I hear the term Life Happens a lot.

I've been made aware of that in spades these past few years, starting 3 years ago this week when I was diagnosed with cancer.

Since then several of my friends and a couple relatives have been diagnosed and 5 of 7 have made it through. RIP to Gene and Debra.

I'm sure there are more, it's one of those diseases that people don't talk about a lot unless it directly affects them.

Stay healthy, get checked up, see your doctors sooner rather than later. Of the 5 survivors, the one thing we shared was catching it early. Paid HUGE dividends!

The other telling stat is that 3 of those 5 were non smokers, 1 had quit a long while back, one hadn't.

ALL of the doctors said our chances of kicking the little bitch cancers ass was 30% higher having never smoked. That's a hell of a return on that investment!  Just Sayin!

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Now that the public safety announcement is out of the way time for current events.

Some of you know, but most don't, that Mom fell a couple Wednesdays ago and broke multiple ribs!

Apparently she must have been feeling frisky and decided to leave the wheelchair in the kitchen and saunter across the living room with her walker and nobody to watch her.

That proved to be a very bad choice indeed! 

She managed to break several (count unsure, between 3, 5, and 8) 

She pressed the Alert 1 button and help was on the way. Paras took her to her hospital of choice St. Francis where she was admitted and stayed 4-5 days.  Of course the hospital was itching to get her out so they started pushing to send her to a SNF. (word to the wise when dealing with hospitals, SNF's, insurance companies, etc.) STAY on top of it!  ADVOCATE for your loved ones, get names of people who can make changes, get names of case managers, social workers, etc.

We finally got her admitted to Golden Gate Rehab Center (on Pine at Divisadero) basically 2nd choice of 4 or 5 options in the city that her insurance approved of.

The staff there is great!  Very Caring, seem competent. She's on pureed food right now to lessen any possibility of aspiration induced pneumonia. (A concern with being in bed with busted ribs and compromised breathing)

Yes I know you'll be surprised that she's basically miserable, but today I was pleasantly surprised when I visited and had dinner with her. She was the most lucid she has been in the past couple weeks, and talkative. She had spent much of the day sitting up in the wheelchair (good!) as opposed to laying in bed all day (Bad!) She had better color and had been off the oxygen for a few hours which showed that she was breathing better.


More later.