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Column Seeking patterns, hope in illness variables
By JEANNETTE BATZ
Saturday evening my mom, who was
emitting strange yelps at twinges around her rib cage and running a fever she
never admitted was 104, finally let my stepdad drag her to the emergency room.
At 3 a.m. Sunday, they admitted her. At 9 a.m. Sunday, my husband and I were to
leave on vacation.
She insisted we go. Having had double pneumonia myself, and
knowing only antibiotics and rest could help, I reluctantly agreed -- but not
before reminding her, with full Irish superstition, of my track record.
Id gone to Spain on a work trip and come home to find my grandmother
dead. Id gone to New York and come home to find my favorite aunt dead.
Just the past August, Id been with my husband on the rough west coast of
Newfoundland when his dad received a diagnosis of terminal liver cancer.
Dont you go dying on me! I teased my lithe, athletic
mother.
Her laugh echoed in my mind for the next two months. Two days
after we left, the pneumonia took a sudden sharp turn downward. By the time
doctors performed a bronchoscopy, she needed a ventilator to breathe for her.
That evening we found a grave message from her doctor and a tearful one from my
mother-in-law. Two hours later I was climbing into a chartered single-engine
plane, hoping my husband, whos terrified of big planes, would
forgive me.
By the time we tiptoed into the ICU, she was heavily sedated. She
managed to mouth, I love you around the oxygen tube, but from that
moment sank deeper and deeper into what the nurses called the twilight
zone, medicines attempt to blunt the panic of being unable to draw
your own breath, and the gagging scraping sensation of having somebodys
finger stuck down your throat.
We took shifts at her bedside while the doctors tried to figure
out what was wrong. First they said inoperable lung cancer, and I immediately
believed them, and began the grieving -- until my husband crisply told me to
stop burying his mother-in-law, we hadnt even seen the test results yet.
Sure enough, the biopsy returned negative -- but she obviously had more than a
common pneumonia, and they didnt know what.
One week earlier, shed beaten my stepdad at tennis --
although he still swore, half laughing, half sobbing, that shed cheated.
Now she lay before us wired and taped and trussed, trimmed like a sad tree, her
skin flushed hot by the warmed oxygen forcing its will into her. I huddled
under the blanket I had brought for her (daughters always end up selfish) and
stared at the monitor. My wildest superstitions about leaving on vacation had
been vindicated; now I was looking for pattern and hope in numbers I
didnt even understand.
Soon wed divided them, my stepdad watching the heart rate
and neon-green respiration rate, me obsessing over the blue oxygen saturation
and orange peak pressure. At the bedside, we pulled our chairs close to the
monitor, like old guys at the horse races who stay inside the betting area and
watch the screens.
My mom, too, was racing against time, growing more feverish and
disoriented every day. Suspended between physical strength and mental lucidity,
she pulled at tubes, pushed away our hands, wedged her foot against the bar in
a feeble attempt at escape. Each attempt set off a piercing alarm, further
jolting her frayed nerves. Desperate to calm her and forestall her panicked
awakenings, I talked nonsense about the magic bed that pulsed circulation into
her limbs, the nice helicopter that landed every few hours outside her window.
If I could just wrap each sensory impression in a soft blanket before it could
pierce her. I groped for the right stories, held her hand for hours just in
case it was keeping her calm. But the drugs had their own rhythm, far stronger
than my soft experiments.
And still, they had no diagnosis. We were lost in the world of
infectious disease, blameless and random and insidious, the prototype of sudden
tragedy. The first week, I prayed Hail Marys nonstop every time I got scared.
The second week, I didnt even bother; every sigh of the ventilator had
become a prayer. My helpless brain consoled me with a childlike logic that
probably drove the nurses mad: Her fevers down? Wonderful!
Her fevers back, thats good, right? It means shes still
fighting the infection? Shes calm at last!
Shes mad as hell again. Thank God for that spirit of hers.
The variables fluctuated like the stock market on a crazy day. Trying to steady
my reactions, I bent them into circles of rationalization, meeting at both
ends.
Finally, the test returned from the Mayo Clinic: positive for
Legionella. My mother, who had never worn a funny hat in her life, had
Legionnaires disease. I raced to the computer, and by the time Id
downloaded 15 articles, Id realized the power of urban legend.
Legionnaires does not strike only at large conventions. Water-borne, the
bacteria more commonly strike in individual, isolated cases -- but because
its tough to diagnose and near-impossible to track to its source, the
media and public health folks dont take note.
Glad to have a focus, the doctors switched to a different
antibiotic, and we came to our daily vigil with renewed hope. All my mother
knew by now was thirst and air gurgling through a hole in her throat
(theyd done a tracheotomy), and drug-induced hallucinations. Watching the
nurses push and prod and stick her, I marveled at their calm. Didnt they
know theyd become fodder for her lifes worst nightmares?
Ah, but they kept reminding me: She wont remember any of
this. Trying to ignore her misery -- does suffering count if you dont
remember it? I glanced involuntarily at the monitor, then remembered the
respiratory techs advice: If I were you, maam, I
wouldnt pay too much attention to those numbers. Its the big
picture that matters.
Slowly I stopped obsessing over the numbers, stopped looking for
signs and patterns, stopped trying to cast a circle of protection around her.
The womb of the ICU room, with its rhythmic over-loud breathing, took on a
surreal familiarity, and even its terrors became routine. Numb, I drove back
and forth each day through the fiercest summer storms I could remember and
barely noticed them.
After three weeks of stalemate, the doctors finally dared a
steroid drug theyd been hesitant to try. The very next day, as if by
magic, my mother was noticeably better, and though we werent out of the
woods yet, hope finally felt safe. I drove home that evening mesmerized by a
sky streaked with translucent pink and coral, each cloud backlit and outlined
in gold, as if the heavens themselves were registering her recovery.
Then I remembered the young woman crying in the hall that
afternoon. Exiled to the waiting room while they bathed my mom, Id
returned to the ICU door and buzzed happily, only to hear that no one could
come in, they had a situation with one of the patients. Is it
my mother? I gasped into the intercom, but before the nurse could answer,
the young woman spoke. They wont let me in either, she said
wearily, and then broke into fresh sobs. I think its my
mother.
Just then the nurse relented and pressed the buzzer. I raced to my
own mothers room, ashamed to feel so relieved. By the time I left,
curtains hid the other womans bed, and her husband and daughter were
inside with a chaplain.
I looked back up at the skys pale streaky brilliance. No, it
wasnt a sign of my mothers recovery; nothing in nature is that
personal, nothing in life is just about us.
The only thing personal about this sunset was that, tonight, my
heart was light enough to notice.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis. Her e-mail address is
jeannette.batz@rftstl.com
National Catholic Reporter, November 10,
2000
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