Rush Medical Center Room 518 ICU.
After mom's emergency kidney removal and hernia repair, I check in on her. She seems well. I fill up on her smile. She's itchy today, and I am able to provide some relief with gross lotion and lots of scratching and massaging. With eyes closed, she utters all those involuntary noises she makes when she's appreciating the hell outta you...just a little softer than usual. About four or five times, her eyes POP WIDE OPEN, searching, and the second she sees me she smiles so sweetly, with relief and happiness to see me still there. I get to witness her grace, yet again. It always takes me by surprise, although, by now, it shouldn't.
Once, waking up for a minute, she proclaims, "I miss my grandson. Have you talked to him lately?" Her heart is always wrapped around her family - even in a morphine-induced-after-surgery stupor.
1/24
Rush Medical Center Room 982S
Went to see mom again with Jen and Katina. She is pretty good, except she thinks the nurses, the doctors, Rog, Jen and I are conspiring against her in some evil plot. She is still itchy. We are guessing it's from all the morphine, so they took her off. She trusts Katina, who manages to make her laugh some.
1/26
Rush Medical Center Room 928S
This is the toughest visit ever. Mom is sometimes mean to me. She mocks me and ignores my questions. When I tell a nurse this behavior is in no way normal for mom, mom cuts in and snidely complains, "she means I'm a big ditz, a dingbat, a dodo, dingy, ditzy!" My heart breaks. My mother's never been any of those things, and I hate that she thinks I would believe she was for a minute.
A half hour later, she's singing about her crazy foot and makes up words for body parts she no longer has. She keeps messing with her tubes - the dialysis tubes, the neck lines, the catheter. She bounces her foot on her drainage blood-ball that sits on the floor beside her bed. She sits up and talks to a doctor who tells her clearly that she has to stay at least one more night. She agrees, pleasantly. Then, less than 15 minutes later, she asks me to find her shoes. When I tell her I'll tell dad to bring them in the morning, she snips, "what do you mean, 'in the morning?' I'm going home tonight!"
After only a few more minutes, she forgets she's annoyed and is awesome-funny-smart, teasing the nurse about calling the doctors by their specializations instead of their names. Then she goes all Shakespearesque on the phone with Colleen talking about how there has been something dark and clandestine about this experience. She probably said "wearying experience wherein such horrors hath clamoured upon me thus." I am amazed and a bit envious of her Shakespearese, but I also have to fight back tears three times...I lose the fight once. She doesn't catch me, though. When you are amused, so so sad, and terrified all at once, the amused part turns into something eerie and stressful. I want my mom back.
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I have many friends who are dealing with the natural deterioration of their parent's, grandparent's, loved one's, (and even of their own) physical bodies... It's such a private kind of absurd nightmare when you are facing it up close. To try to talk about it in any real way is like trying to describe a terrifying dream. I have such respect and awe for those who sit nearby for hours and hours...for as long as it takes. Those who nurse and watch, who cry quietly and secretly, who ask for more pillows, another blanket, a fresh pitcher of ice water, and demand better care without insulting the staff. Those who provide updates, communicate, and organize schedules for visiting, medicating, feeding, bathing, care-taking. Those who scratch the itches, massage the muscles, rub in the lotions, clean the wounds, and deal with the excrement with an open heart, and all while upholding the dignity of the human spirit. Those are the gifts that matter. Those are the only gifts that matter.
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