“Have you ever had so much to say that your mouth closed up tight struggling to harness the nuclear force coalescing within your words? Have you ever had so many thoughts churning inside you that you didn’t dare let them escape in case they blew you wide open?” ~ Ellen Hopkins

 Beachy Head Cliff, South Coast of England (Pixdaus)

                             

“Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one’s own being.” ~ Haruki Murakami

Dunstandburgh by Moonlight, by Rainer Mirau (Pixdaus)

I’m not even certain as to where I should begin to pick up the tale that has been my life over the last week and a half. I was finally able to stay connected long enough to put together the two posts that I had drafted on Word. Both are backdated to the time on which they were actually written, but so much more has happened.

As I write this, my mother is in the hospital where she has been since the very wee hours of Tuesday morning. She developed blood clots in her broken leg, and they traveled to her lungs. On Monday evening, I noticed that her leg was very swollen and filled with fluid. I suspected clots, but she did not want me to call 911 again as the EMTs had just been to the house two nights before (more on this later). I reluctantly agreed not to take her in as long as she woke me if anything changed.

Around 4 a.m. she yelled my name. I took one look at her entire leg, down to her big toe, all of which were twice the normal size and called 911. This time they took her to DePaul hospital instead of Leigh; however, I went to the Leigh ER as I did not know about the change. Once I got to Leigh, someone came out and asked my name and told me about the mixup. I broke the land speed record traveling from one ER to the other.

Very long story short, they finally put her in a room around 11 a.m. where she has been since; she will be moved soon to a rehab facility to continue treatment and receive physical therapy for her leg. All of this has really taken a toll on her mental state, which in turn is passed along to me in the form of panicked telephone calls during the times when I am not at the hospital with her.

“One can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.” ~ Anne Sexton

The Furrows, Sacramento River, by Stephen Oachs (Pixdaus)

The first night that my mother was in the hospital, the hallucinations began again in earnest. She called me and told me that someone was trying to get into her room, that someone was having a party next door, that children were running down the hall screaming, that someone was knocking on her window asking to be let in (third floor room). She did not want me to say anything to the nurses because they would hurt her.

Three nights ago, she called and told me that she wanted me to listen to the noise and then held the phone up in the air. When I told her that I couldn’t hear anything, she became furious. She said that she was going to call 911, call a taxi, call her neighbor, and she was going to get the hell out of that place.  She wanted me to bring her purse. I refused. The conversation ended with her saying to me, “When you find my dead body somewhere, then you’ll have to live with that the rest of your life.” Turns out my mother can be even meaner when she’s hallucinating.

On Friday, I stayed at the hospital for hours waiting for the doctor who was supposed to come by, and luckily it was a female physician with whom I had spoken with on Wednesday morning. She explained the condition as sun downing, something that happens to people who are in the hospital and begin to exhibit symptoms such as mom’s in the evening. Sometimes sun dower syndrome is associated with Alzheimer’s, but not always.

The doctor spoke with my mother about going to a rehab facility (something my mother had already decided quite firmly that she had not intentions of doing as she just wanted to come home). The doctor pointed out that since my mother is still on blood thinners, if she came home and fell, the chances of causing internal bleeding were good, and she pointed out that I could not do anything for internal bleeding. Finally, between the two of us, we convinced mom that a rehab facility would be a good thing.

Can I just tell you how good it was to cross that particular hurdle?

“Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn’t seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.” ~ Pedro Almodovar

Morning Mist in Holland (Pixdaus)

Currently, she is being given seroquel at night to help with the night terrors, and thankfully, she did not call me last night, which meant that I slept, very heavily I might add.  I decided to give myself time to write this morning before tackling anything else, hence the current, up-to-date post.

I do understand why my mother does not want to be in the hospital. Who does, really? It’s the luck of the draw if you are going to have a nurse who is compassionate versus one who is snotty. And regardless of their dispositions, they are all overworked, which means that they may tell their patient that they are going right now to take care of X, only to return an hour later, having completely forgotten the request.

After my last hospital stay post back operation, I don’t know that I ever want to be in a hospital again. My mother is chomping because they are keeping her completely immobile with a catheter and some are treating her as if she is demented. She told me that someone came into her room to ask her what month it was, and she told them December. She knew the month, but she just wanted to fuck with them.

