A bubble of despair sits on my chest. It’s heavy and it’s making its presence known. If someone looks at me sideways – or doesn’t – it’s going to explode into rivulets of tears down my face. This bubble welled up out of nowhere, I’ve already had one explosion today. In my bedroom, dark and deep, where no one could hear or see it. But apparently my grief and fears want an audience because it’s back, and larger than ever.
My husband sits down with me on the couch and just like that the bubble pops. Baby Girl doesn’t know what to do when this happens, she wants to cuddle and pat my arm but she is shooed into the playroom because “Mommy is sad.” Mommy IS sad. It’s the type of sad borne out of an unableness to fix what’s wrong. Mommy is used to fixing what is wrong.
What do you do when you no longer have control? How do you watch your loved one wither and morph into something you don’t recognize, and which doesn’t recognize you? I’m not sure, I tell my brother, that she knows exactly who we are, but she knows we are important to her. She knows she loves us. She knows she wants us there. She does not call me by my name.
She is in the hospital, and I am sitting by her watching her sleep. I have moved a chair so that I can finally hold her hand, after three months of not touching. I rub the soft spot between her thumb and forefinger. The corners of her mouth are turned down and there are tears at the edges of her eyelids. Her chin is a mess of black and blue from where she fell. There is some dried blood around her mouth. I notice long hairs on her chin and upper lip that I know she would be mortified by if she knew they were there. I am struck by an urge to pluck them for her, but obviously I do not. She has gained weight and her arm is a bit swollen from putting the IV in. She wakes up and looks at me briefly. She is calm and for that I am grateful.
My mom has been in the ER and then in a hospital room since Wednesday night at 11 pm. It is now Friday at 8 am. I talked to the ENT that transported her to the hospital and was assured the hospital had all my information and would call me. I hear nothing further all night long. When I called the facility where she lives at 9 am Thursday morning I am assured she’s in her room, resting. I am relieved and go on about my day. Thursday afternoon at 4 pm a phone call tells me she has been admitted to the hospital. From …. where? I ask. From her room? What is going on? No, she was never brought back to the facility. She was in the ER until 1 or 2 pm today when they finally admitted her.
SHE WAS IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM ALL ALONE FOR 16 HOURS?! Horrified, I immediately call the ER she was taken to and the person that answers was actually my mom’s nurse. What on earth? I ask. Why did no one call me? I had no idea she was there by herself! The ER nurse said that they did not have any phone numbers. And you couldn’t call the facility and GET my number? “No,” he said. “I didn’t bother to do that.”
Y’all. Have you ever felt so enraged that you could jump down that phone line and rip someone’s F&(#$&% balls off?
You didn’t bother? I slowly state, just to clarify what he said. “No,” he said, and “I can see this conversation isn’t going anywhere so can I just transfer you to the third floor where she is now?”
I get that he was probably pretty busy but seriously WTF. She has Alzheimer’s – I am SURE the ENT told them she has advanced dementia. She was all alone in a place she did not recognize, could not speak for herself, and did not have anyone to advocate for her. She must have been absolutely terrified. That nurse took advantage of the situation and knew that my mom could not understand, and could not speak for herself and HE decided she would not remember and therefore was not AN ACTUAL PERSON who needed a family member. To top it all off, I also found out that one visitor per person is actually now allowed at that hospital so I could have been there with my mom the entire time. Actually physically present.
I. Can’t. Even.
I called my brother. He promised me that he would “do what he does.” Heads will roll and if that nurse isn’t fired I will be surprised (and pissed off.) I am usually all about forgiveness, and making mistakes and people being people and screwing up. NOT THIS TIME. In no way does that nurse NOT deserve to be fired. He clearly did not care about his patient. Her emotional needs were not considered. He did not care when he was speaking to me, he simply wanted to pass me along and get me off his back.
There are so many things that are wrong here. Mom is finally back in her room, with her cat, whom she does know is named Margaret. I believe she is probably doing as well as she can be. She was not actually injured from either her fall, or her prolonged stay in the emergency room. She doesn’t actually know what happened – she insisted that she “didn’t do it.” Whatever IT was in her mind – she was sure she wasn’t at fault. I can hear her, in my mind, and I know she was scared.
There is so much more I could say about being with her in the hospital, and how she was, and what my thoughts were. About how we finagled the system and got my Dad to meet us in the lobby so he could see her and hold her hand for five minutes before I took her “home.” I have so much to say. There is so much that I feel. But grief is the top emotion, and grief is what causes the bubble of despair. I am supposed to be my mom’s advocate. I was denied the opportunity to be there for her, and I am filled with anger.
So today I am a mushroom – hiding in the dark and hopefully gaining a little strength by being alone so that next time, next time, I can be there for her in all the ways that matter. I am her advocate. I am her daughter. She is not alone, no matter what that ER nurse thought. She has people. SHE HAS ME.
