7 posts tagged “hospital”

We went to the hospital today, despite the crush of my work and their homework, because we didn't make it yesterday and I couldn't bear to let two days go by without visiting. Not when my Mom is in her right mind, counting the hours, very much aware of the long hospital days and how long it's been since we were there last. The girls got ahead of me as we made our way to my Mom's room on the seventh floor. Her door was open and they sauntered in, calling out "Hi Nana!" so loudly that I was about to shush them when they started squealing with delight.

"She's talking! She's talking!" They shouted back at me. "She said 'hi'!"

It wasn't her normal voice, but it was close enough. Certainly not the alien invader voice I had feared, having heard it in the past when conversing with people who'd had tracheotomies/ostomies. But there is something difficult about the interplay of speaking and breathing with this thing, apparently, because she'd be going along saying something and then it was as if someone had pressed her mute button. She just ran out of voice, and no sound would come out. Then she'd have to sip a quick breath in to get the sound going again. Sometimes it took a couple of tries. It didn't seem to bother her much; she was happy to be talking.

Mom told me that Diane had come in around lunchtime. She was tickled and wanted to tell the story.

"Aren't you going to get some lunch?" Mom had asked her.

"What?" Diane said, most likely in that slightly irritated way she says things, even when she is not irritated.

"I said, aren't you going to get some lunch?"

Diane gave her a long look.

"You're talking," she said.

There is this little toy you can get at places like Chuck E. Cheese. It's not a kazoo, but it's in the kazoo family, and when you blow through it, it makes a funny, buzzy wheeeeeeeeEEEEEE! noise. We all suspect that this what the tracheostomy cap really is, because it looks like one (it's purple, too, more like a toy than a medical apparatus) and when she talks it sounds as if she is talking through one of those noisemakers. But we will take it. Whatever works. We do not need her in her former perfection; we just need her.

Before I forget: This morning, after watching the American Idol charity fundraising show last night, Jinx said, "It's really sad about all those people in Africa with molasses."

In other news, my mother is really visibly better. She still can't talk, but her handwriting is nearly back to normal. Even on Tuesday I had trouble making out a few words she had written, but today I could read everything. It's because they finally cut her loose from the restraints this week. She's remembering how to use her extremities.

She was in great spirits today and made a point of standing up to use the strange cabinet toilet next to her bed. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have peed in front of us, much less within spitting distance of two complete strangers on the other side of the curtain, a man and his daughter (who was busy telling her father that he was not to leave yet, and to "just wait until Mom gets here"). But pee she did. She was showing off. Look at me. I'm out of bed. I'm walking without help. She told us that they said she could move upstairs tomorrow. I warned her not to get too excited about it until it actually happens. I've been in the hospital a few times myself. I know how one person will promise something and the next person will say no, you must be mistaken, no one ever said such a thing. We have always been at war with Eurasia, etc.

After Jinx competed in his skateboard competition this morning, I took the girls with me to the hospital to visit my mother. I had already heard from Bambi, my niece, that my Mom had "weaned" (off the ventilator) for three hours in the morning, while my sister was there, and that she had been so restless her blood pressure spiked and they cut the session short. For the last week or so, my Mom's been moving semi-continuously whenever she's awake and even when she appears to be asleep. She arches her back and shifts around, trying to get comfortable. I know that part of her discomfort is the result of her sciatica, which kept her tossing and turning back in the days before she was confined and tied down to her bed. She churns her legs around so much that the nurses don't even try to cover her up anymore. Which means my mother is continually flashing, or on the verge of flashing, anyone who happens by. I can't count the number of times I've yanked that blue hospital gown hem back down.

My mother had the tracheostomy surgery on Wednesday (the same day Rufus died; Felony also got her braces off that day and Jinx's Runescape character died and lost all his equipment--it was an eventful day for everyone). Now she has what looks like a pacifier tied around her neck with what appears to be poultry twine. All of this apparatus is blood-stained. When one of the respiratory therapists was trying to ease my mind about the tracheostomy, I asked her whether my mother would be able to talk after having the procedure done. She told me yes. An unqualified yes. Now she tells me that, well, yes, she will be able to talk, but not until this existing doohickey is replaced, in due time, by some other thingamabob. After the swelling goes down. Like in a couple of weeks.

So my Mom still can't talk.

When we got there, she was out of it. We tried to wake her up, but with no luck. A different respiratory therapist came in to "suction your Mom," as they say. As usual, my mother turned purple during this procedure and coughed, vigorously yet silently, for a couple of minutes afterward.

