My Recent Life in a QoTD

One of the best personal examples of the quote is John Lennon himself, who once said:

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans"

My mom is 90, and still living on her own, about a 2 1/2 hour drive south of me - my dad passed away over 30 years ago.   Tuesday morning, I woke to a text message received the night before from my older brother, who lives about 20 miles from her.  She's in the hospital, again.  Sounded fairly serious when it happened.  She fell, but this time managed to snap her left femur, near the distal end, and broke one of her cervical vertebrae - though thankfully not seriously. 

She had surgery to reduce and repair the femur on Wednesday, inserting a rod in the bone and (I think) gluing everything back. Then, because of age and general condition, they installed an inferior vena cava filter to reduce chances of a problem from a clot.  I call this the NAPA/Fram surgery because the concept is instantly recognizable to anybody who has replaced a fuel filter.  Two surgeries in two days.  IVC Filters are used instead of anticoagulants because of the chances of her injuring herself and bleeding out.  The broken vertebrae seems to be either a lateral process, or the one that extends back, the spinous process.  They're treating it with a neck brace to keep her from moving the chip.

They said when she got back into ICU from the femoral repair, she was demanding to go home.  That's not going to happen, yet, but she will be going into an extended rehab place for a while. IMO, she's not "out of the woods", but she can see the light.

She was tired, but looked good to all of us yesterday.  My brother was saying that although the far end of the femur was off, dislocated sideways, and her thigh had cramped up, she was not in pain.  Doctors thought maybe she had ripped a nerve apart, but tested her by squeezing toes and asking her which toe it was.  Being able to feel her toes properly seems to indicate no major nerve damage.

There are plenty of projects I have in the stack and plenty of things that need to be done around here.  We have squirrels that are stealing every last zucchini that starts to grow.  We have to do hand to hand combat with the tomato worms.  I have a project to get my shop reorganized.  But life is happening.  I don't expect to suddenly not be here for days on end, but I wasn't expecting what's happened, either.

John's later life (after the Beatles) and death are a somber embodiment of that quote.  He had just released a new album (Double Fantasy) that marked his return to actively recording after a five year absence, headlined by a song appropriately called "Starting Over".  

Say what you will about his politics, the cops saw John Lennon as a good man at heart. At a time when the city was too cheap to buy body armor for its police, the union had started a “vest fund,” and John Lennon had made a five-figure contribution. The cops knew it and appreciated it. In the days and weeks that followed, until it was certain that the killer had acted alone, Yoko Ono and Sean had free bodyguard service from a rotating crew of volunteer off-duty police.  - Mas Ayoob