July 6, 2009 cont.

I haven’t written about my mother in a long time, partly because it’s such a painful subject. She’s still in the home two hours south of here. She still functions pretty well day to day, but she gets more tired and she herself says she’s losing more of her memory.  

The worst part is how aware she is of what’s happening. The best part is that I see her every week. We have lunch. Maybe we run errands. I try to come up with subjects for discussion that she might like. Since I’m the one who helped her with the family geneaology, I know her family tree very well and we talk about people I never met but she remembers. When I see her tiring, I leave after making plans for the following week.

I doubt I would handle this illness as gracefully as she does. As she always has, my mother continues to teach me by example. I’m so grateful to be her daughter.

 

As a wife

I cannot adequately express my anger at John Edwards’s “confession.” (Notice I didn’t say “at what he did to lead to the confession”—that’s a different subject, one I won’t address here.) How he could think that the comments “I didn’t love her” (or was it “I wasn’t in love with her”?) as well as “Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission” make this any less ugly or make women forgive him even a little bit is far beyond me. And to deny, deny, deny instead of owning up and moving on? My only hope is that he takes that paternity test this week (because so many people think they already know the results) so it doesn’t drag out for any longer than the weekly news cycle.

Update: The new mother is refusing the paternity test so it looks like he is destined to be forever the father. I just hope the news moves on soon. We do kinda have a bunch of wars, an election that will decide where the country is headed, climate change, etc., that will actually impact our lives.

 

January 9, 2008

I’ve always been one for dates, for anniversaries of events. And for me there aren’t many more significant anniversaries than today. Twenty-six years ago on this date my mother took me to the hospital and saved my life.

I was living on my own in a small apartment in Chestnut Hill. I got sick on Wednesday with what we thought was the flu—fever and vomiting. My sister had had the same thing the week before. My friend the nurse who lived one floor above me wasn’t that concerned. 

When I wasn’t any better by Saturday my mother came to stay with me. On Sunday my legs broke out in large purple blotches. That’s when they took me to the hospital.

You know how you dread going to the ER because you might have a long wait if your problem isn’t that serious? The staff took one look at me and I got bumped to the head of the line. What service! (A bp of 60/40 will do that . . .)

After an argument during my exam with one doctor about whether or not this was an ectopic pregnancy (I knew full well it wasn’t), they prepped me for exploratory surgery. I hyperventilated in the OR and they actually gave me a paper bag to breathe into.  

A wonderful medical team operated on me. My surgeon, Dr. John Roberts, normally wouldn’t have been in the hospital that day, but through some odd circumstances, he was. Someone sitting in her own bedroom had been shot—hit by a bullet that came through her bedroom wall from outside.

After surgery, Dr. Roberts told my mother I would live or die in the next 36 hours. Needless to say, I survived. They estimated that my appendix had burst on Thursday, leading to severe peritonitis.

A week in ICU, a month in the hospital, fantastic residents and students and nurses at the hospital (I was someone’s case study!), more surgery, many antibiotics, brief return to the hospital, long recovery, lifetime impact.

It was my own George Bailey moment—so much around me that has happened since wouldn’t have if I had gone the other way in those 36 hours. And 26 years later, I know I should never forget that.