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May 7th, 2008 | Filed Under:
Daily Life,
Lengthy |
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When I first heard that my mother was in the hospital for tests on her heart, I didn’t feel anything other than a slight suspicion as to why an overcrowded hospital was going to keep her overnight in order to do a test the following morning. I talked to my mother while she sat in her assigned room and she sounded like she always does: nonchalant and casual, as if it was perfectly normal to not be able to leave the hospital on doctor’s orders. I tried to get more details out of her, drilling her with point blank questions, but she answered them all calmly and convincingly. She seemed more interested in hearing all the details on how the deal for the new house fell through than she was in explaining why she been suffering from chest pains for the past 2 months but had chosen not to go to the doctor until that day.
It wasn’t until the following morning, when my father called me to tell me the results of her tests, that everything started to fall into place. My mother had been kept at the hospital because her heart rhythms suggested that she had suffered a minor heart attack over the past few days and her doctor did not want to risk her over-exerting herself before they knew what condition she was in. The test they performed, a Cardiac Catheterization, showed that one of the main arteries to her heart was 80-90% blocked. My mother had emergency bypass surgery scheduled for the following day and once again she could not leave the hospital, as this time they knew for sure that she was at risk for a severe heart attack – the type they would not be able to save her from if it started. The doctor told my parents that considering the amount of blockage and the amount of physical activity she continued to do even while experiencing chest pains it was nothing short of a miracle that she was still alive. Even taking a routine stress test, as it was first suggested by her regular physician, likely would have killed her.
I was at work when my father called me, so I went outside to the parking while we talked and once we hung up I continued to stand there for a while longer in silence. I did not cry, panic, or become angry. I was not shocked or confused; if anything, at that precise moment, the primary emotion I was dealing with was surprise. In all of the years I spent planning to move to AZ and in the nearly 2 years that I have lived here, never once did I consider what I would do if something happened to my parents. It’s not that I am one of those people who are still under the illusion that my parents are invincible… but just that, outside of a freak accident, my parents were healthy enough for it not to be an active concern. And even still, on the topic of the mortality of my parents, never once did I think that my mother would be the first of my parents to face a life or death situation. With my father turning 70 this summer and being 15 years my mother’s senior, even he himself has no problem not only accepting that he would die first but he also constantly talks (no - brags!) about the great lengths he has gone to make sure that my mother would be financially taken care of after he passed away. I have even fallen victim to that assumption, telling my mother that once my father was gone that I wanted her to live with me so that I could take care of her.
The next few hours seemed to go by in a blur. Despite my hesitation of booking a ridiculously expensive last-minute flight, my boyfriend told me that “if you need to go, I’ll get you there” - and by noon that day I had an 11:45PM flight booked and a rental car reserved. Because I work for an amazing company and have an awesome boss, not only was I granted as much time off as I needed to be with my family but I was also given access to my PTO even though I was still within my 90 day evaluation period. Before I called my father back to let him know that I was coming to VA I tried to muster up my most authoritative voice, as I fully expected him to tell me not to come; not necessarily because he didn’t want me there but because he has never been a fan of spending large sums of money, no matter how good the reason or cause. However, to my surprise, when I told him that I would be there the following morning he responded with a short silence and a simple “ok.” He offered to pick me up at the airport the following morning but I stressed to him that he needed to stay in town with my mother – we didn’t know when my mother was having her surgery and he needed to be there encase something happened. Before I hung up with my father I made sure to tell him not to let my mother know that I was coming. The last thing I wanted was for her to be worrying about that on top of everything else.
I hardly got any sleep on the redeye flight from Phoenix to Cleveland, where I had a 1 hour lay over before my flight to DC. At around 7AM EST, as I was sitting outside the terminal waiting for my second flight, I took the opportunity to call my father and see how my mother was doing. As my luck would have it she was going into pre-op around 8:30 or 9AM and my flight would not be landing until 9AM. After I hung up with my father, I called the hospital in an attempt to talk to my mother, since cell phones were not allowed in patient rooms. I had to talk to three different people and call back after an accidental hang up, but my mother’s nurse was eventually able to track down a portable phone that my mother could use. Her voice sounded faint and tired, a complete 180 from how she sounded when I spoke to her two days ago. I asked her how she was doing, a question she was probably sick of answering, and she said she was tired but fine. Even then, hours before her surgery, she still was asking me questions about how work was going and more details about the house debacle. I wanted to make the conversation with her substantial and for it to mean something, but I also didn’t want to sound as though this was the last conversation we would have. The truth was there was no guarantee that after I hung up the phone that I would ever hear her voice again, or that my time in Virginia would not be spent helping my father plan her funeral. Anything could happen during the surgery and I knew I
needed to talk to her before she went in… but nothing seemed like the right thing to say.
