Four Eyes, page 11
Mat was around too, but rarely did we cross paths when I was home, because when I was home, it was usually his break. He was also experiencing the stress of raising his young son while working full-time and had a large share of adulting on his plate too. This dynamic was so new for all of us, and I really wanted to approach it with the intention of doing it well rather than getting completely sucked in, if that was even possible.
CHAPTER 42
August 11, 2012, 12:45 P.M.
MY PLANE LANDED late last night, and for the week I was in town, Becky lent me a spare car she and her husband had recently acquired. It was a huge blessing, and I didn’t even care that it didn’t have heat or air-conditioning. Becky met me at the airport and took me to her house, where we hung out for an hour before I hit the road. It was nice to spend some time catching up with her, about nothing medically related, despite Guilt yelling loudly at Individuation and momentarily stunning it.
I had arrived home to quite the party. Sniff was her adorable wiggly-bodied self as I entered the front door, and I finally felt like things were again at rights. How they should be. My mom was already sleeping, and our neighbor Lisa was talking to my dad in the living room. I hugged them and then dragged my bag through the door and down the hall into the guest bedroom, noticing a pair of socks on the floor I had forgotten from my last trip.
Sniff was as excited to see me as I was her. She was such a smart girl, and always knew when I needed a little extra support or love. She came over and sat on my suitcase, insisting that I pet her, which was warmly comforting. In the hallway there was a long green tube running from my parents’ bedroom to the living room.
“What’s this, Sniff?” I asked her, half expecting her to answer as I followed the tube to its source in my mom’s bedroom. It was connected to a big gray machine that made a steady hum. My mom was wearing oxygen equipment, and a much-shorter, clear tube was also hooked up to the machine and wrapped around both of her ears and into her nostrils. This must be a nonportable oxygen contraption, I thought. Interesting.
It was great to see my mom asleep in her own bed. She looked peaceful, and I wondered how, after sixteen weeks, her own bed must feel, or if she even remembered it. I could only imagine.
“Come on, girl,” I said quietly to Sniff, and she gladly accompanied me to the living room, where my dad and Lisa were drinking coffee sitting on the adjacent brown micro-suede couches my mom hated with a passion. They had gotten the couches a few years prior, but my mom had suffered a strong case of buyer’s remorse; she couldn’t wait to get new ones. There was a third cup of coffee sitting on the table, waiting for me.
“Aw, thanks, Dad,” I said as I settled into the stiffest part of the three-seater couch that no one ever sat on.
“Hi, kid,” he started. “There is creamer in the fridge if you want. And don’t worry, it’s decaf.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll grab it in a minute.” I saw the end of the green tubing draped over a couch and asked, “So, mom’s on oxygen now, huh?”
“Yeah, they sent her home with it because she wasn’t feeling great at LTACH the last few days. They gave her some antibiotics for an elevated white blood cell count that they think has to do with her stomach bug or her bedsore not fully healing yet; the oxygen just helps her breathe easier,” he reported.
Lisa nodded.
“It’s been pretty hard for her since being home,” she shared.
Lisa was a shorter, slender woman with shoulder-length blonde-brown hair. She was a speech-language pathologist and had become my mom’s best friend over the decade plus of neighboring. I was so grateful for Lisa, and that my mom had a friend outside of her family to talk to.
“Yeah?” I asked. “How so?”
“Well, she was doing awesome when she got home Wednesday, but she has really been struggling with strength and feeling capable to do anything since then,” Lisa said.
“I don’t know,” my dad said. “I feel like she is used to having things done for her in the hospital, and I want her to get back to being able to do some stuff, not all of it, on her own. I think she needs that boost of confidence, but she is just so tired all the time.”
“Yeah, it’s good to have her home, but it’s got to be so hard for her to adjust,” Lisa said. I nodded in agreement.
“Maybe it will just take some time,” I suggested, feeling as though we were at another family conference rather than in my living room with loved ones.
