The Long Night

Everything was just a little off that day.  My mother always gets her labs done first to make sure her blood count is high enough to get her weekly chemo, but a tech forgot to put the “rush” order on the lab work, so it sat on someone’s desk and we were waiting, waiting, for three hours before her infusion started.

Two of the regular nurses were out on maternity leave, so the nurses who remained were busy.  Which is why someone forgot to adjust the clamp, so we had to sit another half hour to redo the IV drip again.  What should have been two and one half hours turned into five.

My husband left work early to pick up the kids for me and was there when we got home.  He, my mother, and I were all laughing and joking about the long day.  We all decided to take a nap.

When I checked in on my mom an hour later she was shaking with the chills, fever rising, and her skin was pale gray.  She was vomiting as I called the after-hours nurse.  While on hold my husband said to just take her to the hospital.  She didn’t want to go.

The emergency room was crowded.  A mother sobbed holding her seven-year-old who had fallen on concrete and cracked her skull.  An older person had a stroke.  Someone broke their leg.

My mother got tests and more tests.  There was fluid on her lungs again.  Antibiotics were put in her IV.  Every half hour a new doctor/nurse/technician comes in and I repeated the same answers to the same 10,000 questions.  Her temperature kept rising, rising, rising.

She was just joking with me an hour ago.

A million thoughts raced through my mind.  Should I tell my brother to fly out tonight?  Did she get this fever because we didn’t wash our hands well enough when we came home?  Her house is in escrow and is supposed to close in a few days – what do I say to the realtor?  Do I call Medicare?  Her doctor?  Mostly I prayed that she would get better.

When we met the oncologist in August she said the median life expectancy for someone with my mom’s stage of lung cancer was 12 months.  Some lived longer, others died sooner.  We chose to act on the belief that Mom would be one of those people who will defy the odds and live another decade or so.  But as more wires and beeping machines got attached to my mother’s port, I was wondering if she might fall into that “sooner” category.

I went into the waiting room to find the vending machines as they wheeled her off for a CT scan.  Everything in the room screamed Christmas.  It sang on the TV and sparkled in the magazine racks.  Happy snowmen cupcakes.  People smiling in red sweaters and hats.  It seemed empty to me now.

I inhaled the Twix bar just purchased, and considered the irony that that at long last my book about bodybuilding and weight loss, She’s Losing It!, will be coming out in a few days; just at the precise same time my emotional eating is beginning to spiral out of control from stress and fear and sadness.  Walking back I see the reflection of the Christmas tree from the gift shop against the window.

Will this be our last Christmas together?  Will we have Thanksgiving in my home – or a hospital – or not at all?

“Pneumonia.  We think your mother has pneumonia,” the doctor tells us.  I can’t reach my brother.  There are text messages about the sale of her house I still have to read.  The nurse asks me to bring a copy of my mother’s living will and my durable power of attorney.  I force myself not to cry.

My husband sends me a text.  He has taken our daughter to church for her First Reconciliation and I felt guilty for missing it.  “I love you sweetie.  Just hold her hand and let her know you are there for her.”  Such simple, wonderful advice.

I held her hand.  It was soft and hot with fever, but she squeezed my own and smiled.  She was wearing a wool hat to cover her head balding from the chemo.  I kissed her cheek.

And by the morning her fever broke.  Today she is home, and I am reminded how very much I have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Also, I discovered that it is easier to escape Alcatraz than it is to get discharged from a hospital on a Saturday.

Thanks to everyone for your kind words and prayers while she was in the hospital.  It meant a lot to me.

Lisa

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