Читать книгу NORMAL Doesn't Live Here Anymore - Barb BSL Owen - Страница 32

My parents’ stay in the hospital stretched into the fourth day. By Tuesday, the nurses and doctors decided that Dad had stabilized enough to be moved out of the Medical Intensive Care Unit. The staff located a room where Mom and Dad could be together in adjoining beds. Once Mom could see my dad and hold his hand, she relaxed. Her disorientation (commonly called Sundowners Syndrome) continued at night but daylight usually brought her back to reality.

I learned to travel with all legal paperwork and a notebook in an aqua colored plastic envelope, my constant companion. It housed the expanding accumulation of papers and notes from conversations with the social worker, doctors and the care-coordinator nurse, the most valuable resource of all. That special nurse kept tabs on everything happening in the second floor room where my parents rested. Rarely had she seen an elderly couple in the hospital as patients at the same time and her genuine concern was reassuring. As my parents’ uncertain condition confused me, the care-coordinator explained terminology and calmed my growing fear.

By Wednesday, Exhausted Teresa and Weak Wanda (my sister who played dumb and incapable in order to escape any family responsibility) arrived. The shock of seeing our parents forced them from their imaginary worlds where everything would be okay and Mom and Dad would live happily ever after. I had been coping with so many extraordinary events that I never really noticed the state of my sisters. As soon as I dealt with one issue concerning Mom or Dad, another arose and my energy to care for my sisters or what they were feeling simply didn’t exist.

Late that afternoon, Dad experienced another cardiac event. All his doctors converged for a conference. Their conclusion was succinctly explained by the cardiologist. “There is nothing else that we can do. We have exhausted our options. Your father may last a few days or a few weeks.” He was aloof and unemotional as he delivered the truth, and that helped me discover a stoic self control I needed in that moment and in the succeeding days…weeks…months…

More relatives arrived Wednesday night because my two sisters sounded the panic-alarm due to Dad’s cardiac episode. Sanctimonious Shirley was not among them.

After their tiring visits, most of the extra people left as there was little anyone could do to help. For some reason, that night Exhausted Teresa and Weak Wanda decided that they distrusted the hospital staff to care for our parents. The two of them fashioned beds out of chairs, and stayed in the room with Mom and Dad through through the night. Weak Wanda, although camouflaged by her self-created inadequacy, loved our parents from some distant internal space. Of all of us, she was undoubtedly the most visibly shaken by the thought of losing our parents. Exhausted Teresa found Weak Wanda’s energy contagious and so the two of them stuck together, bonded by some invisible familial glue. I felt the need to conserve my energy for whatever happened next, so I refused to share the night shift. My decision was not well received by my sisters, but the hospital staff seemed grateful to have one less person in the room... And so the vigil continued.

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