“Here’s hoping,” he said as I crossed my fingers.
“Have any of the in-home folks come to assess yet?” I asked.
“Yes, they have been very helpful,” he said, “as has Lisa, giving me breaks. Mom just needs a lot of help with everything, and it’s been harder than I thought. I am really glad you are home, kid. I can use the help.”
Lisa affirmed my presence: “She’ll be so excited you’re here, Alisha.”
I sighed audibly. I could feel Individuation shrinking back as Guilt was getting taller and taller. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought too. I feared Guilt would win.
The morning was full of activity and bustling around. My mom needed help getting up from the bed to the bathroom and back to bed. She leaned on the walker to get there, but she wasn’t yet strong enough to use it for standing up and/or sitting down, which describes the entirety of the task at hand when it came to going to the bathroom.
She needed help carrying her wound vacuum; the tube inserted into the wound right above her coccyx ended in an external machine in a black zippered case that needed to go wherever she went. It was a strange but neat concept, and we all hoped it would work.
My mom’s bedsore had been dressed and packed in tightly, and the in-home nurse assessed it each time she came to check on my mom. It was very painful, and Mom had a hard time getting comfortable doing anything. She was still not great on her feet, so my dad and I took turns spending time in the bedroom with her, playing “gopher” for anything she needed. Mostly it was to warm up a rice pack in the microwave or to refill her purple water bottle with ice. I could see my dad’s point of wanting her to feel empowered enough to get up and do some of these things on her own. But she was so weak, it was really hard to tell when to encourage her and when to do it for her.
She needed help taking her meds on a schedule. Since all of this, she had been put on twenty-two medications, which she now needed help tracking and taking at the right times. And there was no way that some of those meds weren’t contraindicating. I wondered how “typical” it was to be sent home with so many new medications. Some of them were pain meds for her bedsore, which she was beginning to complain of regularly. This meant she was also, with some frequency, rather high.
This version of my mom was so different from the one that had walked herself into all of this months ago. In a couple of days she was to have the blood clot catcher removed. All the doctors were in agreement that she no longer needed it, noting that it had done its job well and had caught a couple of clots before they reached her heart or lungs.
Our home care plan was to wait until the clot catcher surgery day and then reassess what was working and what needed some tweaking. In the meantime, my dad and I became the nursing staff 24/7; it was next to impossible to do much of anything else when the day revolved around the patient’s needs.
CHAPTER 43
August 13, 2012, 5:37 P.M.
THE ROLE REVERSAL I felt was immense. We were now my mom’s full-time caregivers, and I tried to give my dad as much of a break as possible, given that this would become his new normal and I had the luxury of flying away in a week. We had no idea how much work it would be to have her home, and she was only somewhat coherent for us to assess how she was really doing. She was so tired and slept most of the day. We got her to eat little bits at a time and helped her out to the kitchen table for breakfast in her wheelchair, after trying to get her dressed. Walking took too much energy for her. This was often a big deal, and breakfast was the biggest outing of the day. We focused there; based on previous experience, we knew how important nutrition was to her healing. That big outing to the kitchen from the bedroom took hours, never mind trips to the bathroom, and I could only imagine how slowly her acclimating back to feeling self-sufficient at home would actually be.
Guilt was screaming in my face and continuing to lunge ahead at full speed, while Individuation slowly began to slide out of the ring from underneath the ropes in the corner, one bit at a time. I could see it happen in slow motion, and I knew I was in trouble. I was losing myself.
This morning was no exception. We were up early for the trip to MCR for the surgery to remove the clot catcher. My mom was nervous and started to cry; she didn’t want to go back to the hospital. I didn’t blame her. Amid all the physical struggles, I could only imagine how all this was impacting her mental health—how often she felt triggered and scared that something else would go wrong. She hadn’t spoken about this yet, but her personality was understandably so different now than it once was. I grabbed her hand as I helped her get into the car and told her how brave I thought she was, and how hard it must be to go back to the hospital.
