Down the Rabbit Hole (Again)

My Mother is in the hospital again, and this time it's serious: a broken hip.  Difficult for anyone, usually disastrous for the elderly, of which she most surely is.

And the sad and ironic thing is that I was on my way to see her anyway, yesterday. I was in a taxi, taking Jacob up his doctor's appointment when I realized a message had come in that I hadn't noticed in the hustle and bustle of my early morning.

When I registered that it was from the nurse at Carnegie, I held my breath. It is almost never good news.

A fall... found by aide... ambulance... Mt. Sinai ER.

Not how I was planning to spend the day (or the entire holiday weekend, for that matter). I had been thinking: do Mom's laundry, take her to lunch, give her a manicure. Bur ER bound we were.

I was on pins and needles throughout Jake's appointment, just itching to get. to. the. hospital. Jake was amazing though. He had heard my phone conversations, had understood my explanation that we were NOT going to be visiting Grandma in her home as planned, but instead going to the hospital to see her.

He told everyone at the doctor's office: "My Grandma is in the hospital. She doesn't feel good. We are going to see her to tell her to feel better."  (Whoever says autistic kids lack compassion can go suck it.)

And he was great in the two hours he was with me there (until my husband could come to pick him up). He kept telling my mom to "Feel better, Grandma!"

Very shortly after we arrived they wheeled her away for CT scans and X-rays. The doctor prepared me. By the rotation of her leg and the level of her pain, it was certain her hip was either broken or dislocated.

I was praying for dislocation but not feeling hopeful, and sure enough, it was as we'd feared: the top of her femur, the "ball" part of the ball and socket joint that is a hip was broken clear off the rest. She needs surgery to repair it, to place a metal rod in the bone and pins and screws to hold everything in place.

Damn!

Thank goodness her sense of humor is still intact. Between that and the disinhibiting quality to the morphine that is keeping her out of severe pain, she has been terribly funny.

In the ER, as the nurses were trying to put in a catheter, and she was not quite understanding what they were doing, I heard my mother's voice calling out from behind the curtain: "Varda, why are there women in my vagina?"

When told that she needs to have surgery that involves putting the metal rod and pin in her hip, her reply was: "Then I better find a man with a magnetic penis!"

I hold on to this as I prepare to return to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, to send my mother off into surgery. there will be more tales to tell, but for now, I am tired. So, goodnight.

3 AM

My watch says 3 AM.

But ER time is timeless time.

The lights always on full bore. The always ignored monitor alarms calling out their ceaseless beep beep beeyoups, making sleep near impossible in this place where it is so desperately needed by all.

The cots have thinned out by now, their former residents lost to beds upstairs or returned to the street beyond.

Thankfully tonight's more than full share of screamers and moaners, the deeply pained and the ecstatically crazed have been among the dispatched.

The one that really got to me: the man in the curtained berth next door, the B bed to my mother's A, groaning loudly, crying, begging for help with his pain, only to be summarily shushed by the nurses.

"Can you please keep it down?" one of them chided, like he was a wheedling child whining for a cookie.

I found myself fervently wishing his impacted gall stones could be magically transported into their bodies, see if a little empathy might suddenly develop.

I sit in my butt-numbing gray plastic chair snugged up to my mother's feet and watch her toss fitfully, sleep clasped but a few moments before being relinquished again to discomfort.

I have passed out twice, once sprawled, once slumped, keeping my less than perfect vigil as we wait for our number to come up.

Some of the staff here are familiar, faces I know from the last years of my father's life when he was a frequent flyer. We nod to each other as I walk my mother to the bathroom, one step oh so carefully placed in front of the next.

Others are new: fresh scrubbed interns, wearier residents; nurses in colorful scrubs with faces cheery or stern, your luck of the draw which you get. 

I miss my children. I miss my bed and the husband waiting in it, a single spoon, un-nestled.

I miss the Mommy who tucked me in at night and banished monsters for me. She has been replaced by this sweet, increasingly frail old woman - still beautiful with her nearly unlined face, her halo of soft white curls.

Her mind and memory are growing softer by the day, soft as her hands which used to cup my face to kiss my cheek, just the way I now kiss hers, tucking her in when we finally get settled into a room at 4:15 in the morning, nearly dawn.

"Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite..." I intone in the same singsong she once chimed to me, a thousand years ago in my pink bedroom.

"Where am I?" she asks once again, her voice quavering with exhaustion and slightly slurred from the painkillers that will allow her to finally sink into slumber.

"In the hospital, Mom. You fell, broke your rib."

She nods; reminded, remembers.

"I'm going home to get the boys ready for school, have a shower, an hour of sleep, and then I'll be back."

"What would I do without you?" she asks, patting my hand, grasping it, not quite yet willing to let go.

My mind jumps to all the lonely souls I'd witnessed in the ER tonight, suffering without an ally to stand by, bear comfort.

"I'm here" I say, "I'm here."

And then, eyes closed, breath languorous, her hand unfurls, releasing mine.

And I'm gone.

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Looking Down the Road at Hopeful Parents

I'm not here today, I'm over at:

where I'm talking about what I see when I look into my autistic son Jacob's future.

So come read me over at Hopeful Parents today as I contemplate Looking Down the Road

And it starts as a personal meditation and ends with a call to arms.

Because, people?

There are probably a dozen places scattered around the country right now that would be appropriate for Jake to live in as an adult, if he needs the kind of support I think he's going to need to lead a rich and rewarding, semi-independent life.

And there's going to be hundreds of THOUSANDS of autistic adults like him, that need those spots too.

Think about it.

And then do something about it, please. Take action!

Because it's about 10 years from plan to completion in these things; and we're about 10 years too late, already.

