Three weeks have come and gone since my parents left our home and returned to the Central Valley following Mom’s surgery. Just when it all started to feel like a bad dream, Mom let me know that she may need to have a second surgery.
And finally, after avoiding the subject, in a phone conversation with her this week, we started to come to grips with the unholy trinity: Surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy. This has turned into the dreaded nightmare from which you cannot wake up.
I’d rather not remember the details of Mom’s surgery. My parents stayed with us a full week, Dad sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the living room, Mom sleeping on the couch before and after her hospital stay, everyone in the house stressed out to the max. I had to stay out of work to play babysitter and chauffeur. Attending services with my parents on the first night of Rosh Hashannah and leaving early because Mom didn’t feel well. Ferrying them back and forth to Kaiser in Sacramento for testing, admission, post-operative doctor visits. Mom crying on the phone to Kaiser because she’s being transferred from one office to the next, no one seeming to know what time she should report for surgery. Meeting the surgeons after they put an IV into Mom. Not knowing what to say to them. Not knowing how to reassure Mom. Not knowing freaking anything anymore. Feeling dumb as a sack of beans. Horrible pain for Mom, endless waiting for the rest of us. Carrying around my laptop and trying to get some work done during the waiting. Hobbling around the hospital with my cane.
Mom, pumped full of morphine and still in pain despite the drugs, begging the hospital staff to let her stay in post-op a little longer. Request denied. Kaiser trying to send her home before she was ready, resulting in Mom crying and horribly abusing the nurses. Mom being fitted with a catheter, but not before being shown a scary film about catheter care and the awful things that can happen if you mess up. Mom yelling that the catheter felt like someone trying to forcibly have intercourse with her. Going into the bathroom with Mom to assure her that she did not break the emptying valve. First night back at our house, Mom waking me up by kicking my bedroom door at 2 in the morning, yelling that she was having an emergency and needed to go back to the hospital. Carrying on about red streaks near her wound and how the literature given to her by the hospital said she should contact her doctor immediately if she experiences such symptoms. Mom dropping her pants so I could see. Um, a son isn’t supposed to do this, uh, right? Me assuring her that it’s just normal bruising. Go back to bed, Mom. Mom blurting out that my wife hates having her here and that she is going to divorce me. No, Mom, she’s not going to divorce me. Sigh.
A full week after their arrival, my parents finally headed home. Thirty minutes after they left, my grandnephew was born at a different Kaiser hospital, two months premature. He weighed just over a pound and a half and went straight to neonatal intensive care, where he remains. My wife and her sister drive down there about four times a week to be supportive of my young nephew and his wife. I go about once a week. You know me: Have cane, will hobble down hospital corridors. Hit the sink and scrub up to my elbows so I can see the baby in his incubator. Hobble back down the hall to sit with family.
I think there’s an ancient oriental curse: May your life be filled with hospitals.
As for Mom, she is recovering nicely, feeling better with those heavy teratomas removed, but feeling too tired to do much. It will take time, I’ve assured her. At least it isn’t cancer. A blood test before the surgery reassured us of this.
Then one of the surgeons called Mom last week. Um, we looked at the contents of the teratomas under a microscope and squamous cancer cells were found. We were shocked! We’ve never seen this before. We have to do a PET scan in November to see whether cancer has metastasized to other parts of your body.
I now call Mom three times per week. She vents and I listen. Listening is good, I tell myself. All you can do is be there for her. I can only hope that I am doing this right. For after spending a life as a writer, a man of words, I find that they have disintegrated into a meaningless babble of syllables, vowels, consonants. The words, my trusty tools, my stock in trade, have deserted me. And I don’t know what to say.
I’d rather not remember the details of Mom’s surgery. My parents stayed with us a full week, Dad sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the living room, Mom sleeping on the couch before and after her hospital stay, everyone in the house stressed out to the max. I had to stay out of work to play babysitter and chauffeur. Attending services with my parents on the first night of Rosh Hashannah and leaving early because Mom didn’t feel well. Ferrying them back and forth to Kaiser in Sacramento for testing, admission, post-operative doctor visits. Mom crying on the phone to Kaiser because she’s being transferred from one office to the next, no one seeming to know what time she should report for surgery. Meeting the surgeons after they put an IV into Mom. Not knowing what to say to them. Not knowing how to reassure Mom. Not knowing freaking anything anymore. Feeling dumb as a sack of beans. Horrible pain for Mom, endless waiting for the rest of us. Carrying around my laptop and trying to get some work done during the waiting. Hobbling around the hospital with my cane.
Mom, pumped full of morphine and still in pain despite the drugs, begging the hospital staff to let her stay in post-op a little longer. Request denied. Kaiser trying to send her home before she was ready, resulting in Mom crying and horribly abusing the nurses. Mom being fitted with a catheter, but not before being shown a scary film about catheter care and the awful things that can happen if you mess up. Mom yelling that the catheter felt like someone trying to forcibly have intercourse with her. Going into the bathroom with Mom to assure her that she did not break the emptying valve. First night back at our house, Mom waking me up by kicking my bedroom door at 2 in the morning, yelling that she was having an emergency and needed to go back to the hospital. Carrying on about red streaks near her wound and how the literature given to her by the hospital said she should contact her doctor immediately if she experiences such symptoms. Mom dropping her pants so I could see. Um, a son isn’t supposed to do this, uh, right? Me assuring her that it’s just normal bruising. Go back to bed, Mom. Mom blurting out that my wife hates having her here and that she is going to divorce me. No, Mom, she’s not going to divorce me. Sigh.
A full week after their arrival, my parents finally headed home. Thirty minutes after they left, my grandnephew was born at a different Kaiser hospital, two months premature. He weighed just over a pound and a half and went straight to neonatal intensive care, where he remains. My wife and her sister drive down there about four times a week to be supportive of my young nephew and his wife. I go about once a week. You know me: Have cane, will hobble down hospital corridors. Hit the sink and scrub up to my elbows so I can see the baby in his incubator. Hobble back down the hall to sit with family.
I think there’s an ancient oriental curse: May your life be filled with hospitals.
As for Mom, she is recovering nicely, feeling better with those heavy teratomas removed, but feeling too tired to do much. It will take time, I’ve assured her. At least it isn’t cancer. A blood test before the surgery reassured us of this.
Then one of the surgeons called Mom last week. Um, we looked at the contents of the teratomas under a microscope and squamous cancer cells were found. We were shocked! We’ve never seen this before. We have to do a PET scan in November to see whether cancer has metastasized to other parts of your body.
I now call Mom three times per week. She vents and I listen. Listening is good, I tell myself. All you can do is be there for her. I can only hope that I am doing this right. For after spending a life as a writer, a man of words, I find that they have disintegrated into a meaningless babble of syllables, vowels, consonants. The words, my trusty tools, my stock in trade, have deserted me. And I don’t know what to say.
A Map of California 