Hopeful and Grateful and Honored

Yes, it IS the 10th of the month and for once I am actually on time with my post over at Hopeful Parents, where you will find me today, summing up what's been going on with my family lately while looking for things to be grateful for in all the insanity.

So go there and read: Things to be Grateful For


But I also wanted to take this moment to note something really lovely:

I have been chosen as a BlogHer Voice of the Year for 2012. And this year, I am not just an honoree but an actual speaker... Which means I will be READING my selected post in the big Friday evening Voices of the Year keynote address at this summer's BlogHer conference here in New York City on August 3rd.

I remember so well sitting in the audience, listening, rapt in 2010 and 2011; being moved to laughter and tears by so many wonderful, inspiring women and their work.

Last year, my dear friend and BlogHer roommate Alexandra (the Empress) was one of the readers, along with other bloggers, old and new to me, whose voices sang out into the room.

And now this year I, along with so many other wonderful women (and one rather wonderful man: instagram genius, Neil Kramer) will get to return the favor. I feel so honored and thrilled, beyond belief, over the moon. It's a blogging gal's dream come true.

So, if this is such big news, if it's so important, then why have I waited nearly 2 long weeks since the official announcement to tell you all about it? For the same reason everything in my life is deferred at the moment: I got the news while sitting by my mother's bedside in the hospital.

It was less than a week out from the fall, when she was still quite touch and go. The lone bright spot in my rather dark day, I thought "I must write a post about this!" but then it was quickly shoved to the back burner by more pressing issues surrounding my mother.

So I have finally grabbed THIS moment to tell you all. Because those pressing issues? They are not going away any time soon.

And the two sentence update on my mom: Today was yet another long up and down day with her. Mostly down, though by the end there was some peace, as she slept and slept.

Up and Down

Beautiful flowers in Mom's room (thanks Bruce, Bern, Rachel & Simon)

I only have time for the quickest of updates tonight; barely a post, more of a postette, postella, postellini. Because I am completely knackered. (For my readers who are not anglo-australo-philes that means totally worn out, tired, broken.)

In fact, I'm pretty much going to recap my Facebook status updates because that about says it all:

When I arrived:

"Mom is having another really hard day. One minute she is admiring the smile of the nurse who has come to take her blood and the next she is sobbing and screaming at me to just let her die, it hurts to much to live and she just wants to be done.

After this, and before going home to children who will be all over me because I've been gone all day? I think I need a drink."

Then, later:

Mom was in better space & spirits by the time I left. I still do not understand how no one figured out her severe discomfort was caused by gas and that she needed a very simple anti-gas medicine (simethicone) to feel like a human being. I should NOT have to have been the one to suggest it!

And in the middle? (Warning, what follows is a bit of a rant. Cursing involved. Because it was one of THOSE days.)

A lot of begging my mother to eat and drink, followed by her taking one mouthful of yogurt, one sip of seltzer, and then holding up her hand, cursing at me when I try to force more.

A lot of running to the nurse. They are growing to dread me at the hospital rehab nursing station, and that's a good thing. Because I MAKE them fucking take proper CARE of my mother, which they are somehow loathe to do.

I tell the nurse my mother in in excruciating pain and she blinks at me blankly "Really, she didn't say anything to me."

REALLY? REALLY? Are you fucking kidding me?

She didn't "say" anything because she is so out of it. The pain has reduced her to the state of an animal, holding her abdomen and moaning about how she is terrified she is dying.

But if you ask her point blank, she will say she's not in pain, that she's just uncomfortable. Because she's so polite and all. Also, at this moment, mentally compromised enough to NOT be a reliable reporter - as I have told the staff a BAJILLION times.

At one point, she turned to me and asked, "They are giving me so many medicines already isn't there SOMETHING they can give me that will take me out of this misery?" And I thought "Damn straight there should be something!" and ran off to the nurse to make sure they'd been giving her simethicone for what was, so clearly obviously to me, severe gas pain.

Nope.

No one noticed, and she didn't request it. I actually may have gotten a little mouthy at that point and said something about how when my babies were gassy and screaming in pain it didn't take a medical degree for me to figure out they needed simethicone drops. And how I didn't feel the need to wait for them to "ask" either.

And a dose of simethicone and a couple of trips to the bathroom and bedpans later (no gory details I promise, even though I got to live them, you won't have to) and she was back in her mind, able to converse, aware of the world outside her body.

So I arrived to a mother who would not eat a bite of her lunch and who responded to my entreaties by pounding on the bed and yelling "Yes, yes, I want to die, I am ready to die, just get this OVER with, I can't take any more!"

And I left a mother who was actually eating dinner, slowly making her way through the fruit salad and asparagus, the first solid things she had taken in, in days.  And a mother who was holding my hand and thanking me for being there.

And it was so hard to leave her, not knowing how she would fare in the night. But my children across town needed me too.

