We think you're all amazing

It was a week ago today that my mom called me at 5:07 am in severe pain. Don and I shot out of bed and rushed down to her and took her to emergency. After the tests were run it turned out to be her gallbladder that was giving her tremendous grief. Later that night she parted ways with it.

We stayed in the triage part of the emergency room for close to ten hours, and in that time, I witnessed the staff working their butts off to keep up. At one point I stepped out to take a phone call and there was a line of stretchers and ambulance attendants waiting to admit their patients, and that was just on the back end of things there was also a steady flow of walk-ins as well. It was crazy. If you were paying attention you could witness everybody doing their best to be patient with each other. It's not difficult for me or mom to consider circumstances we can't always see that might effect us directly so that gave us more mental space and patience to handle our personal situation.

It took mom close to two hours to see the doctor, which toward the end of that time I could feel my emotions starting to stir, but I did my best to stay mindful that the staff were doing the best they could. Turns out that there was only one doctor on at that time which explained the wait. Sure I could complain about them not having more doctors on, but that wasn't the reality at the time. The reality was that there was one and he was doing the best he could, period. Once we knew this we were able to adjust attitudes and find our own way to manage the time and pain. I sat behind mom on her bed and rubbed her back for an hour to help ease her pain. I felt incredibly grateful to be able to love her and support her like that and we wouldn't have had that experience if we didn't have to wait for the doctor. There are blessing in every situation but only if you're looking for them.

Mom received wonderful care and attention while she was there and we were all impressed with how quickly she was able to get her surgery. It did my heart good to have mom return from surgery chit chatting away about the awesome state of the art operating room. “It was so clean and everyone was so nice” she said! Once she was back in her bed and settled she reached for her lip gloss and I knew right away all was well in our world. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree! She was blessed with another great team of nurses who were very attentive and kind and took great care of her for the next few days. We brought her home with us on Thursday and she's feeling better than ever. She feels very blessed for the entire experience as do I.

Despite our perception of what we 'think' we see on the surface, we never fully know the extent of any situation. Through my eyes, if you can find space to step out of your own story for just a minute and consider others your chances of feeling like a victim of circumstance goes way down. Believe it or not people are always doing the best they can with what they have, be it at work or in their personal life.

A big thank you to the many nurses and doctors who were a part of mom's experience, we think you're all amazing!

Kelly Sweet