My mom recently took a fall from which she is now recovering in a rehab center where she is, in her usual way, making the best of adversity.
I heard my mother, herself a nurse, in a physical therapy session telling the therapist of her disapproval of the staff asking the patients their level of pain before administering pain meds. "You have to give the patient the meds an hour before the typical onset time of pain," she said, "and not wait until they're already at 7 or 8." One of the administrators turned to me and said to me with a wink, "Oh, these nurses are the worst patients!"
But the staff member was joking.
In fact I was informed what a good patient my mother has been at her physical therapy, compliant, hard-working, pushing herself to do whatever she's asked. She's anxious to walk again.
That's my mom in the photos below.
She could barely stop laughing enough to explain that one day one of the activities for the ladies on board was a hat-decorating contest. Everyone was given a hat and some decorating supplies, but my mom had her own vision. She snuck off to the ladies' lounge and pilfered a couple handfuls of the pearly-pink-and-blue-wrapped sanitary napkins. Actually she left the pads and took only the wrappings which she fashioned into lovely paper roses then glued to her hat.
My mom won the contest.
But, she said, someone swiped the hat. I told her I bet it was the maintenance staff who wanted the wrappings back for the sanitary napkins.
Nothing like a good laugh to keep you young.