She was a champion for the visit and the surgery, after which she was allowed to come home following a couple of hours of observation. It was a quick and fairly painless surgery, but still one that required anesthesia, so she was completely out of it when she returned. We considered the rest of the day a wash, as she needed to rest in order to recover.
It felt like it had been thirty years since I’d arrived back home. I checked my calendar to make sure I wasn’t off. It had only been three days.
We were really hopeful for tomorrow—maybe she’d finally begin down the illusive path toward recovery and some self-sufficiency. I couldn’t help but think about how much that could mean to her, as she had been so very independent before any of this. I didn’t blame her at all for being so tired. This was maybe the first time she had truly stopped in years. She had a lot of sleep to make up.
CHAPTER 44
August 14, 2012, 4:37 P.M.
“HI, MOM,” MAT began. “I just stopped by after work to check in on you and see how you are doing!”
My mom was sitting on the edge of her bed, counting.
“One, two, three, upppppp”; she drew out the “up” as she tried with all her might to get herself to a standing position, hands gripped tightly on the walker. It didn’t work, and she exhaled loudly on her way back down the few inches she had achieved.
“Hi, Mat,” she said without looking back. She tried again.
“One, two, three, upppp,” but this time she didn’t leave the bed. She was frustrated.
“Come on, arms!” she begged them.
“Want some help, Mom?” Mat offered.
“Sure,” came her fast reply.
“Okay, here we go; one, two, three, uppppp,” and with their combined effort, she was mostly up. She gripped the walker with both hands and stopped to catch her breath. Breathing seemed to be more and more difficult for her, and I wondered if that was a normal part of regaining strength and ability or something was wrong. The oxygen helped, and Mat grabbed the long green tubing from the bed and handed it to her. She leaned her elbows on the walker and placed the tubing in her nose and behind her ears as she took a couple of deep breaths. That helped tremendously, and she began the long ten-foot journey to the bathroom.
Sometime later when she was done, Mat rolled her out to the dining room in her wheelchair for dinner. It was the first time we had had dinner as a family since I had moved to Pittsburgh. It was nice.
My dad and I had prepared breakfast for dinner—a classic favorite—set the table and gotten everyone drinks. Mat rolled her up to what was typically her spot, but the wheelchair didn’t quite fit in between the china hutch and the table, so I traded spots with her. We ate and caught up, and I summarized my latest experience at school in exchange for Mat’s work updates, which included switching jobs to another construction company. It was thirty minutes or so later when my mom could no longer do it; she finished her last of four bites of oatmeal and fell asleep at the table, her head pitched forward. We chuckled and began the process of wheeling her back to bed. My dad took that job, and Mat and I cleaned up the kitchen.
“Gosh, it’s just so weird seeing her so weak, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s really different. I think Dad’s in for more than he bargained for,” he replied.
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” I answered.
We cleaned the kitchen quickly then headed back to check on the others. My mom was crying, not complaining of any pain, just crying. I headed over to her pills on the white ladder bookshelf scattered with her favorite CDs, books, and many different lotions, and started grabbing her nighttime meds so she could go to sleep. There were so many pills. I wondered if these were all permanent and noted this as a topic to ask my dad about later.
Mat refilled her purple water bottle and warmed up the rice pack for her, and I gave her the pills. Something felt off, but it had been a big day after surgery, and she was exhausted. I convinced myself that she would be better the next day and told her as much as we said goodnight. Mat, my dad, and I talked a little bit more before Mat had to go; we decided to regroup in the morning.
CHAPTER 45
August 16, 2012, 5:37 P.M.
“I THINK WE Should go to MCR. It’s time. Something’s wrong,” I told my dad. Things had only gotten worse since two days ago, and we were exhausted. He felt it too.
