Roller Coaster Days

September 8, 2011: Day 6 for my mom in Shock/Trauma ICU. Just when we think we have leaped over another hurdle - like seeing her smile and watching her mouth form words and sentences with all her brain power working - there is another deep valley we have to wade through - like watching her struggle to take a breath or cough out the YUCK in her poor, infected lungs. I am absolutely drained. Just when I think I can start saying "HOPE" out loud because I just watched her put her cold feet on the floor and sit upright through broken ribs and a breathing tube and still smile at me across the room, I have to suck that ray of sunshine back inside because her heart is doing flip-flops again and she has to go back on the heart meds. Just when I start to relax because the docs say that her chest x-rays look better and MAYBE we can have the tube out today or tomorrow, the bad news comes back that she needs a CT scan and more tests. She has a hard time keeping her eyes open. I can see the effort it takes for her to bring her heavy eyelids closer to her eyebrows, but in mere seconds, she snaps them shut again. She listens to our conversations and smiles or nods or ignores us. She is thirsty. She wants a Diet Pepsi with all her heart and soul. We've almost decided to drench a swab with her favorite brown fizzy bev and put it in her toothless mouth. She is stiff from laying in that bed so long. She pounds her foot on the bottom of the bed when she's frustrated or needs attention. It's an old-lady trick, and my Mumsy is no old lady! She blinks her eyes at her adorable doctor and he smiles like a schoolboy. She wants the breathing tube out. It hurts her throat. It hurts when they suction the fluid out of her lungs. Sometimes her eyes are wild with pain, and I just want to scoop her up and run for the hills.

Today, as Dionne and I were rubbing her poor stiff shoulders, one on each side, she mouthed, "I'm sorry." For what? For being human? For aging like everyone else on this earth? For fighting so hard and with such great courage? You have nothing to be sorry about, Mumsy. You are a rock, even with your two black eyes.