And I don't know who I am going to find in the morning, the pain animal or my rational mother. Hoping for my sweet mother, but willing to do whatever it takes to get her back, in any case.

Who The Hell Am I?

Me and Mom on Mother's Day, just before the fall

Today Eden asked: Who The Hell Are You? and invited us to answer.

But today? I don't have an answer.

The I in me is missing.

I have been consumed, subsumed by caregiving.

And at the moment there is no end in sight.

Right now I am a daughter and a mother and truly nothing more.

Just a month ago I was becoming a somebody again. I even said so in The New York Times (online).

And then bully big bear life took a giant paw and swatted me back down. But first he took down my mother.

For a while now we have known that she was one fall away from hell, and our fingers were crossed for so long they grew permanently twisted and entwined like wisteria trunks. But it happened anyway. On a random Friday. (But so un-random: the Friday just before a three-day weekend full of family plans, as it is ever so.)

And though she is technically on the mend, the steel rod in her hip stronger than the bone surrounding it, able to hold her up, she is still falling down. My mother is descending the rabbit hole of despair. She is in a no-win situation and while I hold it together during my visits, I weep in the elevator on the way down to the street, emerge from the hospital's chill air onto the steaming city streets with silent sobs wracking my body, tears streaming down my face.

I have just spent two, three, four, five hours besides my mother who is grimacing and groaning and sharply intaking her breath, in between moments of begging me to let her go home. She is so tired, so discomforted, so without energy or appetite or hope; unmoored in time and space, unsure of where she is or why.

She wants to be allowed nothing more than to sleep; to sleep and sleep and sleep and rest her bone-weary body. But to let her lie in bed now is to let her lie in bed forever; if she doesn't get up on her feet soon, she never will.

So I am letting the rehab folks kindly torture her. And feel the twisting of my guts as she says: "I can't, I can't, I can't." But then does.

And every fresh day I lie in bed at 5:45, alarm braying, saying to myself: "I can't, I can't, I can't." But then I do.

Linking up with lovely Eden of Edenland today. Neigh.

Wordless Wednesday for Real: My Crew

It's true! I am too tired for words. Squashed so flat you could slide me though the mail slot. So instead, here's a few recent pictures of some of the folks I dearly love:

School Mornings with Jake

Ethan in an elevator

Mom in Hospital, Day 12

So, I'll just let that do for a post, as we come to the end of my mother's day 13 in the hospital. More words tomorrow.

ishes

A yellowish android

Today, I'm taking a break from reporting from my mother's bedside. Not that it's any different, any better there. I just can't keep talking about it day in and day out. My guts are too wrenched, they need a break.

So tonight, a little bit lighter fare; a few moments with the kids. Remember them? Yep, still got 'em.

Jacob tonight was showing me the pictures he'd drawn today, while he was home after school with Daddy. As is usual, he engaged me in conversation the best way he knows how: asking questions he already knows the answers to.

"Mom, what color is Vegeta's* hair?" I had to look to see if he had been drawn as a regular Sayan or a Super-Sayan this time. "Black honey, it's blackish."

"What is 'black-ish' Mom?"

Oy!

-ish is such an abstract concept, I think he's never going to get it, but I try...  "You add '-ish' to the end of a word to show how it is kind of, almost, but not quite all of something. You say 'whitish' about something that is not quite pure white, but on its way there, in the white family."  And left it at that.

And five minutes later...

Jake: "Mom, what color is Freeza's skin?"

I look over. "It's pink honey."

"Nooooo, it's pink-ISH, Mommy!"

And so it was.

(Never underestimate an autistic person's ability to learn.)

And then Ethan, on the loooooong way home from an East side doctor's appointment (Obama in New York = traffic from hell) decides to invent a word. Or rather, a new meaning for an old word, create some slang, as it were.

"Mom, let's make up a new meaning for the word 'Bagel' - OK?"

"OK." I say, game for any sort of game that does not involve a screen.

"How about... a special way you stab something with a sword?" He suggests.

"How about something non-violent?" I counter.

"It's a hug. A special, special hug where you wrap your arms around someone and give them a squeeze like you're the bagel and they're in the hole in the middle."

"THAT I like!"

"Give me a bagel, Mom!"

And I do.

I so do.


*If you have anything like a nine year old boy, you probably know who all these characters are. If not, you are without a clue. They're from the Japanese anime cartoon world of Dragonball Z - one of Jake's current obsessions.

I am linking this up with Just Write, because I just wrote it.

Sandwiched

It's been ten days now since my mom fell, broke her hip and landed in the hospital via the ER. And thus my second weekend being completely torn between my mother's and my family's total need of me.

To say I am nearly being ripped apart by this is an understatement.

I am so sorry to still be here in this space, neither delighting nor entertaining you, my readers. I like being funny. I miss being funny, sweet or lyrical. I even miss thinking about autism nearly all the time.

