So, I've been out of circulation for two weeks. Mark's mom fell and, with the exception of a single day in rehab nursing home care a week ago, has been in the hospital for the past two weeks.
I've been looking at, and hearing the sounds of, ghosts for the past two weeks - air compression stockings to push the blood from the legs back up to the heart, snaking IV lines, beeping monitors, grimaces from the face on the pillow. I've had to hear words that strike at the heart - palliative care, terminal, hospice, not a candidate for X. Jumping for news each time the phone rings - will it be good news this time or bad? A step forward, a step back, two steps forward, one step back, two steps back, one step forward...where do we stand today?
I'm going through all this in the present and the past. I hear the compression machine and Jim's lying in the bed. I see the gastro-nasal tube and remember my grandmother. The bruising and arm in the sling brings my other grandmother to my mind. I have fear in the present that is made worse by memories of the past.
I tell funny stories in waiting rooms to pass the time...the incident where I helped Jim to the washroom in the middle of the night and forgot to unplug the monitor from the wall, the lunch he ordered for Mark and me to eat while waiting for his blood transfusion. We laugh. I remember how the ending to those stories didn't turn out so well. Is everyone else remembering that too? Am I helping with the stories or making it worse?
The human body is a complex system. Doctors quote statistics and it's difficult to keep remembering that each individual doesn't become part of those statistical numbers until their story is over. It's a bell curve. Like I did for those in the past, I'll continue to hold out hope that mom will be on the far side of that curve. They call it denying statistics. I call it love.