While we were talking, she asked what the noise in the background was – apparently someone thought it was necessary to eat the microphone as they paged someone over the airport intercom, to the point where I was having a hard time hearing my mother’s voice – and I lied and said it was the radio playing after the alarm went off. It was so hard to not tell her that I was sitting in an airport on my way to Virginia, because what if this really
was the last time I spoke to her? Would I regret not telling her I tried to be there, even though I didn’t make it in time? What if the last feeling she had would have been looking forward to seeing me, but because I chose not to say anything, she instead would feel regret that her and I didn’t spend enough time together when she was here in February? In the end I chose to stick with my original plan… because doing otherwise was planning for something I wasn’t ready to accept yet.
After a turbulent flight into DC and taking a crash course on how to keep a Kia Sportage within the white lines as I drove down 95, I arrived in Fredericksburg and promptly went into Central Park to find a hotel. I knew my father wasn’t really capable of making preparations for me to stay at their house and I figured that if my mother was going to be in surgery when I got there that I would take the opportunity to nap for a few hours. However, after a fruitless search of finding a room that would be available before 1 or 2PM I ended up grabbing lunch at Camille's Sidewalk Café (ugh, how I’ve missed that place while in AZ) and went over to the hospital to wait with my father. My cousin Penny was actually in the waiting room as well, since her husband was having quadruple bypass surgery at the same time as my mother. I had not seen Penny in years (read: I was likely 10 or so the last time we were in the same room) and if I did not remember what my uncle and aunt looked like I probably wouldn’t have been able to pick her out from a crowd. I was so exhausted from the trip and running on my last reserves of adrenaline that I primarily listened while her and my father talked about family and the surgeries we were waiting on.
During the 3 hours that I spent waiting with my father, I lost count of how many times he told me how glad he was that I was there. I told him how much my flight + rental car had cost and he surprised me again by saying: “I’m sure it’s worth every penny, especially to your mother.” From just looking at him he seemed to be fine and put together, but he had hardly gotten any sleep over the previous 3 days. The more he spoke the more I realized that for the first time in both of our lives that he was looking to me for support in order to get through this. It wasn’t something he was conveying in an obvious way – he didn’t say anything out of the ordinary and he sounded like he always does. It was something so subtle that probably only my mother and myself would have picked up on it and again I found myself unable to think of anything to say that was appropriate. This probably marked one of the few times in my father’s life that something happened that he had not exactly planned on and I can only imagine what was going through his mind. He comes from a generation of men who toast themselves to be the primary protectors of their families, yet if anything were to happen to their spouse they would be lost and completely unable to take care of themselves. On a day when there was so much already on my mind, I now considered for the first time that it might be my father that I took care of in his old age rather than my mother.
Around 2:30 PM, right on schedule, my mother’s doctor came in the waiting room and walked very deliberately toward my father. Even through both of us stood up as he approached, he only made eye contact with my father as he spoke – I could tell he was deliberately avoiding my gaze – and I was focusing so much on his reserved and cold body language that I almost didn’t hear what he was saying. Despite his demeanor, he had good news: the surgery very went well and we would be able to see her within an hour.
My mother was still asleep when we were allowed in the room so I didn’t need to worry just yet as to how we were going to let her know that I was here without surprising her too much. Despite all of the monitors and tubes around her, she looked peaceful… and eerily just like my grandmother did the last time I saw her alive, when she was also unconscious and in a hospital bed. Since my mother would not be awake until around 8PM that evening my father and I only stayed for a few minutes. We both agreed that we would meet back at the hospital later that night and take the time inbetween to get some much needed rest. My father got a room for me at a new Hilton hotel that had recently opened and I managed to get about 3 hours of sleep before it was time to head back over to the hospital.
