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BARNESVILLE - My mother expects this year's Thanksgiving dinner to be the most delicious she's ever eaten, and my family can't wait to watch her enjoy it.

There was no Thanksgiving dinner last year in my parents' Barnesville home. My mother, Nancy, was lying in critical condition in the Cleveland Clinic. In early November 2008, she was eating a simple piece of fruit, and it would be the last bite she would eat for nearly a year.

When she swallowed that strawberry, she felt pain she'd never before experienced.

"It was a stabbing pain in my chest that felt like a heart attack," Mom said. "It went down my arm and up my jaw."

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't swallow. She also was home alone.

Mom managed to run to the garage about 100 feet from the rear of the home. She jumped into her car and drove the short distance - less than a mile - to Barnesville Hospital. The Wells family is thankful for the home's close proximity to that facility.

My father, Richard Wells, arrived home as usual at about 6 p.m. What was unusual was that his wife wasn't there. He learned she was at Barnesville Hospital, and then he was told she wouldn't be there long.

Mom was quickly taken to the Ohio Valley Medical Center, where my father learned she ruptured her esophagus while eating that small piece of fruit. Surgeons there attempted to repair the rupture. I asked the nurse in charge of her care the only question I needed answered:

"Is it more or less likely that she'll survive?"

He answered as best he could.

"I really don't know," she said.

Mom spent the next five days at that Wheeling facility before it was determined she should be moved to the Cleveland Clinic.

The Cleveland Clinic is massive. The critical care unit is a maze of identical, white corridors - white walls, bright white lights. Patients fighting for their lives are in plain sight, and they are only shielded when a nurse or doctor pulls a curtain to perform a procedure.

I thought I was prepared for my first visit with my mother in Cleveland. I'd seen her in Wheeling, and I knew the seriousness of her condition. This visit was different.

I approached Mom's bed and looked down. Her face was grotesquely contorted. Her head was turned to the right, but her bottom jaw was moved to the left. There were tubes everywhere. She looked like a corpse. She was only 59.

I held mom's swollen hand. Two teens, who looked like a brother and sister, walked slowly through the ICU entrance. Both of them looked like they were going to see something they didn't want to see. At the same time, it seemed they realized it may be their last chance to visit someone they love.

What felt like only 30 seconds passed before both of those youngsters raced back out of the unit. Both of them had tears streaming down their faces. That's when I was overcome. I looked at my mother, and I felt panic. Desperation. I had trouble breathing and standing.

Now, the tears were mine. I couldn't stop them. A very young nurse, possibly an intern, noticed me. She momentarily left, but she returned with a box of tissues and a glass of ice water. She tried to offer words of comfort.

"It's OK," she said. "Patients often look like that."

My mother spent weeks in the Cleveland Clinic. I really can't remember how many. It came out to about three months, I believe. The surgeons there determined my mother's esophagus could not be repaired. They removed it.

My father was there at the hospital through her entire stay. I think he averaged about 18 hours a day. He stayed in a Cleveland hotel until the last two or three days she was there. He then started sleeping in the waiting room chairs. Hotels get expensive.

He didn't tell Mom where he spent those last few nights. She would've felt guilty.

My brother Rich and I spent days with her, but we had to go back to work. We called to check on Mom every night. We took care of any errand Dad asked.

We were excited when Mom finally came home on Dec. 17, but it wasn't close to normal life. Her own couch basically became a hospital bed. She was a patient. My father was her nurse. They were perfectly regimented in the medications he placed in her IV. She also received her nutrition through a tube. You can't eat without an esophagus.

Mom hated that milky substance that replaced the food she no longer could eat. It caused terrible nausea, especially in the mornings when she was most miserable.

Dad finally had to return to work. Mom was lonely during the day, and she battled depression. She lived that life for six months, and her biggest challenge was still to come.

When Dad told me of the procedure Mom was to endure to resume a normal life, I laughed. He said the doctor planned to pull her stomach up to the base of her throat and attach it to "the stump." Her stomach would not be in her belly. It would be in her chest.

I thought it was the most radical procedure I'd ever heard described. When I told people of the surgery she was to undergo on Aug. 13, I suspected they didn't believe me.

Mom's excitement gave way to tension in the final days leading up to the surgery. She was in a bad mood. She didn't want to go back to Cleveland, but she had to. It was the only way to make her whole again. She didn't speak of it, but I knew she was scared to die.

Calls to my father on the day of the procedure were warmly welcomed. He said the surgery went wonderfully. For a day-and-a-half I couldn't have been happier. Initially, there was talk that Mom may be released sooner than we expected.

Things changed that night when Dad called.

Bile was noticed in one of the tubes coming from my mother. Doctors suspected there was a leak in the connection of her stomach to the base of her throat - "the stump." Infection was a serious concern, but it wasn't the only worry.

My mother's lungs were failing. She couldn't breathe on her own. There were now two conditions that could take her life.

Days passed, and she didn't improve. Doctors couldn't find the source from which the bile was leaking.

I updated friends and family of my mother's condition on Facebook. I appreciated the thoughts they returned. I still worried the worst was yet to come. At one point, I e-mailed an aunt and wrote that we should start getting prepared for the worst possible news.

But my faith was soon restored. Doctors found the leak in her throat and repaired it. It took weeks, but she was able to breathe on her own. After another month or more in the Cleveland Clinic, Mom returned home.

It took two more checkups before doctors were comfortable in allowing her to eat and drink. The first taste to touch her tongue in nearly a year was apple juice. She quickly moved on to Popsicles and pudding. She now is basically allowed to have most anything she wants, but she has to remember to eat slowly.

Our family and friends stop by and bring food. Many of them have the same request. They want to watch my mother eat. People actually ask her to eat and then just sit and watch her do it.

Dad expects to have a much nicer Thanksgiving in 2009 than he did in 2008. He ate last year's holiday dinner alone in the cafeteria of the Cleveland Clinic.

I'm so proud of him. The strength he displayed and the love and care he showed for my mother is something for which I'm truly thankful.

I'm thankful for mother. There were times I thought she would die. I love her.

This year, Thanksgiving means much more than turkey and pumpkin pie. We're thankful that Mom is back for a second helping.