The bad news came the other night. My mother's treatment is not working, and there was swelling on the front right side of her brain that was beginning to impair her cerebral and cerebellar functions.
This was discovered when my mother was eating dinner and realized that her left hand had taken up temporary residence in her mashed potatoes only after she had lifted the aforementioned hand up and rubbed her head. In doing so, she smeared the potatoes across her brow and head. While the picture that may paint in your mind may cause you to chuckle, my sisters, who had been staying with my mom and dad, immediately freaked out thinking that my mom had suffered a stroke, and rushed her off to the Stroke Center in DC for immediate evaluations.
As it turned out, she didn't have a stroke, but the symptoms were similar enough in nature that it was a good precaution. The doctors immediately started my mom on medication to reduce her brain swelling, but postulated that the swelling was caused by the expansion of her existing tumors. The prognosis for this is grim, and though we all still hope for a miracle, the reality of the situation is that my parents and sisters and I all agree that my mom and dad need the help of a hospice to adequately deal with this situation however it plays out.
I was the latecomer to this clan meeting. I got word of this on Wednesday night, after I spent the latter part of the day at the doctor's office, trying to figure out whether the trouble I was having breathing was caused by pleuracy, a non-diagnosed hiatal hernia, or some other unforeseen ailment. The doctor I was seeing that day, because my doctor was booked full and unable to see me, immediately jumped to the "you're fat and having a heart attack" conclusion. This only succeeded in pissing me off. I explained that I didn't think that was it, and that the pain I was experiencing was only on deep inhalation, and when I breath when laying prone, and also when I cough. Undeterred, she ordered up a EKG to make sure my heart wasn't about to explode out of my chest and muck up her tidy office. When the test came back with a perfect heart rhythm reading, I think I limited my "I told you so's" to a bare minimum, perhaps 8 or 9 at best.
The next step for her was palpation of my back and chest. Unknown to me however, was that this doctor was either a bonafide member of the undead or that she was just off in the other room with her hands in two buckets of ice. When she put her ice cold "Dukes" on my back, I nearly shot off the exam table into John's arms halfway across the room. She laughed and rubbed them together, bringing them from a frosty 20 degrees to a much balmier 22 or 23 degrees. I've heard of having ice in your veins, but she put new meaning to those words, as she kept me jumping and wriggling all over the place as she poked and prodded me with her icy digits.
I was then informed that the x-ray tech had left for the day and that I would need to come back the next day for an x-ray to check to see what might be going on in my chest. Figuring that the worst was over, I took my chart and paperwork and headed over to the labs area so that they could do some blood letting... er... blood drawing on me to see if they could find anything there. As I got there, the doctor strode up to me and added one more thing to the list, a fecal sample card pack, and I realized that I had cursed myself by thinking the worst was past and that the day could indeed get a whole lot worse.
If you've never had the pleasure of doing one of these, a fecal card pack is a multi-day test wherein you have to collect specimens of your own poop and put them on a card and send the whole lot of cards back in an envelope so they can be tested for blood or whatever else it is you can look to find in poop these days. The lab tech handed me the pack and I looked at it, mouth completely agape. I quickly asked if I could just grind one out right there for them and not have to do the collecting, spreading, letting dry, folding and mailing off business. I admit it, I'm a wuss. The idea of making teeny-tiny poop picassos on the inside of what looks like a bunch of matchbook covers just has no appeal to me whatsoever.
First off, I've not had a regular bowel movement since Bill Clinton was in office and I had my gall bladder out. I actually worry when I DO have a normal bowel movement as that's usually a sign that I'm sick or about to be sick.
Second, what does come out of there usually looks and smells like it went through New Jersey on its way out. I mean, some people say that they think their shit doesn't stink. I assure you, mine certainly does. My shit REALLY REALLY does stink! My foolishly curious dogs will push the door of the bathroom open and waltz on in when I'm trying to do my business, then get one whiff of the wolfbane I'm dropping and quickly back the hell out of the bathroom. That's gotta be a sign! I mean, if a dog thinks your shit smells so awful that they have to leave the room, well... there ya go!
Third, the idea of using a piece of a stick that's smaller and thinner than a tongue depresser to fish through the liquid loveliness that is my fecal matter holds absolutely no draw for me at all! I don't understand scat play, I never have and I can honestly say that I never will.
Lastly, I know what comes out of my butt is gross, nasty, and probably toxic on many, many levels. I know this because I've had to clean my toilet, and the chemicals I have to use to remove the lingering remains of my time spent on the porcelain throne are so powerful, bleaching and caustic that the poison warning on the label is practically as big as the product logo itself. And that's just not a good sign at all when the makers and marketers of a product feel that the poison warnings for their product should have as much real estate on the label as the name of the product itself. So my last protest against the at-home scatology painting and self-mailing lab kit was that the mailing pouch didn't look nearly sturdy enough to mail my poop anywhere safely. Come ON...it was PAPER! You definitely want a little more between my shit and the outside world than some flimsy papery envelope.