I watched my father walk down the hall and slip into my mother’s room. I know he was letting her know that she had a special guest, if she was up to seeing them, but I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying. After a few minutes, he came back out into the hallway and waved for me to come forward. I kept a slow pace as I walked into the room and quickly locked eyes with my mother. She was still laying in the same position she was when we had left her, and even though her eyes were obviously puffy she had them open wide – wider than I had ever seen her open them before. I took a few steps into the room and managed a meek “hi” before she realized who I was and abruptly closed her eyes.
While we were standing there, I tried to be as casual as possible – making an effort not to gawk at my mother by acting as though I was interested in the monitors or other miscellaneous things around the room in between stealing glances at her. Then, for the first time since I my father had told me my mother’s test results, I started to feel a weight on my shoulders. The room seemed to fill with a very strong chemical smell and I started to feel dizzy. I watched my mother’s face as my father and I talked, watched as her eyes would fly open at the sound of her name and then quickly close a few seconds later, and I started to feel nauseous. As casually as I could, I asked where the restroom was and as soon as I was out of sight I rushed down the hall and closed the door behind me. I sat down on the floor, my head in my hands, and tried to focus on my breathing so that I wouldn’t get sick or black out. I’m not sure what caused it - if it was the sight of my mother struggling to come out of the anesthesia or if my subconscious had chosen that moment to rush me with all of the emotions I had so far been numb to, but I think that if I had stood in my mother’s room for a minute longer I would have passed out.
After I somehow collected myself, I walked back to her room and sat with her as we watched TV. I’m not sure how long I sat beside her, trying to make small talk, before I reached out and touched her hand. I had intended just to rub the top of her hand as a calming gesture but she reached (as best she could) and took my hand in hers. I was probably still a little girl the last time I had held my mothers hand, but at that moment, looking at my mother so immobile and vulnerable, I somehow felt more like the parent than the child... even though I felt completely helpless in protecting her from all of this.
My mother recovered amazingly well, looking like a new person each day I went to see her, and after having her surgery on Thursday, April 24th, she was allowed to go home on Sunday – 2 days earlier than expected. She rode home with me from the hospital and I spent the evening at home with them. We got to-go food from a nearby pizza place and watched movies on TV. I went back to my hotel that night and came back the following day, Monday, to spend my last day in VA at home. It was a pretty boring day, raining and cold outside, spent sitting in the living room watching TV and getting more takeout from Clearwater Grill (who, to my disappointment, had changed their salads from what I used to remember and love). Around 7PM I left my parents house for the last time, saying goodbye and whispering in my mother’s ear to make sure she took care of herself.
Outside of all that happened pertaining to my mother and my family, my trip Virginia was reassuringly frustrating. One minute I would be drunk on the nostalgia, particularly around 7PM when the sun was setting and a humid mist hung low in the air, and the next I would be furious; randomly sent into a tirade because waiting at a stoplight reminded me of how trapped I used to feel in this little town. Whenever my mother would need to take a nap, I would take a trip around town to see what had changed and what had stayed the same. One day I treated myself to an expensive haircut at a new salon and another I walked around Spotsylvania Mall to see all the new stores and construction that had happened since I left. Stephen and I went to dinner at Olive Garden, and while I was out with him I saw that the Pizza Hut my mother and I had always driven the 20 miles from home to go to, the one Stephen and I had always eaten at after we graduated from high school, had closed in my absence. I felt a tinge of guilt that they had lost my business after I had moved away.
There are no words to describe how
good it felt to fly into Arizona and know that I was home again. My boyfriend and I had texted each other and spoke on the phone each day that I was in Virginia, but even after all that contact, it was so
good to see him waiting for me after I walked out of the security checkpoint. He was the one who made my trip to Virginia possible and I am so glad I was able to be there for my family during that time. I’ve never really had someone like him in my life before – someone who looks after me and does what he can to give me the best that’s possible – and most of the time I feel like I don’t deserve it. I certainly hope that one day I’m able to find a way to pay him back for being as wonderful as he is.
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