Columnist feels a little guilty

I have been feeling like a very bad daughter this week. Monday morning I received a call from my mother saying she had fallen on Saturday evening. She had been sitting in her wheelchair cleaning out her lower kitchen cabinets. She leaned over too far, lost her balance and tumbled out of her chair.
She had tried to get up but couldn’t. She looked out her back door to see if any of the neighbors were out. Nobody was in sight. Thankfully, she pushed the button on her necklace to call the emergency squad. They had to come in the back door to help her get back into her chair. They offered to take her to the emergency room to get checked out but she told them no, that she was OK.
My brother, David, got there after the emergency people left. They had called him to go to her house and check on her.
I didn’t know any of this until she called me on Monday. She told me she was fine, just sore. I told her she was going to be sore for a while and to let me know if she needed anything. She said she was better by herself.
Imagine my surprise a couple of hours later when her doctor called and wanted me to take her to Urgent Care. I asked why. They said it was because she had called complaining that she was sore. I told them that of course she was sore - she fell! They didn’t give me any good reason, other than they didn’t have any openings that week, as to why she needed to go to Urgent Care. So I refused, convinced that it would be a waste of time and money.
Then they called David and he said he would take her after he got off of work. I called him and he told me that after he got there on Saturday, she was walking with her walker as well as usual. That told me that nothing was broken.
I called her back and talked to her for a little while. She told me she was sore and repeated that she was better off staying by herself.
I called my daughter, the nurse, and she told me not to bother with Urgent Care, to take her to the movies and out to eat instead. She said all Urgent Care would do was take a lot of useless X-rays and prescribe painkillers. Knowing that Mom wouldn’t take the painkillers, I opted to stay home.
The next day I called Mom and she said David never did come over. We talked for a bit and I talked her into taking some Tylenol. She said she didn’t realize it was OK to take Tylenol when she had bruises.
I called again the following day and she told me she was much better, that the Tylenol helped. Again, she told me she was better off alone. I am sure that is code for, “Don’t put me in a nursing home.” She also told me not to call anymore because it would run up my phone bill. That told me that she really was feeling better.
She called me Saturday, at the same time she has called for decades. This time she sounded almost back to normal. I am baking stuff this afternoon and am planning a trip to see her tomorrow.
I have felt guilty all week about not going down on Monday to take her to the doctor. I had stuff scheduled almost every day and didn’t want to cancel. I was afraid that if I did go down she would think it was even more serious than it was. I reasoned that if it had been serious, I would have been called when she fell, not a couple of days later. I knew that her home health aide would be there Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I knew that my other brother, Michael, would be over sometime to cut the grass. I knew that either David or Michael or perhaps both, would stop by at least once during the week.
Yet, I feel like a very bad daughter for not leaving as soon as I found out she had fallen. I am going down to see her tomorrow to make amends and to attempt to assuage my guilt.[[In-content Ad]]