Also? I know today is the 11th and my usual posting day is the 10th. But I spent yesterday, the 10th, in the ER with my mother, once again. She had fallen and, it turns out, fractured a rib. 

And, as is usual in a busy city ER, we spent hours waiting for this test, then that one, the decision to admit, and finally a room... which she got into at 4 AM.

Yes, the fun never stops. Now I'mma gonna get an hour of shut-eye, then head back to the hospital.


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13 Things to Do in the ER for 30 Hours

I had all kinds of plans and ambitions for my life and blog this Monday and Tuesday, which all came to naught because of one of *THOSE* phone calls I received Monday, early afternoon.  A classic "your mother isn't feeling well and we think she should be seen by a doctor right away" phone call.

So out went the Book Expo 11 plans, including a tea party at Random House with the fabulous Lisa See. Out went my Red Dress Club  RemembeRED memoir post.

In came the grueling grind: sleep deprivation and worry and tedium and adrenaline and annoyance and rage and acceptance and stupor and... a lot of sour lemons. So I made the bloggers version of lemonade: whipped up a post about it.

It is now late late Tuesday night, and my mother has FINALLY been admitted to a proper bed in a proper room on the appropriate ward. I wrote this post Monday night between midnight and about 3 AM, typing with my thumbs on my little no-keyboard Droid cellphone. That I still had functional thumbs today? Nothing short of miraculous.

So without further ado, I bring you:

13 Things to do in the ER while waiting with your 88 year-old mother for them to find her a bed and move her the hell upstairs:

1.  Eat 2 packs of peanut M&Ms for dinner. (What? Like you've never experienced vending machine cuisine at its finest?)

2.  Read The New Yorker you brought with you cover to cover, even the articles about obscure sports figures you don't care about and the reviews of movies you were never planning to see in the 1st place.

3.  Feel inordinately proud of yourself that you managed to snag, vulture-like, from the patient vacating the berth next door: the pillow your mother's head is dizzily resting upon and the hard, narrow, plastic chair that is currently causing you a literal pain in the butt. As there are so very few of these rare and valuable commodities in the insanely overcrowded ER, you had to consciously restrain yourself from performing a fist pump of victory upon their procurement.

4.  Calling overcooked fish, white rice & soggy mixed veggies "a meal" and pouncing upon it with your mother when it arrives at 8 pm after 6 foodless hours spent in the ER.  (Also? Feeling like a genius for re-purposing the "real lemon juice" packets provided with the tea to make the fish vaguely palatable.)  

5.  Wish you could shut your ears and not hear, the same way you can close your eyes and not see, so as to not have to listen to the 15 minutes of crying, screaming, wailing, cursing, gurgling and pleading going on in the curtained bay next to yours as a young woman has "about a gallon of pus" surgically drained from abscesses in her jaw. Realize how many doctors really do have impatience with, and markedly little empathy for patient's pain. (Be incredibly grateful for the amazing man who is your mother's - and was your father's - eminently patient & empathetic cardiologist. A menschier doctor does not exist.)

6.  Try to hold the lockless stall door closed by sheer will as you pee as quickly as female-humanly possible in the filthy visitor bathroom that you had been hoping not to encounter, but just couldn't hold it in any longer.

7.  Tie the undone shoelaces of the incredibly adorable 3 year old girl who has sidled up to you in the outer waiting room and tapped you on the knee to request assistance with said task, while her bedraggled mother simultaneously tries to fill out paperwork & calm her screaming, ill infant. Give up on trying to answer an urgent email and play with this sweet child for the last 5 minutes of your 10 minute "plugged-in" break from the inner ER electronic blackout zone. Return to your mother with a smile on your face.

8.  Try not to cry, yourself, as you (expecting tears and howls) break the news to your autistic son that you will NOT be home to put him to bed as you had PROMISED him you would be this morning, kissing him goodbye at the school bus door. Be surprised and thankful for his calmness, but even more wrenched by his brave little "OK, mommy I'll see you in the morning." Pray they find a bed for your Mom before 5 AM so as to make THAT one true. (They didn't.)

9.  Listen in to the weary mother of the young man in the next-door berth to the other side as she explains to the hospital security guard for the 10th time why she cannot leave for the standard shift-change visitor clearing protocol, as her non-verbal, seizure-prone, mentality challenged son would be completely lost and unable to communicate without her by his side. Try very hard not to start thinking about how life will be if Jacob still has significant communications problems when he is a man, no longer a child, and my presence by his side will be constantly questioned, his disability invisible.

10.  Be eternally grateful it's just an "ordinary" busy Monday and so we're not being "entertained" by one of the loud, drunk/high, belligerent & yet also inappropriately amorous couples who always manage to show up in the ER on Saturday nights. (I had enough of THOSE on my train ride from Boston to Lowell two weeks ago.)

11.  Laugh when your Mom loudly contemplates what she can possibly lift from the stocked supply shelves you pass, walking her to the one non-filthy patient bathroom on the far side of the ER. Make her laugh as you invent imaginary uses for the pink bedpan you assume she plans on stealing.  Look the other way as she nicks a mini tissue box: "It''s such a convenient size!"

12.  Try not to think about why you know this ER like the back of your hand, can find your way through the catacombed passageways of this hospital's lower corridors like a resident, pushing back against the tide of memories of your father spending much time and mother-in-law dying in the selfsame ward they are seeking to place your mother in, tonight.

13. Two words: angry birds. Two less fun words: dead battery. Two even less fun words: puking toddler. (And yes, a hurling pediatric patient missed my feet by inches today when my Mom was in triage. But it was sweet to hear him say afterward: "I feew bedda now" to the surprised nurse.)

And? that's all folks. Wish us luck!

@@@@@@@

Well, we finally got the luck... some 30 HOURS late.  Much more hilarity ensued, more stories to tell... another night. 

Now? TO BED.


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