"She always does that," the RT said.

"Yeah," I said.

She told me that my mother was a good patient and a very nice lady, not crabby like some of these people.

"Well, she can be crabby," I said.

"Not like some patients. You can tell!" she said. "Even though they can't talk, you can tell. They are doing this"--she slapped the bed with her open palm several times--"and making faces."

Then another woman came in and introduced herself as something or other. I think it was "service director."

"And what does a 'service director' do?" I asked.

"That's a good question!" she laughed, and seemed at a bit of a loss as she attempted to explain it.

I asked her who we should talk to about my mother's missing dentures. She said she would look into it, but seemed skeptical about my sister's claim that the dentures had been removed in the operating room. I confess I had been skeptical myself, but Diane was so persuasive that I defended her honor as best as I could.

Not long after they left, three nurses, two of them male, came in to turn my mother. They closed the curtain to guard their nursing secrets. It's funny to me how the different nurses do things so ... differently. Some of them make a big production out of it. They corral half a dozen helpers, ask us to wait in the waiting room, and draw the curtain all the way around my mother's bed. You'd think they were actually performing surgery in there. Other nurses are less dramatic. They'll come in and do it while you're standing there, bing, bang, boom. One nurse, instead of calling for reinforcements, just lets me or my sister help her if we're there. It's pretty easy unless there's been a bowel movement. I'm trying to decide what the worst part of being an ICU nurse would be. The endless paperwork, the twelve-hour shifts, or cleaning up bowel movements? And I suppose more people die in the ICU than anywhere else in the hospital. There's always that.

The first two weeks my mother was there, she shared the room with a woman named Judy. The way the room is set up, you have to walk past the first bed to get to the second bed, where my mother is. The first time I went to see my Mom in the ICU, I was already freaked out, and then I saw Judy and I just about had a panic attack, thinking it was my Mom. My brain shrieked, What have they done to her?! That's because every part of Judy's body was swollen to twice its normal size. She looked like something out of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Her eyelids alone were so full of fluid that she couldn't open them. The skin over the fluid was translucent, as it is sometimes over a blister, and distended to perhaps an inch beyond where it should have stopped. Even though she could talk, her lips were so swollen that no one could understand her. Strangely, seeing them always made me think of pomegranates. Her skin color was strange, too. Sometimes it looked yellow, and other times, it had a purplish cast. Every part of her was shocking, though I did get used to it. You can get used to just about anything, really. But one day I showed up when my sister was already there, sitting at the foot of my mother's bed. I glanced at Judy on the way in, noticed she looked yellower than usual, and when I turned my head back, my sister was mouthing the words, "She's dead."

I didn't catch it at first. "What?" I said.

"DEAD," she whispered emphatically.

"What?!" I hissed, looking at my mother.

"Not Mom, you idiot. Judy."

"Ohhh."

I asked Diane if she had been there when Judy died, and she said no, but she had been there the night before when Judy's son came in. Diane had listened to him say, "Mom, it's okay to let go. If you want to let go, I understand." Diane had left then for a couple of hours to give him some privacy. When she came back, Judy was already dead.

No one came to take Judy away while we were there. I guess there's no reason to rush. So I spent the rest of my visit chatting and, yes, laughing with my sister, even though we were sharing the room with a dead person. Like I said, you can get used to anything.

Anyway. Back to my Mom. After the nurses finished turning her, she was awake. We'd been there for almost an hour already, and I'd been thinking about leaving, but since she was awake, the girls and I crowded around her bed and talked to her. Once again, she had a lot she wanted to tell us, too. I explained that we couldn't hear her, couldn't make out what she was saying, but she didn't stop. I did notice that she was becoming more animated. She moved her head, her eyebrows were going up and down, she was making faces--faces I had seen her make many times before.

I started laughing. "I know, Mom," I said. "But that's what they're supposed to do."

The girls were baffled. "She's telling us how annoying the nurses are," I said.

My mother, whom several of the nurses have assured me is a "sweet lady," was viciously mocking them and their namby-pamby spiels. It's the sort of thing she's done as long as I've known her. She doesn't suffer fools gladly and she absolutely cannot stomach false cheeriness or being patronized, things these medical professionals excel at.