I reminded her that if she keeps doing things like that, those who don’t know her personality may be inclined to think that she really is out of touch with reality. She maintained that if they are going to torture her, she is going to mess with them.

I did finally have to make someone put a note in her chart that before being admitted, she was mobile, using a walker and standing on her own.

“Funny how life is so like surgery . . . sometimes you can make that rocky davis in that right lower quadrant.. and then there are those days when your bowel ruptures and spells into your peritonium and all you are left with is intense pain and sepsis . . . oh brother, my kingdom for a tenblade when that happens !” ~ Dr. David Morgenstern, ER, “Let the Games Begin”

Fox in the Trees (Pixdaus)

So getting back to the second ER visit, the one that happened the Sunday before the third visit (think it was Sunday, things are blurring together). On Wednesday, October 13, my mother developed diarrhea (too much information, I know). But after three days, of this, I knew that she was dehydrated: I could pull the skin on her hand, and it would stay raised and pinched.

I called her pcp’s emergency service and spoke with the triage nurse, recited the increasingly bad symptoms. She instructed me to get her to the ER, reaffirming what I thought in the first place. Mom, of course, did not want to go. I called for another ambulance as I was alone, and there was no way that mom could have assisted me in getting her to the car. She was taken to Leigh ER again, and pumped full of fluids and potassium. She was diagnosed with c diff (clostridium difficile), which is a microorganism that normally resides in the GI tract and only becomes a problem when it decides to go postal and wreak havoc with the bowels by producing toxins in the GI tract that result in severe infectious diarrhea and inflammation of the large intestine.

Regardless of the c diff, this was still an atypical ER visit in that my mother was joking around with everyone. I think that she was just glad not to be sick to her stomach any more. The more fluids she received, the better her mood. We got home sometime that night, and Corey and his mother were at mom’s house. My mother slept that night.

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition.” ~ Graham Greene

Swan in Fog (Pixdaus)

So here we are:  Mom is recovering from c diff, a broken tibia, night terrors, and blood clots.

In between all of this, Corey’s mom came to town for a few days. Corey was off work, so he was able to spend time with her, but I only saw her during breakfast on Sunday morning and a little bit in between. Everyone (family) got together on Tuesday night for dinner at P. F. Chang’s, but I was unable to go as Mom’s was having too many issues.

In the past few days, I have had a few good things happen: I have found a new musician, Ólafur Arnalds, who is from Iceland. Beautiful music. I have also had an Internet connection long enough to post. The other thing is that I have had some sleep, some even in my very own bed with my husband and dogs.

Small favors.

More later. Peace.

Music by Ólafur Arnalds, “Ljósið”

“Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation.” ~ Cherrie Moraga

 

Durdle Door, Dorset, England

                   

“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that’s happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” ~ Ram Dass

Tip of The Cobb, Lyme Regis, Dorset, England

It’s Saturday afternoon, two weeks and a day since my mother’s accident. Yesterday, Corey brought over one of the computers from the house since my stay here is obviously not going to be just a few days, and he realized that I am going crazy without a computer. That and the fact that I really cannot leave my mother alone in the house while I go somewhere else to work on my blog.

My mom’s house has no Internet connection, but fortunately, enough people nearby have unsecured networks that I can tap into. I know. Not an ideal situation, but at this point, I have to take what I can get.

So now I have a little set-up in my mother’s living room: an old sewing table, a bit rickety but just big enough for a screen and my Bose speakers (hooray for that). This will be my first official post from my new location. I have one of my playlists going in the background, just loud enough to drown out the constant sounds of television coming from her bedroom. She is one of those people who is uncomfortable with silence of any kind; hence there will always be a television on at any given minute, and the sound will always be quite loud. So “Ruby Tuesday” is currently muffling the sounds of whatever lightweight show she has found to watch on Saturday afternoon (only comedies and game shows in this house, no dramas (with the exception of “Law & Order”???), nothing heavy—remember, my mother is of the “think happy thoughts” school of mental health).

“And which is stronger in us—passion or habit?” ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Lyme Regis from The Cobb by Peter Spencer

This is the story: My mother has a very large screened back porch with a cement floor and solid cement steps. These steps are the same ones she fell on last year although without nearly the same bad results. My mom has a tendency to put throw rugs all over the place, and she had one on the steps, which is what she tripped on, ultimately landing hard on the cement. Apparently, she pulled herself into the house and crawled to the telephone.

