holding

We didn’t go to the hospital today. I needed a break (as did Eric- he’s gone with me every single day. I married the best man in the entire universe. His support and strength and love and everything, everything. In this and so much more).

I needed some proper sleep. I needed a reprieve from sitting in uncomfortable hospitals chairs that make my back, and other various parts, ache horribly. (Its as if my son has decided its the Best Time Ever to grow even bigger. Its like, hey! Mom’s hanging out in a cramped hospital room in a stiff chair draped over the side of a hospital bed? Perfect time to get bigger! Perfect time to make her more whale-like!)

But yeah, those are my days now. My mom is better. her heart is stronger and… Well, her heart is stronger. Which is important. But her lungs aren’t stronger. The fungus isn’t getting better. Its not getting worse and for that, we are hugely thankful for, and medically that’s considered good progress. But every morning they try to wean her off the ventilator and they can’t finish. She can’t breathe on her own. Her lungs aren’t well enough yet. Her immune system isn’t fighting hard enough to get rid of the fungus. Its like this neverending awful holding pattern that won’t budge.

So we spend each day there with her while she is lightly sedated and wholly unhappy about the breathing tube that snakes down her throat preventing her from being able to do much more than nod yes or no to questions we ask. she’s pretty damn miserable when she’s awake enough to know it. She can hardly lift her arms or legs because of the weakness of being so very sick, compounded by not moving, having been in a hospital bed for two weeks straight.

I sit beside her, hold her hand, give little shoulder scratches and communicate with her in bits and pieces through a few looks that I can translate and broken apart stories I tell her. When she’s awake that is. Often she’s sedated and out of it, her head and body slack, sloping to the side unnaturally, as the tube pulls at her mouth and I collect the drool and other stuff that falls out with tissues as best I can. (Which she hates but has to ask me to do when she’s aware enough)

She always made adamant proclamations about making sure she’d never be so old that I’d have to put her in a home where she could hardly do for herself. She watched her parents/my grandparents) wither away in homes at the end and it was pretty awful. This was one of her arguments in favor of continuing smoking, actually, when I would try to, again and again, get her to please quit. “I’d rather die early and never have to deal with that! Or make you deal with that.”

Funny how that works, huh? Its the smoking that’s got her laid up in there this long for who knows how much longer, not getting better while her family crowds around her daily full of anxiety, unending frustration and such heartache. Smoking doesn’t gracefully let you shave off a few years at the end. It brings about THIS. It makes you sicker than other people, more quickly than other people. It keeps a breathing tube in your throat instead of letting you heal as others would heal. it brings all the bad and it brings it sooner.

Its pretty difficult for us to make the daily trips to the hospital. We’re 45 minutes away on top of other reasons: work, family issues, traffic difficulties, various obligations. So we stayed home today and I feel guilty for not being there. For not seeing her because she’s aware when I am there and I am the one she wants most beside her. And I want to be, believe me. But fuck, its hard. Not just all the logistical difficulties, but it rips my fucking heart out to be there, seeing her like this, not able to do anything to get her better.

It also makes it difficult not being there because getting any sort of information and updates through my step-dad are an exercise in needing a shedload of patience and the ability to sort through his overly dramatic interpretations and imagined misinformation. (I know that sounds horrible, but it is very much a daily frustration on top of a mess of many other daily frustrations stemming from him. and I love him but I’m near all out of patience. And the resentment is building.)

This is all jumbled. But I guess its all I’ve got for now.

I keep hoping every day for improvement in her lungs for a badly needed reprieve for all of us, mostly for my mom whom I love more than I can ever say.

___

Ps, thank you, you guys, so much for all the notes and the concern and well wishes. I’ve been overwhelmed by how many of you are still out there and its been awesome to “see” all these old, familiar faces. xo