Things do change.

We live 15 hours by car from my in-laws, or it's 6 hours to fly/drive. In the 33 years since my husband left home, he has always been with his mother on Mother's Day. It's the one thing he made quite clear when we got married. And that's always been fine with me.

He told me today that his knees and hips hurt too much to even try and fly down and there's no way that he's driving. Now, before some of you jump the gun and decide to write and tell me this has nothing to do with his diabetes, let me explain that for him, it does. His kidney function is down to 30%. That means that his kidneys cannot remove uric acid from his blood. So it deposits the uric acid crystal in his joints. His joints swell and become red and inflammed. And they hurt him so bad that he cannot walk. Sometimes it presents itself as gouty lumps and he has surgery to have them removed when they exceed the size of a grapefruit. Usually those appear on his elbow.

He has started taking drugs for this and he's been about 50/50 recently on his low purine diet. I'd say that he has a hamburger, hotdog or steak once a week....but that is down from 5-6 times a week in the past.

So things do change. Sadly. His parents are in their late 70s and I know that his mom looks forward to having him with her on Mother's day. But if he can't make a 6 hour trip right now...that tells me that his pain level is much worse that he is letting on.

It just makes you wonder where he will be a year from now?