Some of this story has already been told here, but I'm going to put it all together in one, hopefully well-written narrative. Well, I can try, can't I?...
Yesterday my mother was discharged from the hospital.
She'd been there almost a full week. She checked in (is "checked in" the right phrase?) last Thursday, the night before having surgery to remove tumor(s?) on her right leg, and for a complete knee replacement. This procedure was a surprise to all of us.
She'd been having intense pain in that leg for about 3 weeks since messing up her knee while getting into my aunt's car. The severity of the pain seemed too much to be explained away with just this injury, or even arthritis. She'd been going to doctors, and on the previous Friday, it was confirmed that the soft tissue cancer she'd had 3 or 4 years ago had returned... this time in her leg.
The possibility of radiation therapy to alleviate the pain in her leg was discussed, but the radiation oncologists didn't believe that this would help her, and they referred us to an orthopedic oncologist, Dr. A., in Baldwin Park, and an appointment for last Friday was made.
Thursday morning, my sister got a call from Dr. A.'s office, requesting that my mom come in a day early. The doctor could see her: in an hour. On her end, getting my mom ready to go and to Baldwin Park (about a 30 mile drive from their home in Culver City) was no piece of cake, but Angie managed it. I had a slightly shorter drive (about 22 miles, most of it on the fast-moving 605 freeway) and got there about 20 minutes before they did. I found the clinic in the large Kaiser hospital, and waited out front for my mom, dad and sister.
Somehow we all actually made it there at the time requested (though, the doctor's assistant, Regina, was so sweet that she told us that the doctor would see us "whenever we got there"), and it only took a few moments for us to go in and meet Dr. A.
He was young, handsome, thorough, scary-smart but personable, and it was his recommendation that my mom have surgery. He explained it all to us, showed us her new stainless steel knee, did a needle biopsy, and eventually mom was scheduled for surgery... the next day.
I think the selling point for everybody was his statement that in most surgeries like this, the post-surgery pain is so much less than the pre-surgery pain that most people are shocked at how great they feel again. Even with some pain. My mom had been literally miserable for weeks. Up until this point, we had been given no plan, besides morphine, for helping her. We knew she had cancer, and that terrified all of us. All this pain and cancer too? It was confusing. But having a plan to cut it away - hey, man, if it'll help: do it. Get it out of there. Now is fine, thank you.
Car journeys not being very much fun for my mom at this point, my dad requested that she be admitted Thursday so as to spare her the drive home and then back again (the surgery was scheduled for first thing Friday morning... can you imagine the traffic?). Dr. A.'s awesome staff found her a bed, and before long she was admitted and comfortable. Scared a little, but comfortable. My brothers Andy and Dan joined us at the hospital, too. The whole family was there for awhile, and I think that helped my mom calm down a little.
The next day, I met my dad and sister first thing in the morning at the hospital, and about an hour before her surgery was to begin, we were allowed in, 2 at a time. I went in first, with my dad. The anesthesiologist was talking with my mom, who was not very awake yet. He asked a bunch of questions about her medications and past surgeries that, truth be told, she had gone over with a guy during pre-op the day before (and she'd been much more lucid then). He was considering the possibility of giving her an epidural for the lower half of her body, and general anesthetic from the waist up. I have no idea how they do this. He asked if she'd had any experience with an epidural in the past, and she had: 37 years ago, when her "baby" (me) was born. He asked how that had gone, and she told him, seriously, that for awhile afterward she'd had really bad headaches. I had to laugh: right from the start, I've been a pain in my mom's neck!
(We found out later that her doctor nixed this idea, and she got full-on general anesthesia.)
After awhile I went out and got my sister so she could see mom, too, and then the three of us went to the waiting room, to wait.
Waiting sucks, in case you weren't sure. I had a book to read (the horribly written "Water for Elephants;" but this isn't a book review. I will only say, save your money) and my phone to play with.
After awhile, my brothers showed up to wait with us, and we were all sitting around, waiting. Right about at the time my brothers and sister went to get some lunch, the pager they give you while you're waiting (it's exactly like the pager you get at Island's or Elephant Bar when you're waiting for a table) went off. It took a few minutes to track down Angie, Andy and Dan, but once we told them where we were going, my dad and I went back up to the official waiting room (we'd been waiting in the main lobby because the surgery waiting room was overtaken with a huge, loud, Hispanic family. Also they were playing soap operas on the TV, and not one of us cares for them), where we learned we'd just missed the doctor.
Angie, Andy and Dan came up to meet us, and we sat around and waited some more.
Because the doctor had told us that surgery would take about 6-8 hours, and here it was, just 4 hours in, I started getting a little nervous.
This is how my brain works. I guess I hadn't factored in the post-op time, where my mom would be resting, waiting out the anesthesia, but I thought it was 6-8 hours of actual surgery. This was a major operation, and I thought for sure that having taken less time than we had been told... that this indicated something was wrong. I don't know what was going through the minds of the rest of my family, and I'm pretty sure I looked calm, but I wasn't. I was scared.
Finally the doctor came out again to talk to us, and he started talking about the surgery ("The surgery went great...") and I interrupted him pretty much head on and said, "Is my mom okay?" He stopped and looked at me, at all of us, and he said she was fine.