"Hello-oo-oooo, Mrs. Copes!" she mouthed, then followed it up with a saccharine smile, batted her eyelashes, and rocked her head from side-to-side like a bobble-head doll. She went through several more incarnations, pouring out her bile and frustration for the first time in weeks. It was great. She seemed more like herself than she has since she went in there. I loved it. "Look, Mom," I told her, "these people seem to think you're a sweet old lady, so you better not blow it. Don't let them see what you're really like." She laughed soundlessly.

On the way back to the parking lot, I kept getting the giggles remembering the faces she had made. Felony said, "I couldn't really tell what she was saying. Except I could definitely tell when she said, 'shit.'"

Yep, that's my Mom all right. She swears like a sailor. If they only knew.

The last thing I expected to see when I went to the hospital today was my mother, but that is what I saw. I took three steps into the ICU and I saw her, sitting up in a chair, and most remarkable of all, her eyes were open. All the way from the nurse's station I could see my mother's dark brown eyes.

Viv and Lorraine were there, having driven in from Reno for the second time in two weeks. Viv is my mother's best friend of more than fifty years; Lorraine is her daughter. My sister was there, too, and she told me to come in, even though I had Felony with me and there is a rule against more than two visitors at a time.

"They don't care," Diane said. "They're glad we're here, they told us, because we can watch her and make sure she doesn't pull any of her tubes out."

When I stepped into the room, she saw me, but I couldn't tell if she really recognized me. I try not to get my hopes up. Expect the worst, I always say, and you're never disappointed. Some part of me wanted to blurt out, "Is it really you?" but I managed to say something less accusatory. Then Felony stepped up to the chair and said shyly, "Hi, Nana," and my mother, forced to wear wrist restraints that were tied to the chair, leaned forward and rested her head against Felony's belly and closed her eyes.

"She's giving you a hug," Viv said in her soft voice.

Felony bent down and slowly, gingerly, so as not to disturb any of the tubes or wires, put her arms around her Nana and rested her cheek on my mother's head. It was the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time.

I excused myself and hurried to the waiting room to hustle the other two kids back to the ICU. The other night I saw a nurse giving a big boy of eleven and three-quarters a hard time. But now all the nurses seemed to have their backs discreetly turned as I smuggled in Jinx, who is not even close to twelve. So all three of the kids got to give Nana a hug and a kiss and to know that she knew they were giving it.

I feel guilty because I didn't go to the hospital today. I went to Frank's house instead and did some work on the book. It's not my book and it's not his book but we're both working on it. Go figure.

But I didn't go to the hospital and I feel guilty. I feel like something might go wrong because I didn't go. I imagine the Filipino nurses clucking over my absence, asking each other, "What happened to the other daughter? She didn't come tonight, huh?"

I should go to bed.

The wind is blowing and the house is shuddering. Some door somewhere keeps soft-slamming itself. The whole house shakes. It scares me.

Another difficult, painful evening, though I'm better now. I started taking Wellbutrin a few days ago but two hours ago I would have told you it's not working. Finally I dragged my ass down to the hospital where there are sick people who actually look sick. I guess my Mom had a hard day, too. My niece told me they want to give her a new breathing tube, this time by making a hole in her trachea. They say at least she'll be able to talk. The respiratory therapist tried to reassure me. She said the tracheotomy hole heals up nicely.

"Elizabeth Taylor had one," she said, running her hand over her own throat. "You couldn't even tell afterward."

The whole time I was there, my mother kept trying to speak to me. But she can't make any sounds because of the breathing tube. It's very disconcerting, even a little maddening, to watch someone's lips moving when you cannot hear a single word. I put a pen in her hand, hoping she could write something, but she could hardly hold it. When she managed to touch pen to paper, she made small jagged lines and circles. Not letters but the idea of letters. I have to remind myself that my mother hasn't lost her mind. She is sedated, that's all. Before my father died, he had severe dementia for five years. I know what it looks like. The last time I visited him, he couldn't talk either. Not because he had a breathing tube but because his brain was so damaged. He'd move his lips as if he were speaking, and make noises that sounded like conversation. But it wasn't speech. It was the idea of speech. He even included faint little chuckles to follow the jokes he hadn't told. Before, when he was still himself, he was a charming and funny man. In the end he could remember the cadences but not the words.

Just a quick note to say my Mom is in the ICU on a ventilator and has been since Tuesday night. She has pneumonia and related conditions. She's been heavily sedated but making small improvements. My sister and I have been camping out there for hours at a time (she more than me; I'm worried about her not sleeping and straining her own heart--she had a Pacemaker installed earlier this year). I'll try to update again tonight.