Life under construction

I haven't been posting due to unforeseen circumstances involving my mother.  She has since March 7th been in and out of hospitals and rehabs and is now once again in the hospital fighting an infection.  She is doing fairly well, as well as can be expected for a woman with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  My mother was a smoker, and despite quitting almost thirty years ago, the damage has already been done to her lungs.  She has flare-ups, usually pneumonia only this last time it was bronchitis, and she has to be treated with antibiotics and inhalers.  It is a scary way to live hoping that you don't lose the air that you so preciously need to survive.

On the anniversary of my father's death we almost lost my mother.  I can now joke about him pushing her back down from above because he has peace and quiet now, but at the time it was a daunting experience.  She had been in rehab doing quite well when she contracted pneumonia the day before she was to leave to go home.  The rehab staff wasn't so sure there was anything wrong, but all of that changed when I arrived to find her unresponsive in bed.  Suddenly it was like a scene from a medical show with the rapid response team rushing to her bedside thumping on her chest, calling out medical data, and starting IV's.  She was rushed out of the room encircled on all sides of her bed by the medical team and I was left standing in her empty room surrounded by her belongings.  The silence was haunting.

I have been preparing myself for my mother's death for some time now.  She isn't a healthy woman and the condition she has isn't going away.  There are days I have rushed to her house unable to get her on the phone.  There are days I have arrived at her house to find the lights off and the morning paper still at the door.  Those are the days where I have taken a deep breath and told myself that this might be the day she has decided to quit.  I'm as prepared then as anyone can be upon finding a dead loved one. 

That night in the ER the doctor talked to be about having to intubate her, but I wasn't really understanding him at that time.  I always think that these hospitals know that she doesn't want life support, but now I understand that they need paperwork.  My mother was coming in and out of consciousness and reality.  Her eyes were rolling around in her head quickly at times and shut more often then open.  Her blood pressure was low at 66/33.  Eventually I began to wrap my head around the things the doctor had told me and then I hunted him down and asked for another explanation.  He was kind.  "We have done all that we can for her," he told me.  "It is up to her now."  He talked again about the intubation and I told him she was a DNR and had paperwork.  That was taken off the table.  He told me to tell my brother to come to Florida.

My mother rallied.  She gripes about it at times now, but she isn't ready to die yet.  Yes, she is in pain.  Yes, her quality of life isn't good.  Yes, she is miserable most of the time.  But deep down she isn't ready to give it all up.  She has her children and her grandchildren and her Netflix.  I'm not sure what keeps her going, but I feel that when she has had enough she will stop fighting.  That night she fought when I told her she was sick, that she could either fight or not, that her son was on the way but wouldn't arrive until tomorrow.  It didn't take long after that conversation for her to start coming around.  She spent five days in ICU and five days in a regular room before moving to rehab once again.

She came home Monday night.  Friday afternoon we were calling 911 and back in the ER all over again.  One time this happened she was in and out of the hospital for months.  She had been hospital free for a little over a year and she was lucky there.  This is just the way this disease goes.  Eventually it will kill her.  I'm not ready to lose my mother, but I'm also realistic.  The doctor in the second ER said she had had a good life.  My friend Kelly, who dropped everything to sit with me for nine hours, looked at him in disbelief and said, "She's only 78 years old!".  As we get older 78 looks younger. 

Dealing with my parents I realize life is passing us all by.  I'm trying to do what's right for my mother and my children and my husband.  It isn't easy.  There are days I scream and rant.  There are days I cry.  There are days I enjoy so much I want to hold them there forever.  Finding a balance between it all is difficult.  I just try to tell myself to live and love, take it one day at a time.