Still, sometimes I forget how old she is – to be honest, we didn’t think she would live that long when she first came to the US.

When we visited the doctor today, she said she hopes to be in such great shape as my mom when she is eighty-nine ). She also asked my mom to tell her what she occupied herself with every day, and my mom gave her a complete list of her activities; she even spoke a little bit of English with the doctor. Speaking of which, they now have a new technology where they can call a translator from the doctor’s office, and not on the phone as it used to be but on a screen mounted on a rolling cart. It looks really cool: a doctor can take it from one room to another and have translators from twenty different languages available instantaneously. Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), my mom couldn’t hear what a translator was saying, so we had to call it off, and I carried out the translator’s duty.

So, the doctor believes my mom is doing great for her age, so I guess I need to accept the fact that what’s going on now is “great for her age.” I am not being sarcastic. I think that I should start to accept the process of my mom’s aging as a reality that nobody can avoid and not be frustrated with any particular incidents. We’ll see how long I will last with this resolution 🙂