My Mom will  be home for the Easter holidays.

A little over two weeks ago she had knee replacement surgery, and then temporarily moved into a nursing home for intensive physical therapy. She’s leaving with plenty of new buddies among the nurses, aides, physical therapists and residents. She’ll go home having shown my sisters and me, again, about determination.

My mother’s resiliency and willpower was on display from the moment she woke up after the operation. Knee replacement surgeries are common among the elderly but success rates after a slow and painful recovery vary.

I can’t imagine the pain my mother was feeling initially, but it was intense. It has eased somewhat but her left knee is sort of like a bully,  the aches and pains keep coming back, sometimes more aggressively than the last time. But my mother didn’t retreat. She endured seven hours a day on a  machine that slowly moved her knee up and down. When the physical therapists asked her to walk or left her leg, she did. Some evenings she was so exhausted or in so much pain she didn’t want to talk.

“I’m going to do what it takes to make my knee better,” my Mom told us.

That can-do attitude started flourishing after my father passed away nearly 24 years ago, leaving my mother to learn how to be independent, how to take care of herself. She did that, so we know that she’ll hang in there and have a successful recovery.

Related posts:

1. Hugs and kisses for my mother
2. Dealing with nursing home angst
3. Many elderly need us to volunteer at nursing homes
4. My mom’s world is growing again
5. Applauding my mother’s reservoir of determination