Despite not having family around, Christmas was pretty good this year, perhaps because we stayed busy seeing new things. We were thankful to be able to get internet long enough to contact our closest family: kids, grandkids and parents. However, a few days after I called my Mom, I heard from my sister that she had fallen in the nursing home and broken her hip.

Back in KL I tried to get through to Mom at her hospital, but to no avail. Her ward didn’t allow patient phones, and the reports from the nurses were brief in the extreme. I was able to gather that Mom would not leave her room and was refusing physio. Because she would not move, her body closed down and they stopped feeding her by mouth.

Today we were to find out if they would take her back in the nursing home. My sister and I feared the worst. Her home is not equipped for the level of care that Mom’s condition would require. We didn’t know what the ‘Plan B’ would be, but we were sure that we would have to consider it.

We needn’t have worried. Lorna from the home came around this morning and welcomed her back to the home this afternoon. Mom had put on quite a show. Apparently when the physio team left the room, other staff reported that Mom had been up, moving around quite nimbly, practicising, as it were, for her ‘performance’ to Lorna. Like the old trooper that she is, she knew she could come through with the goods when she needed to; so why waste her ammo on the rehearsals.

Mom has always been like that. She was singer/entertainer in the war, that is, when she wasn’t manning the radar, and has been fighting some version of the Nazis ever since. It is never a nice feeling to realize that you have been duped once again by a consummate player, but you can’t help admiring the spunky old thing, and I do wish her a full and complete recovery back in the safety of her snug little apartment.