Oh, My Aching Bones!

My Mom is NOT a complainer. She handles pain and stiffness pretty well and will always answer the questions of how she is with a "Pretty good!" response. So when I hear her saying "Oh, my bones!" or "Oh, my aching bones!" or "Oh, I'm so stiff!" or "Oh, my muscles!", I know that she has to be in a lot of pain. She has been saying some variation of this every day for the past week.

We did some weeding in the front yard the other day, so I expected her to feel some consequences from doing yard work. But I certainly didn't expect the winces I saw when she got into my vehicle and started to reach for the seatbelt. Her arms cannot move in those backwards, twisty directions any longer! Looks like I will be getting the seatbelt into position for Mom when I help her into my vehicle now. ;-)

Most mornings, Mom wakes up with pain. I've heard tales from former professional athletes about how they take an hour to get out of bed in the morning because they are so stiff and have to warm up their muscles to get them moving. Maybe that's why Mom lays in bed for awhile in the morning! This morning, Mom actually told me that she would start taking a Tylenol before she went to bed in order to help the pain. This is a MAJOR win for us!!!!! However, on the way to her doctor's visit this morning, we had a bit of an "argument" because she did not want to tell her doctor about her stiffness because "she did not want to deal with getting x-rays or anything like that". Did I mention that my Mother is STUBBORN???

In addition to the "argument", we talked a bit about grammar schools (we passed a few on the drive to the doctor's office) and Mom talked about her grammar school days. My Mom grew up on a farm in Iowa. She is one of 15 children. They all walked to school (a couple of miles) and attended a one-room schoolhouse. Remember what school was like on "Little House of the Prairie"? That's the kind of grammar school my Mom attended. One of her favorite memories is of her dipping Alice's (the girl who sat in front of her) pigtails in her inkwell. Apparently, my Mother was a "stinker"! Some things never change.