Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Unresponsive...

I got a call last night from my sister Lisa. She told me that everything is okay, but Momma went into the hospital, briefly, yesterday.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She was unresponsive…” Lisa came back, not sounding very sure of her self.

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m not sure, you know how Momma is, lately.”

I did. Her awareness has been dwindling, of late. Early on-set of the Big-A, or advanced Dementia, as the Doctors are calling it. The folks at the nursing home called Lisa and Janice at work and told them. Janice had already left her floor and was going to meet them down in the ER—that worked out well since she works at the hospital, running the Cardiac Care unit.

Lisa rushed out of work, wondering what, exactly they meant by: ‘unresponsive’. You should know that we grew up as the children of a Surgeon, so medical lingo is not unusual to us, but that term leaves a lot to the imagination, and under the circumstances (we’ve sent your mother to the hospital…) well…you can imagine Lisa’s worry as she dashed to her truck and tore out for Gaston Memorial.

When she got there, she saw both Momma, lying on a gurney, and Janice in her scrubs, along one of the ER hallways. When Momma saw her, she of course tried to get up. Both of my sisters worked to keep her lying there, despite her insistence that she was just fine and how are you doing? Etc. etc.

Janice has been telling us that Momma no longer recognizes her. For once, Lisa witnessed it, as they talked about this and that and everyone in the family. She told me that in fact, Momma did avoid addressing Janice, as if she were a stranger, until much later in the day, but that puts me ahead of myself…

Once everyone realized that Momma was in no real danger, and that her unresponsiveness was merely part of her dementia, etc., they decided to take her and go do lunch someplace.

There was embattled talk about which place to go; Janice wanted something a bit spicier than Lisa felt Momma could handle. In the end, they opted for a trip to the local KFC, to get Momma some good ole taters and gravy, biscuits and the like. After all, it was Momma who had not responded to either supper or breakfast back at the home, go figure.

In the parking lot, it finally occurred to both sisters, that neither of them had Momma’s wheelchair. Momma uses it to push or pull herself around the home, often exceeding safe speeds. She can really motor around in that thing, using her legs, which evidently are not strong enough to carry her entire weight around anymore.
“Let’s just lift her up and carry her, you know…” Lisa was using hand signal to demonstrate, “…like they do when they carry off a wounded football player?”

They glanced around at people coming and going from the KFC, and the town full of traffic out on the street. What would people think of them carrying in our poor, dear mother sans-chair, like one might carry a drunk? Regardless, everyone was hungry and Momma, evidently in a moment of clarity, nodded that she did not mind at all if they carried her in with her arms over both of their shoulders.

In fact, once they had her feet on the ground, she began to pedal intensely, making both of her daughters have to struggle to keep up. Either Momma was really hungry, or maybe we should look into just how badly she needs that chair. “She was moving like she was ready to outrun us inside!” Lisa declared over the phone.

When they had food in front of Momma, Lisa told me that she tore into it like she was a starved dog. Of course, she had not eaten since lunch the day before, her mind having taken a little time off of such thoughts.

They began talking again about the family, the grandkids and great grandkids as well as the brothers and sisters.

“Yes, Scott’s still in Texas with Heather. He's got a new book contract…”

“Yes, Johnny and Stephanie had the new baby, little Tate, or TaterTot…”

“Johnny’s down in Jacksonville training to become the first 44 year old Deep Water Repair Diver…”

“Yes, we’re all fine and…”

Something Janice had said, I never found out what, exactly—since Lisa was laughing so hard trying to tell me about it—caught Momma as funny just as she had guzzled down a couple mouthfuls of her iced tea. She spewed tea all over Janice, who was sitting in the unfortunate location of directly across from Momma.

The place came to a stand still, every head turned to see what had happened. There Janice sat drenched and dripping, and Momma pointing at her, laughing her head off so hard she could not utter a sound for lack of air. Lisa began to laugh as well, then the whole place erupted, leaving poor Janice to finally nod, and begin chuckling as well, as they wiped up the spill; a great huge wad of wet napkins remained on their food trays as they went on with their conversation, a conversation the likes of which they had not had with Momma in a long, long time.

It ebbed and flowed, covering any number of topics. For that while, Momma was her old self, asking questions, laughing and giggling with my sisters. Janice kept holding up a napkin whenever she said anything, joking with Momma to just try and spew tea again. She did not spew any more tea, but she took a bite of her dessert, chocolate pudding with whipped cream, just as Janice had let down her guard. Momma blew pudding and whipped cream over Janice’s way, once more setting the place into a tumble of laughter.

Once they had her back in the car and finally, tucked her away to the capable hands of the nursing home staff, Lisa went back to work after dropping Janice at the hospital. They both promised to stay in closer touch, a resolution we all make from time to time when life has kept us apart for all the reasons you can imagine. On her way back down to the state line, Lisa began laughing again. Just the thought of the looks on Janice and Momma’s faces set her off into peels of laughter.

Finally she made it back to work and managed to finish out her day. When she got back into the truck, she had to start laughing again. She said she laughed so hard that her sides were hurting by the time she made it home, and called me to tell me about it.

God, I love my family.

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