She called a number that she thought was Brett’s and told the man on the other end that she had fallen and asked him to get me as soon as possible. Turns out it was a wrong number, but you would think that the man on the other end might have had the decency to call 911 or something. My mom waited a few minutes and then called my number. I answered, and she asked why I hadn’t come over. I told her that I didn’t know what she was talking about. She asked why Brett hadn’t told me. I ask what was wrong and told her that I would be there in a couple of minutes.

Brett and I broke the land speed record going the two miles between our houses. I walked in, touched her leg which caused her to scream, and called 911. One ambulance and a fire truck later, I was surrounded by five EMT personnel, three of whom were asking me questions simultaneously. My reaction? To answer them while cleaning. It’s what I do under stress—regress to the child who cleaned her way through family fights and insecurities. I picked up laundry, moved chairs, and recited my mom’s vitals. Brett stood by looking helpless, and Donna, the neighbor from across the street spoke quietly to my mother.

Surreal is the only way to categorize the tableau as it unfolded in the living room on Friday evening.

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”  ~ Chuck Palahniuk from “Invisible Monsters”

Town Mill in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England

Brett rode next to the EMT driving the ambulance transporting mom, and I followed in the Rodeo (Brett later told me that the man had tried to make casual conversation during the ride to try to keep Brett calm, for which I am ever grateful), all the while thinking that it would go so much faster if they would turn on the lights and sirens, but it wasn’t really an emergency in their book, so I obeyed the speed limit and followed the transport to Leigh Memorial, a hospital that I truly hate but the one that my mother requested.

My father died in that hospital, and the ER in that hospital misdiagnosed Caitlin when she first presented with symptoms. Needless to say I just don’t get a warm and fuzzy from the place.

I walked into a packed ER, gave the person at the registration desk my name, and tried to find seats that were not directly under the blaring television. Have you ever noticed the unspoken rules in an ER waiting room: Everyone already seated checks out the newest arrival in order to assess if the person has a real emergency—like a dangling appendage, which would be cause to be taken out of the queue. When the registration desk tells the newest arrival to take a seat, all of those already waiting breathe a collective sigh of relief that the order will not be disturbed. Of course, when your name is called and you go between those two magical doors, the ones that can only be opened by the keeper of the automatic door opener, everyone still seated shoots daggers at your back.

Ah, the rich pageantry of life.

I forgot to mention that during all of this, I texted Alexis first with a brief message: “Oma fell. 911. Call ASAP.” She did not respond; what in the hell is the point of using 911 if the response is ho hum, I ask. I texted again, this time to everyone with more specifics: “They are taking Oma to the ER in an ambulance.” Alexis and Eamonn called almost simultaneously. I had already called Corey on the way to the house, but as luck would have it, he was working but supposed to be off at 11.

“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.” ~ Charles Bukowski 

Ammonite Light Post at Dusk in Lyme Regis

So back to the narrative: I was told to go through the doors, turn right, turn left, go around and turn right. Right. Got it. I turned right and immediately asked for someone to point me towards my mother’s room.

She had been given morphine in the ambulance, which had made her throw up, so when I walked in, she was clutching a disposable emetic bag that I eventually had to pry from her fingers. I was told that x-rays had been taken and that we were waiting for the doctor. Talk about stating the obvious.

Hours and hours later . . .

The x-rays revealed that my mother had broken her tibia directly below the kneecap, and she was bruised in several places. She had not broken her hip. An immobilizing brace was ordered, and the attending physician told me to call the orthopedist on Monday.

Now this all sounds terribly civilized, but I’m leaving out some good parts, like my mother screaming when anyone touched her, the fact that she was shaking all over from shock and I couldn’t get her a blanket, and she needed to pee. Eventually, she was catheterized, given more meds (I felt like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment, trying not to become hysterical as I demanded that they shoot some more of the good stuff into the IV. Look, I just can’t get into what I was feeling during all of this, not really, as it was all much too intense and draining). 

As the doctor was giving his parting directions, I thought to myself, “You’re not keeping her??? What do you mean you’re not keeping her??? Have you lost your mind??? Have I lost my mind???

Then there was the Marx Brothers scene in which an orderly, a nurse, and I tried to put my mother into the passenger seat of my car. You see, I had sent everyone home. Brett hadn’t eaten all day. Corey was exhausted,and I knew that I was going to need him when we got home. So the departure was a solo event.

