Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone

Machinery (7)

(June and July, 2002)

During the months of June and July, 2002, if the phone rang while I was getting ready for work, it meant my mother was calling. If the phone rang while I was getting ready for work, it meant my mother was calling to tell me she needed to get fluids. If the phone rang while I was getting ready for work, it meant my mother was calling to tell me she needed to get fluids and was unable to drive. If the phone rang while I was getting ready for work, it meant my mother was calling to tell me she needed to get fluids and was unable to drive, so I had to take her.

The first week of June, we'd danced together at my cousin's wedding, though she'd had a setback and almost didn't attend. From Memorial Day on, we were in somewhat of a holding pattern; we didn't know how serious the setback was. In the weeks between the last holiday of spring and the first holiday of summer, the picture gradually-and inevitably-came into focus.

Actually, it was the opposite. With the expectation (or hope) of recovery (or stabilization), tunnel vision ensues and everything on the periphery is simply a distraction. It's all a matter of scale and scope. Once you begin to lose control of the narrative, the image blurs and all the questions, conclusions, and alternatives you didn't need to consider (or didn't let yourself consider) crash in from all corners. Then, anything might happen, and while it's still a matter of scope and scale, now every possible outcome seems unacceptable.

The chemotherapy had made her sick, but it had also made her better. (Hadn't it?)

After Memorial Day, she began feeling bad again, and this time we couldn't blame it on the chemo.

Suddenly, she couldn't hold anything down, and when even plain liquids were causing side effects, it wasn't possible to kid anyone about what was going on inside her. We still didn't know, and we didn't need to know (yet), but the diarrhea and nausea became severe enough that chronic dehydration resulted.

The doctors were methodical, which was encouraging, at least initially. She's losing electrolytes, they said, so we infuse those fluids into her system. This, after all, was a miracle of modern medicine: we now had ways and means of providing what the body had trouble producing. Potassium and saline drips were prescribed to help restore the vital nutrients her body was expelling like an allergic reaction.

Solid meals and solid bowel movements became memories from another time, another life. We found ourselves in near constant crisis, spending more time shuttling her to and from treatments than we had during her regular chemo visits. That this coincided with the most intolerably hot days of summer seemed almost scripted. Nevertheless, when you see your mother shifting uncomfortably away from the blast of the car's air conditioner even though it's approaching triple digits, you are officially at the point where medicine and miracles are the only hope you have left.