My 4th Mistake - Sending You to the Nursing Home?

Mom, you were at Methodist Hospital six days, if I remember correctly. They wanted to release you after just 3 days, but they are a good hospital, and they wanted to make sure that certain things were okay. It bothered me that you still had your cathater, but as a family we were grateful that your insurance would cover 20 days at a rehab center. This included speech therapy and physical therapy. While you were at Methodist Hospital, your speech was getting better every day, but you still were not able to say complete sentences. You could start sentences, but you could never finish sentences with the true meat and bones. The first day after your stroke, you were able to say, "Why" or Where". The second day after your stroke, you were able to say, "Why do you," and the third day you were even able to add on another word, but still it was never enough to know what your questions were.
  I will never forget the day that the non-emergency ambulance brought you to the nursing home. I got off work early. (During that first week you were at Methodist, I continued working, but I now remember fondly how I was able to get 20 miles down the tollway and freeway in just about 25 minutes to see you in the afternoons). It was about 4:45 in the afternoon when they brought you to the nursing home on a gurnie. I remember how high the gurnie was, and I remember seeing you lying flat -- a position for which always meant excruciating pain for you -- and I remember how tightly they had you strapped. You were bawling your eyes out, and I started to cry too. I immediately told the paramedics that the straps were too tight, and I told them that you needed your head elevated a little bit. This they did. During the ten minutes of waiting there by the front desk for someone to direct us to what would be your room for the next three weeks, I remember feeling awful trying to guess what you were thinking. Is this the place you would spend the rest of your life? Is this a permanent nursing home? Will your family abandon you here, like other families have seemed to have abandoned all the other old people that we saw sitting in the lobby in their wheel chairs.
  Eventually I told the paramedics that I knew which room was slated for you, so I led them to the room. I even knew which bed was for you because someone had given me a tour of the place an hour before you got there. It was painful, as usual, getting you off the gurnie onto the bed, but soon it was done, and soon the paramedics were out of there, and I started to cry like a baby. And I will never forget this: you started comforting me! You put your arm around my head, and you started to say, "It's okay, it's okay." I told you that this was short term. I emphasized that this place would provide therapy for her. I told you that the sooner you were home, the better for all of us.
  I will never really know if this was a mistake. You did get better for the next ten days. Then you reached what doctors called your plateau.