24--Mom's Story

(Wow, a lot can happen in a weekend. I wrote this several days ago but
time ran away from me. Future posts will tell why....)

Behold, the rest of the story...

...I stood to her right as I soaped and rinsed her hands; she seemed
distracted as I washed them. In the midst of splashing water on her hands,
I noticed her left hand receding. Slow at first then faster and faster, it
inched away from me. I initially thought she was just uncomfortable with
the edge of the counter pinching her under arm, so I kept splashing water.
Her arm thrashed uncontrollably and fell into a clenched bicep curl
position as Jill mentioned, and she looked to the left side. Jill and I
said she was seizing almost simultaneously and Jill ran to get help. Diane
hurried over from throwing something out and I told her what was
happening. By this time, Mom was frothing at the mouth, her eyes rolled
back into her head, her face clenched in a painful expression. Every
muscle in her body contracted and twitched, particularly her left side.
Her leg thrashed on her wheelchair leg stand. Diane began steering her out
and I was face to face with Mom. I won't forget her yellowish, vacant eyes
and her purple complexion. She wasn't breathing and she was losing oxygen
fast.

I opened the door and ran out to help Jill. Dad popped up thinking we were
on our way home. The hustle and bustle convinced him otherwise. I looked
through the doors of the oncology unit to find Jennifer RUNNING toward us,
so I went back and helped Diane get Mom out of the bathroom.

We freed ourselves from the small, suffocating confines of the bathroom to
find an army of people forming to help. Diane grabbed Mom's legs and Jill
and I were on either shoulder to lift Mom to the floor as she lost
consciousness. It seemed we were about to drop her but somehow we had
enough strength to lay her peacefully on the floor. Her purple color
turned to an ashen gray too close to death and dying, and it was
terrifying to see. The concern spreading across the doctors' and nurses'
faces showed us that her situation was severe. We'd later learn that they
were unsure if she was seizing, had a stroke, a heart attack, any number
of critical conditions. After finding a pulse, they settled on our first
assumption. It was surreal to see Craig's team working on her, moving
first from Craig then to Mom in a turn of a second.

She lay on her back, seemingly lifeless save that of her belly--round and
taught like a basketball--moving violently up and down from her chest to
pelvis while her mouth foamed, spit and chomped forcefully. Her eyes just
stared lifelessly into space. At the onset, Diane and Jill sat Dad down
away from the scene, after confirming that he didn't wanted to see what
was happening. Throughout the ordeal, the daughters rotated in between
consoling him and holding Mom's hand, saying "I love you" and "we're all
here" as her body continued to seize. Craig, still locked in his own
appointment as he learned the details of a new device he'd have to use,
was unaware what was happening just outside. I'm sure the exodus of his
staff-including his urologic oncologist, Dr. Flaig, and all of the nurse
practitioners-indicated something was amiss. Someone, perhaps Emily,
finally broke the news. I joined Emily in the hallway just in time to see
him duck into a bathroom, red eyed and distraught. I waited to comfort him
but he wanted nothing of it when he came out, still dealing with his own
rather disconcerting news.

As they loaded Mom and Dad into the ambulance and drove the---ohhhh 500
feet?---to the ER, Jennifer walked me to the ER just behind Diane and
Jill, who were comforting each other. We were finally falling apart a bit
from the shock and disbelief of what had just happened.

In those 24 hours after her seizure and being discharged, we saw the
mother that had already been transformed by this cancer slip into someone
who would only communicate with yes and no responses, or sometimes not at
all. She had marked confusion and extreme difficulty communicating with
the left side. It was as if we were back in the post-surgery room after
her tumor resection. The doctors would ask her to move or respond with her
left hand, and her right hand would move instead. Another occasion, she
was asked to push and pull with her left hand and the right hand slowly
traversed her body to help out Lefty, now too weak and confused to move on
its own. How the tables had turned.

So, here we are again, at the doorstep of a new normal. We seem to "move"
weekly or even daily, now. She's much more vocal and more expressive today
and we're hoping that, as the urinary tract infection disappears and her
body acclimates to the new drugs, she'll come back to us more and more.
She's a tough ol bird that is for sure. As they say, the waiting is the
hardest part.

This is my vantage point--perhaps a bit long, perhaps a bit redundant to
Jill's--but no words ever written or story ever told could adequately
capture the images and the sequences of events that made that Thursday
stand apart from all others. I think we'd all do just fine not having
another quite like that again.

~E