If you're newly visiting my blog and want something other than this grim, gut wrenching sandwich generation, ill, elderly and rather broken mother in the hospital stuff, might I suggest you read some old posts of mine? Try "Best Squash" or "The Alphabet Posts" in the tabs above. Or maybe click "Humor" from the label cloud to the left. (Or click my shiny hotlinks.)

And, for people who actually want the update on my life, my mom:  She's hanging in there. We're both exhausted.

They moved her to the rehab unit yesterday, and I'm not sure she was quite ready, but a bed was open so... she went.  Physically, she is out of immediate post-operative danger, but the rehab is going to be a long haul for her.

She's still in a lot of pain. And she's very up and down.

When I show up, I never know if I'm going to find with-it, upbeat, funny, joking with the nurses Mom, or confused, miserable, groaning in pain and begging to go home Mom.  And sometimes I will show up to find one type, and then she will emerge from a short nap, the other.

But show up, I must. If I am not there, my mother does not eat.

When I arrive a look of relief usually washes over her; she grabs my hand, holds it for all the world as if she's never letting go. And then three minutes later she's drifted off to sleep again, the hot cocoa I've brought her abandoned two sips in.

Today was my mother-in-law's unveiling. I was heartbroken that I couldn't go to the cemetery with my husband and the rest of his family. But it was to be the whole day, and I couldn't not show up at my mother's bedside.

Also this: while my mother is out of immediate danger, her inevitably fatal cardiac condition is progressing: critical aortic stenosis; which is the same thing that killed my father. (Which is why I am encouraging Ethan to go into hi-tech medical research and invent nanobots that can repair aortic valves. Just in case, you know?) This could be her last hospitalization. This could be the beginning of the end, which is surely coming, in the not so distant future.

I must push to be as there as possible for her. Each moment is precious. Even if she is sleeping through most of them right now.

Today was another one of those days. But they're all those days, these days.

Today Jake melted down because his video game didn't work right, and he didn't want to play another. And then, he had to take his glasses off because they were all foggy with crying and he sat on them, bent them out of shape. And then he was crying because he wanted his glasses - and the store that fixes them opens at noon earliest on Sundays.

And Ethan had undone homework hanging over our heads like an anvil, and I could not let him go off on a playdate until it was done. And Jake's vitamins needed to be poured for the day, because neither the sitter nor my husband can do that.

And so this morning the clock was ticking and I had not showered / dressed / packed my bag. Because there is always something else that needs to be done but I can't do it all and also get to my mother's side as soon as I wish.

I can't remember my last un-squashed moment.

But when the big one comes, when I am no longer squashed by my mother's demands but rather by the thousand-pound chest-weight of her absence, then I will long for these days when she was still here and I could still be with her, could still do for her.

And so I do, I do, I do.

And I sit and hold her hand.

One more day

I have now gotten through one more day with my mother in the hospital. She is in her 4th room in seven days - 5th if you count the ER - and she is disoriented. (Well, I think I would be too, in that situation.)

She is also, for the first time this time around, unfortunately, in the "A" bed now, which means the one near the door, not the window. And for my mother that means trouble, always. I have learned this by now. But try getting the hospital staff to listen to me...

My mom, struggling with short term memory issues under the BEST of circumstances (let alone the disorienting journey that is hospitalization) needs all the external supports she can get to help her know where she is and why she's there, what time it is and whether is is day or night.

And a window? Wonderfully useful to figure out whether the clock on the wall is telling you if it's noon or midnight.

Without this knowledge she gets anxious.  Today, every time she drifted off and then reawakened - which meant about every ten minutes - she would ask me, fearfully: "Is it morning or night? What time is it? What am I supposed to be doing?"  And also, often: "Varda, where am I? What happened to me?"

It's Groundhog Day all over again (and over, and over, and over again).

I considered making a voice recording on my phone so I could just hit a button and play it back for her each time, instead of leaning in to her good ear to speak the following, very clearly and in the perfect cadence that is neither too slow or too fast, with a voice that is neither too loud nor too soft:

"Mom, you're in the Hospital. Last Friday - a week ago now - you fell and broke your hip. On the left side, this side, here." (As I lightly touch the top of her left leg.)  "You had surgery on Sunday to fix it and they did - they put a metal rod and pins and screws in, good as new."

"But you heart had a hard time with the surgery. So you had to go to the ICU to get better. There was a machine breathing for you, with a tube down your throat, and you were heavily sedated. You probably don't remember anything from those days." (She shakes her head, she most certainly doesn't. This is all news to her. Again.)

"Then you got better, so they took out the tube and woke you up, and moved you to a room. Bruce came to visit for a few days." (She nods but she's just being polite. She has no memory of that either, it being more than an hour ago.)

"And now you're in this room, on the orthopedic floor, and you need to work on getting stronger and using your leg now. It's (insert time here) and time for you to (insert desired activity here - eat, rest, get your vitals taken, have PT) soon."

Mission accomplished.

Until the next time.