Not Normal
2019-03-18
“No, this is not normal.” I say over and over again to the hospital staff who meet Mom for the first time.
Mom lies in a restless sleep sometimes trying to swing her legs out of bed sometimes eyes directed to the lights flashing from the television on the wall mounted above the nursing chart. She doesn’t recognize me or say anything. She moans and brings her hand from the bed to her lips and rests again.
Just two weeks ago she was eating scones and cucumber sandwiches at our last tea party. Today she refuses pudding and water. Someone convinced her to take her first sip of juice in days last night, but she’s taken nothing since.
We had company for dinner that weekend and she sat and talked with the mother of eight who came over with her family and discussed Mom’s favorite brand of sneakers. I was able to convince her to say a long drawn out “hi” yesterday and saw one smile, that beautiful smile that lights up her face. Other than that she is silent except for an occasional moan or two. She hummed a little bit. It wasn’t her tune. It didn’t last long. Even her hum is broken.
She hasn’t gone on any walks since we moved last August, well for about a year. I don’t know if she had ever gotten back into her mile a day since she started dialysis a year and a half ago. She hasn’t been exercising but she was walking around the house and yard before she started falling. She walked around the nursing home even though they tried to keep her in a wheelchair for safety. That’s how she escaped out the emergency exit last week. Today the physical therapist came in and sat her up on the edge of the bed. She didn’t fall to the side and maintained her sitting balance for a few minutes. He pulled her to standing long enough for me to straighten out her sheets. She slept for an hour afterwards.
There has been a drastic change in the past couple of weeks and in the past few days. There has also been a gradual change since we moved to Texas when her kidney function when into a dive and she went onto dialysis. She likes tea parties and gatherings but has been a silent member for many months now. Her days filled with reading and praying and resting. No one in Texas remembers Mom of Albuquerque who used to go palling around with her caregivers and friends. She would talk for hours with them and was always trying some shenanigans. Like the time she tried to convince her caregiver Maria to buy her a bee hive for her bedroom. Like the way she’d sneak huge potted plants into her room till she was living in a jungle. She hasn’t tried anything fun like that in at least three years. The Albuquerque friends never saw her as the active homebody when she moved in with us in San Diego before Basil was born. She vacuumed and did the dishes and helped with the babies and toddlers as they came along. She went for long walks to pick lemons off the neighbor’s trees. That wasn’t her old self either. When she was living in her own home before diabetes and kidney disease, she was always on the go. She was queen of dropping in on friends and drove somewhere everyday like Denny’s for a senior breakfast or McDonalds for fries or to the library and a stop at the park where she sat and read her books. She loved church and not only didn’t miss a service but went to two or three churches for extra Bible studies and fellowship groups. Her friend Sherri from middle school was just describing Mom as a teenager telling grandma that she was going into to visit her girlfriend when the weekends were full of movies, fun, and finding boys at the park to take her out to dinner. Her wild side has been distilled into throwing her leg over the bed railing.
The doctor has run test after test and can’t find a cause. No stroke. No UTI. No infections. Blood levels of everything are acceptable numbers. There are more tests to do but it doesn’t seem likely that there is anything to find. He says that we can send her to a nursing home where with time she might get back to normal. Which normal is he talking about?
Mom hasn’t seen the normal she’d like to get back to in a very long time.
2019-03-18
“No, this is not normal.” I say over and over again to the hospital staff who meet Mom for the first time.
Mom lies in a restless sleep sometimes trying to swing her legs out of bed sometimes eyes directed to the lights flashing from the television on the wall mounted above the nursing chart. She doesn’t recognize me or say anything. She moans and brings her hand from the bed to her lips and rests again.
Just two weeks ago she was eating scones and cucumber sandwiches at our last tea party. Today she refuses pudding and water. Someone convinced her to take her first sip of juice in days last night, but she’s taken nothing since.
We had company for dinner that weekend and she sat and talked with the mother of eight who came over with her family and discussed Mom’s favorite brand of sneakers. I was able to convince her to say a long drawn out “hi” yesterday and saw one smile, that beautiful smile that lights up her face. Other than that she is silent except for an occasional moan or two. She hummed a little bit. It wasn’t her tune. It didn’t last long. Even her hum is broken.
She hasn’t gone on any walks since we moved last August, well for about a year. I don’t know if she had ever gotten back into her mile a day since she started dialysis a year and a half ago. She hasn’t been exercising but she was walking around the house and yard before she started falling. She walked around the nursing home even though they tried to keep her in a wheelchair for safety. That’s how she escaped out the emergency exit last week. Today the physical therapist came in and sat her up on the edge of the bed. She didn’t fall to the side and maintained her sitting balance for a few minutes. He pulled her to standing long enough for me to straighten out her sheets. She slept for an hour afterwards.
There has been a drastic change in the past couple of weeks and in the past few days. There has also been a gradual change since we moved to Texas when her kidney function when into a dive and she went onto dialysis. She likes tea parties and gatherings but has been a silent member for many months now. Her days filled with reading and praying and resting. No one in Texas remembers Mom of Albuquerque who used to go palling around with her caregivers and friends. She would talk for hours with them and was always trying some shenanigans. Like the time she tried to convince her caregiver Maria to buy her a bee hive for her bedroom. Like the way she’d sneak huge potted plants into her room till she was living in a jungle. She hasn’t tried anything fun like that in at least three years. The Albuquerque friends never saw her as the active homebody when she moved in with us in San Diego before Basil was born. She vacuumed and did the dishes and helped with the babies and toddlers as they came along. She went for long walks to pick lemons off the neighbor’s trees. That wasn’t her old self either. When she was living in her own home before diabetes and kidney disease, she was always on the go. She was queen of dropping in on friends and drove somewhere everyday like Denny’s for a senior breakfast or McDonalds for fries or to the library and a stop at the park where she sat and read her books. She loved church and not only didn’t miss a service but went to two or three churches for extra Bible studies and fellowship groups. Her friend Sherri from middle school was just describing Mom as a teenager telling grandma that she was going into to visit her girlfriend when the weekends were full of movies, fun, and finding boys at the park to take her out to dinner. Her wild side has been distilled into throwing her leg over the bed railing.
The doctor has run test after test and can’t find a cause. No stroke. No UTI. No infections. Blood levels of everything are acceptable numbers. There are more tests to do but it doesn’t seem likely that there is anything to find. He says that we can send her to a nursing home where with time she might get back to normal. Which normal is he talking about?
Mom hasn’t seen the normal she’d like to get back to in a very long time.