My mom woke up today in a lot of pain and had been crying all day. It had taken her hours to get up this morning, and when she made it to the bathroom with my dad’s assistance, she didn’t know where she was. He called me in to help; she now needed assistance with wiping, getting cleaned up, and changing her underwear, as she hadn’t able to hold it before she got to the bathroom. This was a new level of engagement with my mom, one that didn’t allow for any modesty. When I got back to the bathroom, there was urine all over the floor.
When we let her know she was at home, it took her a few minutes to register this as truth. She had just taken her pain medication and was really spacey as a result, so we thought it was that. We helped her back to bed, and she slept for a few hours before we woke her up for lunch.
“Mom, it’s lunch time,” I said, bringing in a burger she had requested this morning. I sat next to her on the king-size bed and started to cut up the burger with no bun for her. She was totally out of it. I would be too, on all those pain meds. Slowly, she woke up and began to talk with us.
“Where did you get that meat?” she asked.
“We got it from the freezer, hon,” my dad said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, what about the lettuce?” she responded. My dad and I looked at each other.
“That was from the fridge, Mom, from the garden out back.” It was my turn. Every year, my dad planted and tended a vegetable garden, and this year they added a birdbath to the raised bed in the backyard. My dad loved to take Brooks to show him the vegetables, and Brooks liked to “give the froggy a drink,” referring to the stone frog in the birdbath. It was adorable, and the two of them had a special bond. Stories like this drove my mom toward recovery: a relationship with her grandson.
“Oh, okay.” She took a small bite.
“What about the cheese?” My dad laughed. I smiled. She was high, and this was kind of funny.
“Well, we got that out of the garden too, Mom,” I said, testing the strength of the medication.
“Yeah, hon; it grew on the cheese bush out back,” my dad chimed in.
My mom stopped chewing and thought for a moment.
“Wait a second, do we have a cheese bush?” came her very earnest question, eyes wide.
My dad and I stifled a giggle.
My dad continued, “Yep, we just have to pick the slices and plop ’em onto the burgers to melt. It’s real easy.” He looked at her with a lifetime of love behind his eyes, begging her to joke back. Anything other than crying was incredible today.
“Oh.” She studied his face, very carefully analyzing what he’d just said, then broke into a slight smile. “Really? Cheese doesn’t grow on bushes, does it?”
With her smile, my dad broke, and we all burst into laughter, my mom the loudest.
“No, honey, cheese doesn’t grow on bushes,” my dad said, wiping his eyes from the tears of laughing so hard.
“You guys,” my mom said. “You’re trying to trick me!” She giggled. “Cheese bushes, ha!” She continued to laugh with us. It was the happiest we had seen her since I had arrived in town.
That was hours ago at this point. After taking only a few bites of her burger, she fell asleep again. She woke up an hour later, screaming.
“The little boy, the little boy, where is he?” came her terrified scream from the bedroom. My dad and I had been watching one of our favorite shows, The Mentalist, enjoying a small break when we heard this. We sprinted around the brown buyer’s remorse couches and down the hallway to her room.
“Sher, you’re sleeping, honey, wake up,” my dad said as he sat next to her and touched her head. She was warm, but not feverish.
“We have to find him now! He’s in danger!” she screamed, inconsolable.
“He’s okay, hon,” my dad said.
My mom gripped his arm and stared at him; her blue eyes as wide as I’d ever seen.
“You got him? Is he okay? Where is he?” she asked, looking around.
“I’ve got him, Mom,” I said, moving back into the hallway. “I’m going to take him to the bathroom.” I stopped just outside of her line of sight to hear the rest.
“Oh, good. He was in trouble, but the little girl was okay,” she began to tell my dad, crying as she told the story that made no sense. She was growing more animatedly afraid as she recounted the danger the children faced in her dream reality. I knew her pain medication was powerful, but I didn’t know it had such hallucinogenic side effects. My dad talked her down from the fear, and thirty minutes later she was asleep again, complaining of pain but not able to locate the source.
