Today was the start of our first RV trip in far too long. Due to necessity, its a short trip into the restorative woods of the Catskills, but after so much time and all that's happened in that time, it feels miraculous. There were times we thought it might never happen. Many things were the cause of our delay. They were unavoidable things, but now that we're back at it, it's hard to image being away for so long.
It all started last March (2016). We were finishing up a month long trip to New Orleans and then Pensacola Beach. Two days before we were scheduled to head home we got an early morning call that my Mom was sick and in the hospital. We packed up, unhooked, and hitched-up in record time, and made a mad dash for the nearest campground to Staten Island, NY - where I grew up and where my parents still live. A marathon drive and 48 hours later we landed at Liberty State Park Campground in Jersey City, NJ.
Seriously, it's criminal that they are allowed to call that a campground. Hands down its the worst RV Park in the world. It was nothing more than a poorly maintained parking lot with hookups, in a dangerous neighborhood, in the middle of a construction zone, surrounded by high-rises. But it served its purpose being only a 20 minute drive to my parents.
We stayed there two days, visited Mom, assessed the situation, returned the RV to her Upstate storage spot, and then returned to our home in Long Island. And the next 14 months were a non-stop cluster-puck, with one crises after another with seemingly no end in sight.
Due to a series of UTI infections complicated by several C-diff infections, Mom was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes repeatedly between March 2016 and September 2016. All the while, my father's and my mother-in-law's health were also declining. As a result, Bill and I became the full-time managers of their health and the lives of all three, and remain so.
After extensive testing, we learned Mom had a golf-ball sized, badly infected kidney stone. She had surgery to remove it on January 3, 2017. By this time we had aides in place for my parents. The same level of care we'd had in place for my mother-in-law for the past year. And by the the end of January 2017 things seemed to be calming down and were under control enough for us to book our planned March trip to Utah.
And then, in a freak accident, on January 31st, I injured both my ankles. I know, right? You're asking yourself, "Both ankles? "How the hell did she do that? Me too! This is how...
My father had fallen in front of his house. He lay helpless in the street. As I rushed down the front steps of his house to help him, I slipped and fell. I landed very badly. I did not fall forward, as you would expect. Somehow, instead, I came crashing down feet-first, dislocating and breaking both the tibia and fibula in my left my ankle, and chipping the bone in and badly spraining my right ankle.
Fortunately, the 84 year-old popped up unharmed like one of those blow-up punching clowns from my youth. The 54 year-old, not so much. I was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital. I had surgery the next afternoon on my left ankle and spent 4 days in the hospital, and the next five months in rehab.
And I'm still not fully recovered. As we speak, I can't walk without a cane and stairs are challenging, and I wonder if I'll ever be right again. But, I will not let this stop me from living my life to the fullest.
And so I find myself finally, happily, in the bucolic woods of Upstate New York. Not only are we finally back where we belong, in the place that makes us happiest, but I'm writing again. As is apparent by this long past due blog post. They say home is where the heart is. Well, our hearts are transient. They live within the walls of this "vehicle" - as my Mom calls it. And we are delighted to let go and allow it to take us where ever it will...
-Diane
