After dinner yesterday evening we popped over to see Ted. It was a nice surprise for him because he wasn't expecting to see Mom until today. (Not knowing what time we'd get back from the shore, and not wanting him to be disappointed if she didn't show, Mom had told him she wouldn't see him until today.)

Ted was vastly improved since our last visit, smiling and joking like he always used to, and his color was much, much better (although after eating dinner with a man who was extremely jaundiced, possibly anyone's color would have looked better!)

This morning we dealt with another crisis of sorts. Mom asked me to look at a 'scab' on her arm that she noticed when she woke up; however it was not a scab at all, but a tick. After trying to remove it with tweezers at least a dozen times (the body was easily tuggable but the head was firmly imbedded, and I did not want to break it off) I tried the 'hot match-head on the body' trick, but that did not motivate the tick to back out. So Mom headed over to the medical clinic for some
professional removal (and possibly some meds to ward off Lyme disease?) On the plus side, it was not engorged, so it didn't look like it'd been on her long.

While she was gone taking care of that I took my shower and then packed. Packing to go home is not much of a chore since everything goes, and I was rather pleased that everything fit so easily. Of course that was before I realized that everything I'd hung in the closet was still hanging in the closet. LOL Happily even after adding those shirts/dresses I still did not have trouble closing the suitcase, although it's definitely got some heft to it; will just have to hope that I'm not over the 50-pound weight limit. It did become a tad lighter when I realized that in my zeal I had packed all of my shoes and had left none out to wear home on the plane...

***

It's now 9:30 and Mom is back from the clinic (yet another nice thing about Roderwood) where the tick was dug out after the administration of novocaine. Apparently I did all the right things :) which is always nice to hear.

Although her risk of getting Lyme disease is thought to be low since the tick was not engorged (although it seems to me that once it's bitten her the opportunity for passing on disease is there...) she was given a dose of Doxycycline Hyclate as a preventative measure.