Blood Clots

My mom went into the ER yesterday. Her right leg (the one that can’t move much) was hurting, and the physical therapist that comes out to our house once a week decided that the pain might indicate a blood clot. So my mom went to the ER to have it checked.

After waiting for hours (as in nine hours), for some sort of scan, and then for the results, they decided that she did have blood clots in her leg. Which isn’t good. If they detach from where they are in her leg, they can make their way up to her heart, her lungs or her brain, and kill her, in a painful kind of way.  

So they had two options: surgically insert a filter into one of the large veins (or arteries, or whatever… I don’t know my anatomy) that goes into the heart, so that any clots that make their way up break apart; or they could pump her full of blood thinner to get rid of the clots immediately. With the filter, she’d still have pain in her leg, until the clots broke off and hit the filter (if they ever did). With the blood thinner, there was a concern that it would make her bleed more, which would be bad, since she already had the bleed in her brain, and because the cancer is very vascular.

They decided to do the blood thinner – her pain was pretty high (a 7 out of 10 on the pain chart. Yes, they really use this chart), and I guess there wasn’t any more of a risk with the blood thinner then there was inherently with the cancer. (Which is actually not reassuring – it just makes me more worried that another vessel is going to burst in her brain, and the slow death from cancer that we’ve been told will eventually come about will actually be a quick stroke-like thing again. I’d rather have slow and painless over quick and ugly.)

So now she’s in the hospital (her 4^th hospital since this started. We’re becoming real hospital connoisseurs) getting a strong Heparin drip, so getting blood thinner for 24 hours. She’s also getting some morphine to help with the pain in her leg. She should be back home again tomorrow night, if all goes well.

I visited her in the hospital today. I didn’t expect to hate going into the hospital as much as I did. I mean, aren’t I a hospital veteran now? Haven’t I seen it all? Aren’t I jaded and completely at ease? The answer to most of those questions is no. No, I’m not really a veteran, no I haven’t seen it all, and yes I am jaded, but I am not completely at ease. I am completely at un-ease. When I went into that hospital, I immediately felt more scared, more tense, and more on the verge of tears than I had been two seconds before when I was standing outside.  And seeing my mom in a hospital bed again, in the gleam of the ugly florescent lights? Fugeddaboutit (yes, I looked this up on Urban Dictionary to make sure I was spelling it right. I’m a nerd).

But the thing that’s even worse than the feeling of stepping foot in another hospital is realizing that things might end sooner than I expect. I mean, even though I know, as in logically know, that things could change in a second, that my mom could be dead in a second, I can’t get the rest of me to realize it. I can’t get the rest of me to stop planning for the next few months with my mom. I can’t get the rest of me to accept that something new and dramatic (as in bad dramatic) could happen each day. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism to keep me from making myself CRAZY with worry. Maybe I’m just in denial. Whatever it is, when something new (as in bad new) happens, its like I’m feeling the shock of the stroke all over again. I’m just never ready for any change (as in bad changes) in what has become the new normal of my life.

I was telling my therapist this today, and she said she thought of the image of me standing on the edge on a teeter-totter, trying to balance, and a big weight falling out of the sky and unbalancing everything. It felt like the most apt description ever. Every new thing (as in bad new) is a weight falling out of the sky, upsetting my very fragile balance that I’m trying desperately to keep. Maybe I need to learn gymnastics.