The Visible Woman...July 10, 2000

Monday

July 10, 2000

"My chief discovery in sickness and misfortune is the callousness of people to our case--not from hard-heartedness (everyone is kind), but from absence of sympathetic imagination. People don't know the horrors and they can't imagine them--perhaps they are unimaginable....Beyond a certain point, suffering must be borne alone, and so must extreme joy."

W.N.P. Barbellion, Journal of a Disappointed Man

playing doctor

mood: dark, but resigned

the belly of the beast

I spend a few minutes this morning marveling at the city and our neighborhood assoications who think that drawing dreamlike pictures of our street without driveways can create a nirvana for cars, bicycles and (maybe, but perhaps not) people walking dogs. The realities (and the linear feet) don't add up. Idiotic.

Some of the women of a certain age get together to mark the birthday of one of our own for lunch. Iron Cactus. I get alamo enchiladas but don't like them much. We have decided to go backwards in age on our birthdays henceforth. When I reach zero, you are all invited to the celebration.

I have a meeting. After it, a perfectly sane person says, "Let's go forward as if we are going forward with it and only raise objections to tweak it."

I get tangled with something I didn't understand about permissions on files on the servers and was a little late getting home. I am fretting about when we are going to get the parents settled in the house. They are back from their trip to West Texas. They have handled lots of things about moving, but being strung out all over town is wearing thin.

We decide to go to Ella's for dinner. Forrest calls and gets the last available table inside because half the restaurant is taken up with a wine dinner.

On the way down, Mom's door is ajar. We tell her a couple of times to close it after Forrest stops. She seems confused but she is fumbling with the seatbelt no one over 60 can put on.

At the restaurant, we order drinks. I ask Mom if she wants anything but water. Iced tea? She is pointing to the oyster appetizer. "I think I just want that?" OK, no drink. She continues to say, "That's all I want." The light in her eyes seems faded.

"Mom, did you take all your medication today?"

"I'm sorry. That's all I want."

We quickly decide that she is having a neurological episode. She can still walk though a bit hesitantly but is thoroughly confused. Gone. Nowhere. She doesn't know her name.

Forrest goes and tells the waiter we have to leave...an emergency. We are two minutes from Seton emergency.

Scribbled list of medication is fetched from her purse. Medicare and insurance cards produced. They give her a shot, an IV, run a cat scan.

Time drags on. People bleed and blink in the emergency room. One small child is everywhere, endangering himself and his mother is not so much indifferent as incompetent. Dad and I take turns going back to her spot in the labyrith of treatment areas. Forrest goes to 34th Street Deli and eats and brings back a sandwich for me. Mom's BP is very high. She starts to come around. I keep asking her: "Did you take your meds?" Finally, it is very late, the doctor wants to admit her. He is charting, talking into a tape recorder, I think. Dad tells us to leave (it's 10:30PM). I ask her about the meds and she admits that she didn't have enough on her trip so she just spaced them out. That's a dangerous thing to do with certain drugs. I interrupt the doctor and tell him what she said and he goes back to talk to her.

We watch the TV at home and wait for Dad's call. Finally, at 1:30AM, I drive back down the desserted street and pick him up. It's late and my head throbs. But I can't sleep very well. I vow that we will get her important numbers and her medications typed up in a reasonable fashion for her to carry. This is the type of thing I'd hoped we could handle being close. I hadn't wanted to have such a dramatic demonstration of its necessity.