"I Would for You"--Jane's Addiction

I was logging in to Facebook, just to see if anyone had sent me a message, or if anything interesting had happened with the fam damily, when I saw my sister's post. It said that Mom was going to the hospital, and everyone please pray for her. I immediately responded “WTF is going on, call me or write me or something.” So I called and talked to  my Aunt who was at the house with Mom. She was in a lot of pain, and hadn’t been able to have a bowel movement. The doctor wanted her to come to the Markey Cancer Center, but didn’t want her to drive all the way there to just wait for a bed, so they were waiting for the doctor to call back when there was a bed available.

I didn’t get to the hospital until Friday. I had been getting updates from Dad and the sibs. But when I arrived everyone was pissed. Except Dad, he didn't appear to be angry. But the others had had plenty of time to dwell on the fact that her urine output had decreased and that the size of her abdomen had increased. They thought that it must be urine leaking into her abdomen.

Mom was still Mom, of course. But she was in and out, having been given a lot of pain medication. The combination of not being able to have a BM and also having fluid filling her abdomen was excruciatingly painful. When I came in, I sat and talked for a while with my sisters and brother, we laughed quite a bit, cried some.

I think it was the laughter that woke her up, “What’s so funny? So you were just going to sit there and not say anything to me?”

“Sorry,” I said as I bent to kiss her, “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Beth.”

“I just didn’t want to wake you up while you were resting,” I explained. My eldest sister resumed her humorous tirade, which explained our laughter. Mom didn’t stay awake too long, she wanted something to drink, something for nausea and something for pain.

When she went back to sleep the sibs who smoked wanted to take a smoke break. I decided to walk with them. The University had become a non-smoking campus, so you actually have to walk over to a public street or smoking area to smoke. This entails walking over to Hugeulet. At Hugeulet you have to stop, of course, and wait for the walk sign to cross the street. When the walk sign is lit to cross Hugeulet; it also speaks, “Uvula, uvula, walk sign uvula, uvula.” Or at least that’s what it sounds like it says; who gets to decide these street names, anyway? I listened to this a few times before I mentioned it to the sibs.

"It sounds like it's saying uvula."

“You know, I've been thinking the same thing,” my oldest sister said. This provided us with some much needed comic relief. So did bears. (Don’t ask; you’ll only be one of three things: disgusted, lost, or so amused that you’ll want to make bear jokes too). We are all very fortunate that we can maintain our senses of humor in the most difficult situations. I guess we get that from Mom…

Back in the hospital, Dad had arrived. The doctors wanted to drain some of the fluid from Mom’s abdomen to try to relieve the pressure that it was putting on her chest—it was getting increasingly difficult and painful to breathe. Dad and my Uncle made a trip to the cafeteria to eat; I requested a chicken salad so that I could stay with mom as long as possible. While they were gone two doctors and an intern came in. One doctor explained the procedure, they conversed a while and prepared the necessary equipment. Then one doctor left, but not before telling them that they pretty much had one shot at this, because there was no way to rethread the guide needle afterward, and they didn’t need to be doing it more than once because of the high risk of infection.

Once the other doctor left to tend to other patients, the two remaining turned their attention on me. “Are you going to stay for the procedure?”

“Yeah,” with a look that I hoped conveyed, of course I’m staying, I held my Mother’s hand and stood by the bed.

“What kind of work do you do?” they looked doubtful, like, who is this pregnant chick and are we going to have to scrape her off the floor later or clean up her puke?

“Well, I don’t have a job right now, but I’m a grad student—getting my masters in English. And I’m writing a book,” I explained, as if this would help ease their curiosity or concern.

“Oh. Like a murder mystery or something?” the intern asked.

“Yes, exactly,” well, apparently, enough said.

“Oh, I like those,” she said. And that was the end of that. Now they were going to start the procedure.

I would convey the details of it here, but it’s not something everyone can stomach. They attempted the procedure, but only withdrew a small amount of fluid into the syringe before it failed. While they were preparing for a second attempt, all the while Mom squeezed my hand, gasping in pain, as they poked around at her belly. The head nurse opened the door decisively and addressed the two doctors.

“I need to speak with you, now,” and she looked pretty pissed. They all left and when they returned she said that they were not going to attempt the procedure again and that they would be taking her shortly for a super special CT scan that would help them determine if it indeed was a bladder perforation, or something else.

Not too long after that they wheeled her off in her bed and Dad returned with my chicken salad. I told him all about it, as well as the sibs (who were, of course, pissed all over again) and then everyone went to have a cigarette break.

I was sitting alone on the couch, eating my chicken salad, when the urological surgeon came in. After introducing myself as her daughter and explaining that everyone had gone outside, he asked me if I had any questions. He explained that the CT scan would use a catheter into which contrast would be injected. Then one of two things would happen, the fluid inside her bladder would remain in her bladder or the contrast would travel outside the bladder, indicating a perforation.

I asked what would happen if it was a perforated bladder, and if it wasn’t a perforated bladder, then what could it be? A perforated bladder would require surgery, and they were concerned with her being able to survive another surgery, but that she would go directly to surgery that evening if that was what the test revealed. If it was not urine leaking into the abdomen, then it was most likely fluid secreted by the cancer, and that that meant that the cancer had basically spread throughout her abdomen.

Well, he left and I ate my chicken salad as tears streamed down my face. I would have to go soon. I had said my goodbyes to Mom before they wheeled her away; she knew that I would have to leave to be back in the Ville in time to pick up Addison from day care. I drove home thinking, this is not Mom dying. They will fix her bladder and send her on home again. I listened to Jane's Addiction as I drove through the miles of road construction on I64, wiping the tears from my face.

I wasn’t there when the results came back; her bladder was intact. They did succeed in draining the fluid from her abdomen that evening, however. I planned on coming back Saturday and Sunday with the girls. That Sunday was Mother’s day.

"You said

This I do for you

If it would help

To give the world back

What it gave

Then I would

I would

I would

I would

I would for you"

I would for you, Mom.