In Stuyvesant Town, first apartment, 653 East 14th Street, apartment 5G

This tome might one day, possibly one day soon, be a eulogy for a now ninety-four year old woman who will be ninety-five in a couple of weeks. I last saw my mother in August. She wanted to go shopping so we threw her walker in the trunk and set-off to the mall where she wheeled and reeled ahead of me at umpteen miles an hour, all 4′ 9″ of her diminished self; she was a powerhouse.

Then in September, she wasn’t.

My mother always said, “Life can turn on a dime.” It did. Her blood pressure became high and erratic if not defiantly uncontrollable. It thumbed its nose at her, her blood pressure machine, her vials of pills, and went on it merry way. She kept a bag packed and ready at the door along with a folder holding her Do Not Resuscitate order and when her pressure crept higher and higher and knocked at the door of numbers that could reflect a stroke, she’d call herself an ambulance. This happened numerous times and despite these hospital visits and visits to her doctor, (who, by the way, would interview my mother on her secrets of longevity), nothing changed. Her pressure was as wild as a teenager who had keys to a new Corvette.

It took on a life of its own. My mother’s hobby seemed to be winding the blood pressure strap around her arm, crossing it over her chest and waiting for the verdict. When you are alone and so old it is easy to panic and anxiety is a horrible thing to have to deal with, it just makes things worse.

During the first bout she was weakened, feels she lost some strength in the right side of her body despite there not being evidence of a stroke, she had difficulty moving, walking, getting down to the dining room for meals, in fact she had to have meals brought up and that didn’t work out well with the timing of her pills. “I feel like my feet are encased in wax,” she kept saying. She even fell in the apartment and crawled to the wall to prop herself up. The assisted living residence, where she lives “independently”, insisted she never pressed her emergency button. I suspect ass-covering.

Some people go to a spa, others get manicures or massages regularly. My mother seemed to have a bi-weekly appointment at Northwest Hospital to get her blood pressure stabilized. For five minutes. Or a couple of days.  Then she’d be dumped back home. Occasionally they would keep her overnight but ultimately she was back where she started from, having another episode.

She complained more and more about the horrible, unchewable, over-seasoned, overly salted, dried out food at the residence, the paucity of residents she could communicate with as most had dementia.

She stopped taking showers for fear of falling and did the best she could with a wash cloth. Still she got up at 5:00 am to pick out her outfit and put on her makeup so that by 7:00 am she could go down for breakfast.

The last six months have been transitional. Obviously something was going on, something was attacking my mother, something insidious. It’s called “aging.” We can fight if off as long as we can but we all know what happens eventually, we just don’t know what the end will look like and where it will happen—until it does.

Around February 7th she fell in her apartment and was taken to the hospital. I got a call around midnight that there was good news: nothing was broken and they were going to release her. “Release a ninety-four year old woman at midnight?” I asked. “No. This is not acceptable. She lives alone and that is NOT wise. You better reconsider.”

So around 4:00 am she was admitted and put on an IV and not fed all day. This is a woman who weighs about eighty-five pounds—if that. No one knew why she was not being fed. “That’s OK,” she said, “sometimes fasting helps cleanse the body.” Always the naturopath.

But a physician who was supposed to come never came and it appeared she was on an IV in case they wanted to operate. Operate on a ninety-four year old woman who was told nothing was broken just hours before. Now they claim there was a fracture. I left a message: “Under no circumstances is anyone to touch my mother or consider surgery. I want the orthopedist to call me.” he never did. It appeared the first doctor never got a message to see my mother from his answering service. Another doctor was called that evening and saw my mother and said the surgery would likely not help. Finally mother was allowed to eat.

It doesn’t end there. She was shipped to a rehab place where “the food looks like dogfood, I have to wait for a half hour or more for someone to help me get to the bathroom, it’s noisy, I can’t sleep and I feel drugged.”

At some point my mother who was trying to comply and eat and take her meds, felt sick to her stomach. No one seemed to take it very seriously.

I called the next day and my mother didn’t answer her phone so I called the nurse’s station. I was told my mother wasn’t there. “Oh, I asked, did she go on a cruise? What do you mean she isn’t there?” She began vomiting blood in the middle of the night and we sent her back to the hospital.”

I later found my mother in the ICU. She was there two days and then moved to a private room. She had developed some kind of ulcer, most likely. But in the middle of all this, her clothes were delivered at my request to the rehab and left there when she went to the hospital. A small wardrobe. Gone.

And guess what? After a couple of days in the hospital she was sent to a rehab again, just as she was settled in and feeling safe. I knew I needed help, I needed someone to act on my behalf so I hired an advocate, a wonderful person. She was helpful finding an acceptable rehab facility and we suggested the place to the case worker in the hospital. She is still there.

But it is the same story: waiting forty minutes to be taken to the bathroom, food that looks like it should be fed to animals, so weak she can barely get out of bed to go to physical therapy let alone do the exercises …

But as always, the telephone provided a lifeline.

I try to distract her by asking about the past, I need to ask all the questions that still need answers, I fear letting go.

The woman who tried to learn everything possible about homeopathic medicine and natural cures is now surviving on Ensure. Perhaps I should say, subsisting on Ensure. This is not living.

Last night she said, after talking about the way things used to be, that society has been declining drastically, people were so much more genteel and respectful. You felt safe on the streets, on the subway at all hours, nobody bothered you, not like now.”

Now this may seem like a total non-sequitor, but just about the time my mother began to decline, one of my cats began to display subtle changes in behavior and in appearance. He began to lose weight rapidly just within the last few weeks, like the Universe is displaying a mirror of my mother wasting away. I just learned the cat has diabetes and will require daily insulin shots. I shudder at the thought of what I am seeing.

Potential loss.

[This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.]

continued here

The series starts here