The cliff and the trampoline

*Disclaimer: this post uses really poor metaphors. I’m not a poet, so that’s just how it goes. 

Last Friday my mom fell of the cliff. Everything that could have happened (you know, other than actually dying) did happen. Her right leg stopped working. Her entire right side lost all strength – she couldn’t sit up; instead she was hunched over and to the side. She was so tired she went to bed two hours early. Or at least she tried – instead of falling asleep she threw up all her dinner. She eventually fell asleep, and woke up at about 11:30pm and had to go to the bathroom. My dad took her to the toilet, and then asked me to watch her while he made the bed (she had wet the bed before we could get her up and to the bathroom).

And then she had a seizure. She was sitting on the toilet, mostly asleep. She was holding onto the guiderail with her left hand, to keep herself upright. But her arm started to get shaky, and she started slipping. So I told her to let go of the bar, and held her upright myself. Then her throat started convulsing, and her eyes opened wide and rolled back, and she started shaking. I yelled for my dad, and we somehow got her into the bed (I remember my dad picking her up and carrying her like you would carry a damsel in distress), got hospice on the phone, and got her head up so she wouldn’t choke on whatever you choke on when you’re having a seizure.

After a total of ten minutes or so she came back to consciousness – she opened her eyes normally, instead of exorcist style, she was able to speak a little instead of having a spasming throat. She was able to fall asleep for the night after a few minutes time.

Then Saturday rolled around, and she was exhausted. She could barely get out of bed in the morning. She could barely stay awake in her chair in the living room. We used the bedside (or chair-side) commode instead of taking her to the bathroom because the bathroom was just too far. Every time she used the commode she was in pain – pain from being moved, pain from trying to sit on this awkward contraption, pain from not being able to sit up straight. We were even talking about a catheter, but she really didn’t want one. She took a nap in the afternoon (which she never does) because she was so exhausted.

And I thought that that was it. She’d fallen off the cliff. The descent was steep – steep and a little violent. This was what it would look like from now on – the bedside commode or a catheter, a barely responsive mom stuck in her hospital bed all day long. I knew it had to happen sometime, but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. It was too fast, too frightening, too painful.

And then Sunday she must have landed on a trampoline that lives somewhere on the side of that cliff (see, really bad metaphor!). Because she bounced back. She’s still tired, still having a hard time speaking, still forgetting what she’s saying in the middle of a sentence. But she can sit up. She can go to the bathroom with relative ease. Her right leg still doesn’t work, but it works well enough to stand up as we transfer her from one chair to another. She’s back to what she was like before the horrible Friday, back to the slow decline we were expecting her to have.

And all I can do is suck in a deep breath – a breath of anticipation, to prepare me for the worst, but also a pausing kind of breath, because we still have more time.


p.s. I'm giving all this detail not to shame my mom, or to incite pity, or to gross anyone out. I'm giving all this detail because it's cathartic, and because there should be no shame in wetting the bed when you're dying from cancer and you can't control your bowels. I hope these details bring dignity to a woman who has lost control of her own body and who is living as best she can.