By Nancy Jones
After the age of 80, her health began to fail
dramatically. From 1987 until her death in 2002, she was
admitted to the hospital 24 times. Besides writing in my
journals, I learned that I must have with me at all times
her written medical history. "Coronary Artery Disease" was
the top heading. This saved tons of time for me and the
medical personnel and probably helped save her fragile life
for one more hospital visit. I learned from all these
emergencies that the heart is a pretty strong muscle; she
had six myocardial infarctions, none of which killed her.
Together we coped with hip operations, pulmonary edema,
stroke, pneumonia, and what we considered the minor
problems: angina, dehydration, cataract and retinal surgery.
However, before heading to the nearest hospital on an
emergency basis, we always discussed whether it was truly
merited. It was a "judgment call" we made on the basis of
the problem. And if the crisis came on a weekend, we coped
at home unless it was life threatening. I can still see her
shaking her head and moaning, “But we can't go to the
hospital. No one will be there. It's a weekend and a
holiday!”
After she died in June of 2002, I realized my mother and
I had been a team, not unlike buddies in combat who help
each other when the other is down. Time and time again
during unavoidable hospitalizations, we encountered and rose
above inept interns, brusque nurses, officious bureaucrats,
and even crazy patient roommates. We dreaded these hospital
stays. They were exhausting and debilitating for us both. I
would make at least two trips a day to the hospital,
catering to her daily requests of needed items. When not so
engaged, I would stay with her and try to catch assigned
specialists, nurses and social workers. However, it was
years before I found out that my mother dismissed every
social worker who came to her hospital room before
discharge, claiming she did not need the home health aide
that Medicare would provide because she lived with her
daughter who would take care of everything.
In the end, it was a hospital stay which killed her; not
her frail heart. Admitted for a lingering cough, it was not
long before I was informed by the doctors in charge that she
had sepsis, a hospital infection which led to her death on
June 2, the date she had been married 72 years earlier.
Later, I was to read in one of my medical newsletters that
one out of 10 hospital patients acquires an infection and
these infections or medical mistakes kill about 100,000
people a year.
She was 94 when she died and I was 65, almost the same
age she was when she first came to live with me. "Don't be
sad when I'm gone," she would tell me toward the end. “It's
getting too hard to live. My aches and pains make it
impossible to enjoy life.” This was a mantra I heard from
her almost every day of the last year of her life. But
dismissing her complaints, I would physically lift her
little frame so she could grasp her walker, and together we
would make the hard trek to the bathroom or to the breakfast
table or wherever she directed me.
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