At the hospital: waiting it out
Yesterday morning I was awakened by a phone call from my mother’s caretaker, the sort of phone call no one likes to get. She said my mother was having tingling and numbness in her left arm and left leg, which happens to be the distribution of the stroke she had last summer.
And everything had been going so well recently with her. Things had stabilized to the point where she was comfortable and relatively content, if not happy. I reminded myself that there was no reason to imagine they wouldn’t continue to go well. This event could be big, even the Big One; or it could be nothing at all, or next to nothing at all.
I felt a strange calm above the eerie fluttering in my gut as I drove to the hospital and met them there. My mother was already in a hospital bed, looking unfrail and quite herself (she’s one of the few ninety-two-year olds I’ve ever seen with a full head of thick hair, albeit white). Her nervousness was palpable, and she’s a lousy reporter–“when did it start?” “Are you having any weakness?” “Is it worse now, or before?” are all challenging and perhaps unanswerable questions for her at this point.
So we played the waiting game. The man in the next bed had a prostate operation gone bad, a painful infection. This is the sort of thing one cannot help overhearing. The flimsy curtain does almost nothing to hide the anguish and turmoil and the small and large humiliations of the emergency room vigil, both for the patient and the furrow-browed relatives. It works only marginally better than the hospital gown serves to guard the privacy of the body, slipping and sliding and riding up, exposing this and that at intervals.
Intervals. Why are there no clocks in these waiting rooms? Because if there were, time might be seen to pass in excruciatingly slow increments. Because when the doctor says “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” it’s not really a good idea to count those minutes too closely.
So one waits. One waits to hear news that will either change a life, or let it go on much as before. One waits to see whether the numbness will progress to weakness and then to virtual paralysis–as it did last time–or even worse. One waits to see whether this particular precious life will turn more tragic, or stay its fairly decent course a while longer.
It’s not really so different from any other day, any other moment in which life can change in an instant. The only real difference is that in the hospital waiting room that fact is highlighted with sudden sharpness.
And there’s the illusion that it’s time-limited, as well. We’ll learn her fate in “a few minutes.” But the fate we learn is only today’s fate and that minute’s fate, and that’s all we ever know.
The results of the CAT scan were excellent. No new damage. The symptoms began to resolve. My mother began to smile. She ate a turkey sandwich and had a ginger ale. The doctors told her the provisional diagnoses, just guesses on their part: a TIA, or a complex migraine. Go home, relax, go about your business.
So we did. And so we do.
Having lost my own Mother when she was 37 and my husband when he was 48……those hospitals sans clocks and Doctors with their ‘profound’ prognosis are distressful to say the least. Good to hear your Mom is apparantly well and home and moving along. Thoughts and hopes are with you and your family today Neo.
I have enjoyed reading this blog for sime time now. Hopes and prayers to you and your loved ones.
Neo,
Will most certainly pray for you and your Mother..
ExP(Jack)
All of us privileged to live for and care for older lives, even parents, know what you describe. But you are there for her, and that’s the life saver. I wish you both the joy of that life, yours and hers. God bless.
Note: I’m not sure what you use for your source of public medical information, but our family likes the health Newsletter from Consumer Reports, and the magazine itself. It warns one to monitor well your loved one when she is in medical institutions.
also, for good information and normally wonderful assistance, your local/county hospice can be a godsend. My husband died while in southern California….I simply don’t know what I would have done without the San Bernardino County hospice Association. Best of luck to you Neo.
I am a registered nurse. Often, I am humbled by the moments I witness in people’s lives. The other day, I listened to a woman talking to her daughter on the telephone. She said, “I have some bad news; I have lung cancer”. I realized that the moment and those words will forever be with that daughter.
And I heard it…right before I gave report to the next shift, right before I was to leave for the day, right before I was on to my own life.
It stops me in my tracks frequently. The saving GRACE is that I can speak these words to the patients…I can be honest about how extraordinary and humbling it is to witness their life developments.
We sit quietly, hand holding and thinking and feeling….
I’m glad your mom is okay.
Prayers and good wishes for you both. It’s tough to sit and wait like that. I’m very happy it turned out to be not serious. And I hope for both of you that this doesn’t happen too often – I know it’s very tiring (not to mention the ER being tiresome).
Best wishes for your Mother’s health, Neo.
Lost my mother last year after a lengthy illness….
My hopes and prayers are with you and your Mom.
Best wishes. We just buried a brother-in-law from pancreatic cancer. His mother, age 101, was at the funeral, fully functional but frail, though she went up 4 steps by herself using the handrail for support. Hope always floats.
As Goomp always says, old age is not for the faint of heart. All good wishes to you and your mother.
The human condition, in all its uncertainty and wonder.