Near Calamity

At 4 am, I was roused by an urgent voice. "Laurie!  Laurie!"  It was our friend, Claudette. The next words out of her mouth were, "Has anyone called you about your mom?" Not really the question you want to hear in the middle of the night.

Mom has Life Alert.  Around 3:00 they picked up on the fact that her electricity had gone out.  Without power, her oxygen concentrator doesn't work. I have 3 emergency contacts on file with the company: me, Claudette and my brother in New Mexico. They tried to call me first but my power was out, too. That made my landline inoperative. I keep my cell next to my bed plugged in during the night.  Unfortunately, I picked that night to fall asleep listening to a podcast, so without power, the battery drained.

Claudette got the call at 3:00 but for some inexplicable reason waited an hour before getting to me.  As I was getting dressed in the dark, I called 911. Without power nothing works.  I tried opening my garage door manually but didn't have the strength with one arm to yank the cord. I was frantic, so she drove.

The fire dept. had arrived before us and had her hooked up to her portable oxygen tank.  Poor mom had no idea what was going on. Claudette still had power so we all went to her place. Mom went to bed there, still confused.  We learned that 3500 homes were affected due to "equipment malfunction/vehicle."  

I was a wreck. When Claudette asked me if I had been called, the first thing I said screamed was, "God damn it, today's her birthday.  Today's her freaking birthday!" If I was going to lose her, I didn't want it to be on her damn birthday.

In the end, she was fine. I'm posting this late Monday night. This misadventure took place during the wee hours of Sunday morning.  I'm exhausted.  My ankle hurts and both my knee and shoulder are killing me.  I could sleep for a week.  If only that was possible.

This is only the second time in 7 years I haven't posted a picture of her on October 8th.  You can look back through the one year ago feature.