So Mom update, I will make this short.
After going from a 5% chance of living for another 12 hours, she is now awake. She is understandably exhausted from her ordeal, but here and with us. She still has a massive infection that the doctors can't seem to find and she is on oxygen because she can't keep her O2 levels up on her own. She has started physical therapy, but has a long way to go to recovery.
There is a lot more to this story, and I will share it with some of you. Or with all of you when I am less prone to bursting into tears.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
To be or not to be in a Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea
This is supposed to be a blog about life. At some points that inevitably means that it will be about death. At this moment it is going to be about my mom's potential expiration date.
I have read enough white, suburban, privileged womans' lit to know that watching one of your loved ones die is supposed to be a profound, tragic, heart-rending and life changing event. So far, the only thing profound about it, is how profoundly fucking boring it is. Don't take this to mean that I don't love my mom. I do. However, sitting in a hospital room watching as she does nothing, and slips in and out of not-actual-consciousness is really, really, really dull.
There has only been one moment of "excitement" since I've been here. I use the word excitement, loosely. It wasn't exciting. It was terrible and oddly cathartic. Yesterday morning at 330 in the morning (because you know these things never happen at a reasonable hour like noon, when you've had your coffee and breakfast and are ready to face the day. Nope they only happen when you are bleary-eyed and fuzzy from sleep deprivation and at times of day that only really dedicated fisherman and colic-y infants will admit actually exists.) we got called into the hospital. My mom's kidneys has stopped working and her heart was ready to give out on her. This was it, this was the end. We were asked if we wanted to do any "heroic" potential life-saving techniques for her. Our answer was eventually no. I know that if I ever reached the condition she was in yesterday morning I wouldn't want to be saved. Load me up with morphine and let me go. However, it seems that we were to slow to make our choice, because by the time we had our answer, they already had her intubated and on a ventilator. To be fair to her doctor's and nurses, this was in no way actually supposed to save her life, but rather give me and the rest of my family enough time to say good-bye. Even with a machine to breathe for her, the doctors gave her a 5% chance and predicted that her heart would stop by mid-afternoon.
And so I said good-bye and made my peace. That conversation will remain between me and the universe, so don't ask.
Around 6 am, the priest came in to give my mom her last rites. She chose this moment to get stubborn. I know that she can hear what is going on around her, even if she isn't "awake". I guess being told that this is it made her decide that she was "just joking". Or more likely, knowing how damnably stubborn my mom is, jump started that little piece of crazy in her head that always declare "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!" Her kidneys started working again (really she has pushed off about 10 lbs of the fluid that were pressing against her lungs and heart in the last 24 hours), her heart returned to a normal rhythm, she started fighting the ventilator (she is still on it though), and her blood pressure improved.
And so here we sit. My moment of catharsis is gone. Mom is holding steady, with no further improvements (although she is off the dopamine which was helping her heart pump). She hasn't declined either. We are waiting for a blood transfusion (she is a special snowflake who has a weird blood thing going on and no one in Alaska can type her accurately).
She isn't doing well enough to be hopeful, but isn't doing bad enough to not be. I'm stuck in the middle and it's really really boring.
I have read enough white, suburban, privileged womans' lit to know that watching one of your loved ones die is supposed to be a profound, tragic, heart-rending and life changing event. So far, the only thing profound about it, is how profoundly fucking boring it is. Don't take this to mean that I don't love my mom. I do. However, sitting in a hospital room watching as she does nothing, and slips in and out of not-actual-consciousness is really, really, really dull.
There has only been one moment of "excitement" since I've been here. I use the word excitement, loosely. It wasn't exciting. It was terrible and oddly cathartic. Yesterday morning at 330 in the morning (because you know these things never happen at a reasonable hour like noon, when you've had your coffee and breakfast and are ready to face the day. Nope they only happen when you are bleary-eyed and fuzzy from sleep deprivation and at times of day that only really dedicated fisherman and colic-y infants will admit actually exists.) we got called into the hospital. My mom's kidneys has stopped working and her heart was ready to give out on her. This was it, this was the end. We were asked if we wanted to do any "heroic" potential life-saving techniques for her. Our answer was eventually no. I know that if I ever reached the condition she was in yesterday morning I wouldn't want to be saved. Load me up with morphine and let me go. However, it seems that we were to slow to make our choice, because by the time we had our answer, they already had her intubated and on a ventilator. To be fair to her doctor's and nurses, this was in no way actually supposed to save her life, but rather give me and the rest of my family enough time to say good-bye. Even with a machine to breathe for her, the doctors gave her a 5% chance and predicted that her heart would stop by mid-afternoon.
And so I said good-bye and made my peace. That conversation will remain between me and the universe, so don't ask.
Around 6 am, the priest came in to give my mom her last rites. She chose this moment to get stubborn. I know that she can hear what is going on around her, even if she isn't "awake". I guess being told that this is it made her decide that she was "just joking". Or more likely, knowing how damnably stubborn my mom is, jump started that little piece of crazy in her head that always declare "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!" Her kidneys started working again (really she has pushed off about 10 lbs of the fluid that were pressing against her lungs and heart in the last 24 hours), her heart returned to a normal rhythm, she started fighting the ventilator (she is still on it though), and her blood pressure improved.
And so here we sit. My moment of catharsis is gone. Mom is holding steady, with no further improvements (although she is off the dopamine which was helping her heart pump). She hasn't declined either. We are waiting for a blood transfusion (she is a special snowflake who has a weird blood thing going on and no one in Alaska can type her accurately).
She isn't doing well enough to be hopeful, but isn't doing bad enough to not be. I'm stuck in the middle and it's really really boring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)