We are lit*er*al*ly family
Truth Serum Thursday #7
“We’ve got the whole family here,” the ER doctor jokes with arms open wide as he enters the curtained room. “I just saw your Dad in this very same room,” he adds.
What are the odds?
I laughed with him because yes, this visit was a family affair. My mother fell in the kitchen Sunday night, and I wasn’t close enough to catch her.
But Dad and I decided not to take her to urgent care; to wait and see how she felt.
The next morning, Dad had blood in his urine. He’s still recovering from having scar tissue removed from around his prostate and bladder. It’s kinda hard to recover when you have to take care of a wife with advancing dementia.
He decided we needed to take a trip to the ER—for the both of them.
Welcome to Lit*er*al*ly, Ororo, a weekly blog by me, Ororo Munroe. You are reading Truth Serum Thursdays, posts about deeper life shit that The Blunt Twin would share willy-nilly, but The Quiet Twin has doubts (shocker). No needles or toxic, mind-bending drugs were used to write these posts. Thanks for reading.
I called my sister, and she had my nephew bring her down. It was going to be a divide and conquer thing. She goes with Dad; I go with Mom.
They took her back first for the CT scan, then brought her back out pretty quickly. Where we proceeded to wait for a kajillion few hours.
An hour or so later, they called Dad back, and my sister went with him. When my Dad was released (after they’d attached a foley bag and irrigated him), he and my sister, and her BFF went down to the cafeteria. Mom was called back while they were gone.
Doc: “So it looks like she’s got a compression fracture in the L1.”
He even had a picture of her scan. Which is unusual because they never share that.
Doc: “Think of it like this.” He pulls down a box of gloves, stands it on its side on the counter and puts a dent in the side. “See how it’s compressed like that, but eventually goes back to its original shape? The muscles around it will be angry, and it’ll hurt, but after about 6 weeks, she’ll be good.”
Me, raising a skeptical brow and pointing a thumb in my Mom’s direction: “6 weeks? Really? Even for someone at her age?”
Doc, nodding emphatically: “Yep. Just nothing strenuous. She can’t help someone move.”
Me: “So, what do we do for the pain?”
Doc: “Well, I’d like to prescribe Gambit1 because that seems to work the best.”
Me: “Will that interfere with what she’s already taking?”
Doc: “Possibly. Do you know what she’s taking?”
Me: whips out Mom’s medical list and hands it over.
He quickly looks it over, his head bobbing back and forth.
Doc: “Looks like it’ll interfere with everything she’s taking, so I would suggest 3 Advil Liqui-gels every 6 hours, then alternate between heat and ice. Movement is good, walking around. Sitting for long periods of time will make it stiffer. And have her follow-up with her primary.”
Sitting there talking with the doctor was a little…surreal for me. I was hoping my Dad and sister would’ve been in the room with me. I had a flash of anxiety: what if I forget to ask something? Did I ask all the right questions? I had to quickly shove that aside and mentally pull up my Big Girl Panties; this won’t be the only time I’ll be in a hospital room alone with just me, my mom, and a doctor.
She was released soon after and as I wheeled her down to the cafeteria, I was thinking Well, she gets into trouble when she walks around, so movement may not be a good thing in this case and I can’t see Dad helping her switch between heat and cold every 20 mins because that would mean getting up which isn’t good for the hernia and GODDAMN it! I wish I was able to work from home…
Going to my parents’ appointments has been a family affair since COVID. Every time they see us all there—”us” as in my sister and I—the doctors’ say a variation of the same thing:
“This is so great.”
“We get so many patients who never see their kids.”
“Our patients have kids who don’t care about their health.”
“What a great support system you have.”
At first, my reaction was:
How is that even possible?
But it is.
And it’s a damn shame.
I understand that not everyone may have the greatest relationship with their parents.
Not everyone wants to spend time with their parents. Hell, my parents had to kick me out at the age of 25 because, as my Dad said, “We needed to make sure you could make it on your own.” I’m back living with them (moving plans thwarted combined with high rental costs), but that’s neither here nor there.
My parents are not a burden.
Taking care of them is not a hardship (although I’m still trying to find a way to “show up” in the co-caregiving dept. In my own way).
We are family.
They’re the only parents I’ve got.
Losing them is going to rip a black-hole sized hole in my world.
So we do what we gotta do.
For family.
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The drug he wanted to prescribe is NOT actually named after one of my favorite characters from the X-Men Universe. It just sounded that way. LOL
Hospitals seem to be architecturally designed to be stressful. I'm glad both of your parents are back home and I hope those six weeks go smooth and quick. To have an actual functioning family is such a win, Ororo. Love it. xo