The three of us tried lots of different scenarios with each of us holding different body parts, and my mother screaming “No. No. No. Just put me back.” Finally, the orderly lifted her bodily and placed her in the seat as my mother said, “You’ll get a hernia. You’re going to hurt your back.” Meanwhile, I thought, “how in the hell are we going to get her out of the car when I get home?”

“The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.” ~ Winston Churchill

Coade Stone Ammonite Pavement Celebrating Lyme Regis’ as the Capital of the Jurassic Coast

                   

I don’t remember the drive home at all, just that I avoided potholes and bumps. I had called Corey, and he was waiting at my mother’s house for us. I told him about the ordeal of putting her in the car. Neither of us had an inkling as to how we would get her out of the car, up the steps, and into the bedroom.

Lots of screaming. Hers, mine, ours.  (look, I’m not being flippant, or maybe I am, but this was two weeks ago, and the only way to deal with some things is in retrospect and with no respect whatsoever). The goal was to remove her from the car without bending her right leg . . . We had the walker, but it quickly became apparent that it was useful as a skateboard.

We ended up carrying her. Don’t ask me how. We stopped on the porch as I opened the doors while my mother yelled not to let Willow (her schnauzer) out. Trust me, Willow was too petrified to bolt. We stopped at the entrance to the hall. Somehow, we got her in bed.

Those first few days and nights were a blur, except for the hallucinations, which I’ll get into next time as they deserve a post of their own.

So that’s the first part of my latest saga. Feels good to be writing about it.

More later. Peace.

Music by Jean Louisa Kelly, her version of “Someone to Watch over Me” from Mr. Holland’s Opus

More Lunatic Tales From The Ether

 

The Other Side of the Looking Glass

When last we left our heroine, she had been disarmed of her sword and was strapped to a gurney being transported to the emergency room for her own good . . . 

The Mexicans in the Walls

Part 3

Final chapter: The Emergency Room 

 So we arrive at the emergency room, where I am parked on a gurney in the hall to wait, for what or whom, I have no idea. I have already assured anyone who will listen that I don’t really need to be there, which is probably not the best thing to say in an emergency room full of people who need to be there. I am going to be taken to x-ray to make sure I didn’t hurt my back when I tried to rearrange the furniture. In the meantime, I am right outside the door of a man who is apparently—and I really am not making this up—dying. This is the only part of the story that is not the least bit humorous, and I don’t think that this was part of my hallucination. He is moaning and crying and no one is doing anything about it. It’s tearing me to pieces to hear this, and I just want to go home. I promise my husband that if I can just go home, I’ll be fine, but I don’t want to hear this man any more.

The Correct Way to Start an IV

In the meantime, someone decides that I need an IV. The crew from the ambulance that brought me in assert comically that they need some practice in this area, so one of them volunteers. It’s the female. She gives me the smile given to crazy people to assure them that everything is going to be all right when it’s obvious that it won’t be; then she jabs me with the needle: again and again and again. She looks over at the person who I assume is her supervisor and says, “I can’t do it,” to which I ache to reply, “No shit.” He ambles over, picks up my arm, and declares: “She has really tiny veins.” I reply to his assertion, “no one’s has ever had problems with my veins,” but they aren’t listening because they think that I’m crazy. Well I may be crazy, but I know my veins. This guy tries twice and misses. I give him a look like I’m going to pull a sword out of my butt, and he backs off.

Finally, a technician comes by, (I deduce what she is because she is carrying one of those carts with all of the tubes and needles and stuff), and I tell her what they’ve been doing to me, and she says, “Oh my. Here.” And in goes the needle, and I have an IV. I’m glaring at the EMT’s who are hanging around the vending machines. This is why I didn’t want to come to the emergency room.

Did I mention the medications? Probably not. When the EMT’s were in my bedroom checking my vitals and getting ready to take me out, they noticed my little castle of drug bottles by the bed, the veritable cornucopia of pharmacopoeias. They looked at each other, and I’ve seen that look: “She’s a druggie.” Please let me pause here. I had just been released from the hospital for back surgery. I had a few meds on my nightstand, along with my medicine for heartburn and other ailments. But they are jumping to the White Rabbit conclusions (you know, “Go Ask Alice,” Jefferson Airplane), and frankly, at the time, all I could think of was Desi Arnaz saying to Lucy, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin to do,” which would have made me giggle, so I shut up.