I mentioned this, apparently not too quietly to the lab tech and due to the close proximity of the office layout, most of the entire office as well. All of them, including the patients who were also within earshot, began to giggle in a rather school-girlish fashion. Great! Just great!
So yeah, I'd have definitely taken any bets at that moment that I'd hit rock bottom there, and that the day couldn't really slide/freefall any further down the abyss. Fecal collection... I mean... how much shittier can it get, right? Well.. I definitely wouldn't have beat the spread (fecal collection pun intended) on those bets, as my sister called just as I got back in the car and began driving off to get something to eat before I headed home. She called to let me know about Mom's possible stroke and to let me know that they were testing her now and they'd know more later on that evening. It was then that I knew, without a doubt, that I'd hit the bottom of the laurentian abyss that had been my day.
When I called my friends on Wednesday and Thursday to tell them what was going on with my Mom (there's a group of my friends that ask me for constant updates oon my mom), every one of them asked me if I'm alright. I've found that I have two base instinctive reactions that can happen when disasters happen, and I think this may be a "guy thing" too. I can either throw my hands up in the air, scream, yell, wail and cry, or I can "fuck shit up", which is wherein I take something/anything and just slam it against a wall, a tree, the side of the house, etc., til it's just splinters. Though both of these usually makes me feel better, the first really doesn't do much of anything positive except burn calories, and the second makes me wish I had better property insurance after I calm down and realize that the "insert destroyed object" cost "$xxx.xx" dollars and destroying it was just stupid. It's definitely a guy thing!
I got my chest x-ray the next day (Thursday) and then, that evening, got the news from my sister that what my mom had wasn't a stroke, but brain swelling that was causing my mom's symptoms. John and I discussed my options and I decided that, sick or not, I was going to go up to visit. I called my coworker and told her what was happening and she told me not to worry about whatever I was working on, that it would get done and that I was to go be with my mom. My boss, whom I called as I drove up today, said much the same thing, adding that everyone in my workgroup thoughts were with my mom and me and my family.
When I got to my parents sublet in Alexandria, I got to see a familiar sight, my parents forcing food on my siblings, and then onto me even before I was able to set down my bags and greet everyone. This ritual is one my partner never fails to make light of. This stems from the time we'd taken a trip to PA to visit my folks when they lived in Latrobe. We'd driven up there one night after work and had arrived there around 5 am, and, despite the hour and the fact that we'd been driving for 10-12 hours, my parents got up to greet us at the door and to tell us that they'd made some chili for us, and to ask would we like some? John just looked at my parents as if they'd just done something really, really disturbing and then, shaking his head in disbelief, toddled off to bed. I, of course, had some chili, and then went off to bed. Having been raised by them, I'm nothing if not well-trained when it comes to that kinda stuff.
So, as the early evening wore on, all of my sisters showed up, and, like kids waiting for Santa Claus, we began to wait for the "Hospice Lady" to make her appearance. While we waited, we threw in a copy of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and my parents watched incredulously as my sisters and I recited the entire show, verbatim... in chorus; pointing out our favorite parts of the show as they passed. I remarked on the eerie similarity in looks between John and the Grinch in several places during the show. most notably when he was grousing about the Whoos to his dog Max, and again when he began to smile "a smile most unpleasant" as he watched the Whoo children asleep with their candy canes (right before he stole them.) My sisters goggled at me for a second and then began to laugh and point at the screen and say, "oh my God, he really DOES look like John!" There's more than one reason we named our dog Max.
The Hospice Lady showed up and went through the whole spiel on what all was entailed with the hospice and hospice-care and then got the paperwork going for my mom's enrollment. My mother's doctor, Dr. Kressel called the Hospice Lady to confirm all the facts with her and in doing so, inadvertently upset both my mom and my dad when she relayed out-loud his rather grim prognosis for my mom, which is necessary to get the hospice care going. After my sister walked the Hospeice Lady back to her car, thanking her for the housecall, she and my other sisters began to explain to my parents that it wasn't a death sentence, but only his estimation, and that it might be completely off the mark.
My Dad, God love him, refuses to believe anything but the best will happen, and predicts my Mom will still beat this back. I quietly asked my sisters if they thought he could see the pyramids and Sphynx from his vantage point in de Nile (sic).
The rest of our evening was spent having a really, really fascinating conversation about the state of our family; how the way our family works positively impacts the new family members (i.e. spouses, daughters, sons, cousins, aunts, uncles, mother and fathers-in-law, etc., and how proud we all are of the way our family has stayed so tightly together through the years in contrast to other branches of our family who have splintered off.
I have to admit that I know where my Dad's coming from with his unflappable optimism (aka Denial), as part of me is seeing the pyramids just as clearly. There's that part of me that believes it could happen, too. I mean, I keep thinking to myself that, in a world where the son of a lowly carpenter can become the King of the Jews, anything is possible.
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