A Phone Call Away
We’re down at our cabin in Arkansas this week, some 240 miles and 6 hours away from home. When we’re out of town, I maintain the same routines with Mom every day with the exception of going to see her everyday. We talk by phone at least every morning, and sometimes twice, as I like to know when she gets back from the beauty shop, for example. But I worry, maybe not as much as I did when she really lived by herself in her duplex, but the worry is there.
I know my mother, she doesn’t like to admit illness, nor does she like to worry those around her and she sometimes goes to great pains to hide her pain.
And a lot more can be hidden by phone.
On the morning of her near fatal heart attack, I talked with her at our usual 8:30 morning call. She told me she felt fine (she had been experiencing severe shortness of breath and other symptoms we now know was the prelude, but were blamed on the COPD). But she really wasn’t fine. By the time I talked to her, she was already having shooting pains in her back. She waited 4 hours from the time the first symptoms appeared to call me and tell me something was terribly wrong. It was a wait that nearly cost her life. She later told me in the hospital, “Well, I wanted to feel fine.”
After her second fall last autumn, the nurse at her doctor’s office put a brace on her badly swollen and bruised foot. It looked pretty tight to me and I kept asking Mom about it, but she insisted in keeping it on. A sore eventually formed on her foot that I knew nothing about until gangrene had set in. It took months of visits from a home nurse to get the sore healed.
I’ve learned to read her voice pretty well, there’s not many times she can hide things from me anymore, but when we’re gone I still worry she may hide something in order to protect our time away. If it’s not worrying that she might be concealing an illness, I’m worried if something did happen, we wouldn’t be able to get back to the city in time to help her through the process of a hospital admission. After dealing with doctors, hospitals, Medicare and all of the others involved in elderly care for nearly three years, I take a very active role in Mom’s care, from knowing what goes on at each “routine” check up, to researching possible side effects for each new medication.
After her heart attack, I wouldn’t come down to the cabin for nearly 6 months afterward.
Now when I leave, I make sure our phone call times are set (we get no cell phone reception in these remote mountains), I make sure her neighbors know I’m leaving and how to reach me in case of emergency. I leave Mom with leftovers and dinners I start freezing weeks in advance.
Mom is so vulnerable. I guess I now know how she probably felt each day I walked out the door to school or anywhere when I was a child. Yet, Mom isn’t a child and (Thank God), she has her full mental capabilities. There’s a balance of respecting what she wants and can manage and where I feel I need to step in.
Yesterday, we took an unexpected trip to town and I missed our usual morning call. We forgot our cell phones, which do work in town, and it was nearly 1 p.m. before I could get a call into her. I don’t know who was more panicked, her or me. She says its worry about us, that I don’t doubt, but I also think for her, it is a little knowing I’m still only a phone call away.
I know all the experts in care giving are right. My friends are right and even my mother is right when they all tell me we do need time away from all of our daily responsibilities and worries.
But sometimes I wonder if I worry more when we’re at home or when we’re away.
I know my mother, she doesn’t like to admit illness, nor does she like to worry those around her and she sometimes goes to great pains to hide her pain.
And a lot more can be hidden by phone.
On the morning of her near fatal heart attack, I talked with her at our usual 8:30 morning call. She told me she felt fine (she had been experiencing severe shortness of breath and other symptoms we now know was the prelude, but were blamed on the COPD). But she really wasn’t fine. By the time I talked to her, she was already having shooting pains in her back. She waited 4 hours from the time the first symptoms appeared to call me and tell me something was terribly wrong. It was a wait that nearly cost her life. She later told me in the hospital, “Well, I wanted to feel fine.”
After her second fall last autumn, the nurse at her doctor’s office put a brace on her badly swollen and bruised foot. It looked pretty tight to me and I kept asking Mom about it, but she insisted in keeping it on. A sore eventually formed on her foot that I knew nothing about until gangrene had set in. It took months of visits from a home nurse to get the sore healed.
I’ve learned to read her voice pretty well, there’s not many times she can hide things from me anymore, but when we’re gone I still worry she may hide something in order to protect our time away. If it’s not worrying that she might be concealing an illness, I’m worried if something did happen, we wouldn’t be able to get back to the city in time to help her through the process of a hospital admission. After dealing with doctors, hospitals, Medicare and all of the others involved in elderly care for nearly three years, I take a very active role in Mom’s care, from knowing what goes on at each “routine” check up, to researching possible side effects for each new medication.
After her heart attack, I wouldn’t come down to the cabin for nearly 6 months afterward.
Now when I leave, I make sure our phone call times are set (we get no cell phone reception in these remote mountains), I make sure her neighbors know I’m leaving and how to reach me in case of emergency. I leave Mom with leftovers and dinners I start freezing weeks in advance.
Mom is so vulnerable. I guess I now know how she probably felt each day I walked out the door to school or anywhere when I was a child. Yet, Mom isn’t a child and (Thank God), she has her full mental capabilities. There’s a balance of respecting what she wants and can manage and where I feel I need to step in.
Yesterday, we took an unexpected trip to town and I missed our usual morning call. We forgot our cell phones, which do work in town, and it was nearly 1 p.m. before I could get a call into her. I don’t know who was more panicked, her or me. She says its worry about us, that I don’t doubt, but I also think for her, it is a little knowing I’m still only a phone call away.
I know all the experts in care giving are right. My friends are right and even my mother is right when they all tell me we do need time away from all of our daily responsibilities and worries.
But sometimes I wonder if I worry more when we’re at home or when we’re away.
posted by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell at 5:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home