I wanted to giggle a lot during this whole episode, but I think that (other than the two cops at my bedroom door), I’m the only one who was finding any humor in the situation.

So now that I have an official IV and an ID bracelet, we sit. And sit and sit and sit. The man in the room is moaning horribly, and I’m getting hungry. I also need to pee. I ask my husband what we are waiting for. He replies that he’s not sure. We’ve already been there for two hours going on three. I get off the cart, and my husband immediately panics and asks where I’m going. I tell him to calm down. I’m not running away from the ER, I just need to pee. But that’s harder than you would think when you have an IV, and people are in rooms, and there is no bathroom close by. I find a bathroom but am not particularly happy about its cleanliness—it is, afterall, a hospital, and they are teeming with germs, and by now, I am very ill-tempered, and I just want to go home.

My beleaguered spouse goes to see if anyone will see us, and comes back without anyone. So I pull out my cell phone and call the ER main desk. I distinctly remember doing this as this is something that I would do under normal circumstances. I call the main desk and ask if anyone is ever going to see me. The person who answers the phone is very confused. She asks who she is talking to. I tell her that I’m the woman on the gurney in the hallway outside of the door of the man who is dying, and no one has even checked me in yet.

A doctor shows up in two minutes. We give him a rundown of what’s going on. He totally ignores me (which proves my whole conspiracy theory), and only talks to my husband. I realize that he’s a resident. I hear him go off and consult with the attending, a female physician who comes back and asks my husband if I want a psych consult. I say, “No. I don’t need a psych consult. I just want you to tell me why I’ve started to have post-op hallucinations.” They order a psych consult.

After four hours, I tell my husband that we’re going. He looks at me, and I say, “Look, obviously, it’s something to do with my medicine. You can call the surgeon’s office when we get home. I want to go home and get back in bed. I’m not hearing or seeing anything any more since I haven’t had any medicine in almost six hours. Just take me home, and put me to bed.” He reluctantly admits that I have a point. Truthfully, at this point, he himself is so exhausted that he would probably agree to me performing surgery in the hallway if it would get a response out of someone.

 I wait for the next physician type to walk by and then loudly announce that I’m leaving. It’s the resident again, and I think that I’m scaring him. The female attending comes back, says that I have to sign papers saying that I am refusing treatment. When she thinks she’s out of earshot, she starts talking about me. This time, I’m not hallucinating.

On a better day, I would have taken her to task, but today I have to admit defeat. I’m tired, and I just want to be gone from this hell-hole.

We go home, and my husband finally speaks to someone knowledgeable at the doctor’s office. Turns out that the whole thing was a result of my having stayed in the hospital on the extra strength kaboom medicine for five days instead of three and then going home and taking extra strength pills that the doctor had prescribed for me without taking into account that I still had all of the other stuff in my bloodstream. In other words, the surgeon didn’t bother to do some measured calculations on how much frigging stuff they were pumping into me those two extra days that I was hospitalized and then sent me out into the world, an hallucinatory event in waiting.

What a pedestrian explanation for a calamitous event. After we got home I heard the music a little bit more, but didn’t say anything. My husband got some sleep. My kids approached me tentatively, and I tried to explain that I wasn’t psycho any more. But as far as the whole family of Mexicans and their card table and coffee behind the walls? I think that they left when the ambulance pulled out of my driveway.

It was one hell of a ride, I’ll give you that. The person who had the worst end of it was my poor spouse, who was just trying to keep me from hurting myself. The cops who turned out in full armor probably laughed themselves silly at the stupid woman who was waving around a sword with a blade so dull that it wouldn’t even cut an apple. And I had to have an MRI to make sure that I hadn’t undone the surgeon’s work when I tried to move a 200-pound dresser to bar the non-existent intruders.

It never occurred to me to ask the Mexicans in the walls for help.  But that’s just as well. Now that there is a lot of time and distance from this event, I find it highly amusing, but my husband? He still is not amused. I cannot imagine why.

So this is the moral of the story: If you have a lot of pain medication when you are in the hospital, and they give you more pain medicine to take at home, don’t be surprised if you start to hallucinate. I’m not sure if you’ll have a Mariachi band as I did. But whatever your hallucinations may be, just know that it’s the medication, and don’t allow yourself to be used for recertification training for EMT’s who need to practice sticking people who are conscious.

And that dear friends, is all for now. Peace.