kind of a miracle

Recently I had a pretty serious injury that involved hospitalization and permanent metal plates and more pills than I think I've taken for my entire previous life. It's against my religion, to say the least, to depend on anyone else. But I am literally incapable of doing quite a few things that I have always took for granted. Temporarily - I will heal eventually.

My mother has stepped up. I keep expecting her to leave me high and dry, and she's threatened it, but so far she's been there. Thank goodness I don't have to live with her. That would probably kill us both. But she drives me everywhere because I'm too medicated to, even if physically I could drive.

She's actually getting better as the days go by. She's been remarkably patient. She's nearly kind. I keep wondering, where has this person been all my life?

I've been trying to figure out how this change came about. Here's my theory:
1) I'm nearly incapacitated and pitiful, so I have a rock solid reason for needing help.
2) I still try to do as much as I can without burdening people. (Getting dressed takes forever and is excruciating - seriously, it's the worst - but as long as I can I'm going to do it by myself.)
3) I think my mother feels better - she's leaving the house every day, getting exercise, feeling like she's useful, having tasks to complete every day. She has a purpose.
4) To be frank, I'm probably a little more chilled out than normal due to the drugs and focusing on my injury vs what anyone else is doing.

Somehow that combination seems to be making an impact on her. Or maybe she's expecting to get a cut of the settlement I'll be sure to be receiving, which, damn straight she will be; she'll have earned it by being my chauffeur for however long this is going to last.

It's not been perfect. She'll both want directions and snap at me for telling her what to do... She helps in non-helpful ways when I ask her directly to do something. For instance I asked her to open a pill bottle for me, which she did, and then immediately flipped the cap over to the non-childproof side and screwed it back on. She didn't get that I can't grasp the bottle, so I needed the pills poured into a zip bag, which I can manipulate open and closed. That annoyed her to no end.

I don't expect this to last. But the timing couldn't have been more perfect. It's both so strange and so normal not to be constantly criticized by her. I'm glad I noticed it while it's been happening so I'll be able to look back at it when things go back to the way it's always been again.

Hello sumowira: Thanks for sharing this. I'm sorry you sustained what sounds to have been a nearly devastating injury. I wish you the best with regard to your efforts to heal. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to bring out the humanity in us. And, unfortunately, it doesn't always last. But hopefully at least some of the improvement you have seen, in your relationship with your mother, will endure.