Then we let him tell us about the surgery, and he was pretty vague, to be honest. Beyond the "she looks great" detail, that's about all I remember. So it's possible there was more detail that I've just pushed under the "she's fine" gift he gave us, but I think no.
We had a couple more hours of waiting while mom came out from the anesthesia, and then finally they called us to accompany her to her room.
The walk from the waiting room door to her room was pretty scary. I'm sure she was still feeling the anesthesia a little, so I don't think at this point she was in pain, but she was crying. My dad looked scared. We all looked scared. The male nurse pushing her bed had everything under control, though, and as we all rolled down the hallway, my mom was praising God and crying. These are the two things I distinctly remember her saying:
"I'm so glad it's over!" and,
"Thank you Jesus!"
Without that last one I would've wondered if this was truly my mom.
We let the nurse get her settled with her IV and pain medication, and then finally we went in to see her.
She spent 6 full days in the hospital, and wow, that was an experience. For her, for us. I think she was glad to be there, and by the last day, her pain had tapered off a lot. In fact, I'm pretty sure she was almost pain-free. She was getting back to herself: complaining about the food a little, bossing us around a little, contemplating her future, getting ready to come home.
I brought her home yesterday in my car, which is lower than both my parents' cars (my Accord seemed like it would be more comfortable). Her leg is in an immobilizing strap-on cast like thing, and bending it is a big no-no still, but my front passenger seat didn't go back quite far enough. Right off the bat we realized that there was no good way to get her comfortable. My dad and sister had met me at the hospital in my mom's Blazer, which would've been impossible for her to ride in, so we had no choice but to just leave.
Angie rode in the back.
We gave her a couple of pain pills, but had no idea when they would kick in. I wanted her to be comfortable; I wanted to get the fuck home.
Luckily traffic on the 10 west (my dad swore by this route, but personally, I would've taken the 605 to the 105 to the 405, which I know seems longer, but to me, I hate the 10 west heading through downtown LA with the passion of a thousand suns). I should've done it. Instead, we made our way down the 10, and traffic was fairly light, but then my dad had told me to exit in Culver City at Washington Blvd., and this is where the trouble began.
Actually, this is not where the trouble began.
My mom was distressed the entire way home. She wasn't in too much pain, I think. I don't know, to be honest. It was very difficult and extremely uncomfortable for her, I know that. She cried. She prayed. She sang. Angie tried to help from the back seat, and we both spoke calmly to her.
I don't know how I stayed calm (usually in the face of my mom's tears, I get right in there with her and cry too), but my job, for 33 miles, was to drive. And I did it.
My mom, a born-again Christian, sang every Praise & Worship song she could remember (and some she couldn't. At one point she sobbed, "I can't remember the words!" I told her, that's okay, mom, make some up. And she did), she spoke directly to God and thanked Jesus for his mercy, and I sat there, with my "I'm driving us home and getting us there as safely as I can" face on. I tried to keep it at 60 mph - I don't usually drive that slowly on the freeway, and yes, I wanted to get there faster but the 10 is bumpy through parts of El Monte or where ever the hell we were, and I was afraid to hit a bump or a pothole or a mattress (why are there always trucks with questionably secured mattresses on them on the freeways? Have these people not seen CHiPs?) or worse. An accident or a near accident would've been a disaster. My dad, who left after we did (he had to get his car out of the parking lot) passed us. I was tense: but I tried to talk to my mom calmly, and we were okay, sort of, until we got off the freeway. My thoughts, as we drove, weren't in the same gentle vein as my mom's: I wasn't thanking God for his mercy but demanding that he DO SOMETHING for this woman who loves him so much: my belief or non-belief in him being beside the point. I was kind of mad about it all, which surprised me almost as much as my so-called nerves of steel.
And maybe I had stronger words in my head. I just wanted that ride to end. It was the worst 33 miles in my life, quite possibly the hardest thing I've ever done.
My dad prefers to exit the 10 at Washington rather than stay on and get on the 405 south for a couple of miles. Personally, if there's no rush, I don't mind going that way either. The downtown Culver City area (now) is new to me, and it's interesting to see all the new shops and restaurants down there. But if I had been thinking about it, I would've realized that it's also rife with traffic and stop signs and for some reason there were all these giant trucks out at the same time we were on the road, and I swear, that stretch of the ride was longer than all the time we were actually on the freeway. For once I agreed with Patrick about west side traffic, meaning: it sucks.
Finally we made it to Sawtelle (my trick of cutting through to Jefferson down Ince, instead of taking Duquesne, was thwarted by this mammoth truck that decided to make the same turn ahead of me, and he made me miss the freakin' light. Rather than sit there, I pulled back into traffic and just stayed on Washington), and I made an illegal right turn onto my parents' street, backed up into the driveway, and got out.
My dad and brothers helped get my mom out of the car, and she was calmer, now. Andy rolled her up the ramp my dad had made, and in a few moments, we were all fine (mom even complimented my driving).
Home has that effect sometimes, doesn't it.
No comments:
Post a Comment