I have spent a great deal of emotional and physical energy on my relationship with my mother. In part, because it is the subtext of my master's thesis. The rest is that I currently facing a life without her.
Hours after celebrating her 68th birthday with us back in January, she woke up unable to breathe. We called 911 and she was rushed to my local emergency room. I was pushed out of her room when she crashed the first time. The doctors and nurses stabilized her and she was admitted to ICU. At the time, they thought she had had a heart attack. They found a blockage and did a heart catheterization which revealed she needed an angioplasty to clear a 90 percent blockage.
She was transferred to Cooper up in Camden where they did the angioplasty, put in three stents and everything according to them was fine. They released her the next day and in her words- " She lost her mind on 295." She had developed an infection while she was there and they released her anyway. By the time I got home from work, she was running a 104 degree fever. By the time I got her readmitted to my local under her cardiologist's service, she was out of her head and according to the ER docs becoming septic. they pushed heavy duty antibiotics and tried to get a helicopter from Cooper to bring her back. They called my husband to sit with me after he arranged for close family/friends to watch our son.
Cooper did send an ambulance, and we drove from Salem to Cooper Hospital in Camden in 15 minutes. They admitted her right to ICU, which must have been modeled after Bedlam in London for the dark and gloomy chaos that rules that overcrowded space. Once she was out of ICU, John had her sent back to Salem for the rest of her recovery. From there she stepped down to a nursing home, and came back to us.
Mom and I were supposed to go up to Outcalt to check on her house and get some things when she decided she couldn't wait and asked John to take her.
They had stopped at the Shop Rite in Spotswood when she started to hemorrhage from where they went in for the angioplasty. John wanted to drive her immediately to Old Bridge Regional's Emergency Room. She wanted to call 911 and get an ambulance. John drove her to the hospital. ER docs there said that if she had waited for an ambulance she would have bled out.
She was there for another week while they got her hemoglobin back up and everybody is trying to tell me everything is fine except she she cannot live two hours away from family anymore.
I tell Mom that she cannot live with me, but she can live near me within walking distance.
Then all this emotional bilge pours out of her. She falsely accused me of stealing my grandmother's china and silver. She says nasty and hateful things about my husband, myself and my son. She tell me that she would rather live with my brother in VA.
I called my brother and told him to come get her. My sister in law came up and took her back the end of February. She never even acknowledged my son's fourth birthday.
From then until yesterday, I have not spoken to my mother. She had not called me nor I her. My husband convinced me that in the spirit of holiday I should call her and wish her a Happy Easter as she would probably be in C-ville with my brother and his in laws.
Frank answered and told me how my mother was doing so much better since Mom came to live with them. I ended the call politely before I said something spiteful.
Half hour later my mother called me using her cell phone and told me the truth without telling me the truth. The stats she read off to me tell me that her heart is in fact failing. She is dying of Congestive Heart Failure and there is nothing to be done. She will not see me graduate with honors from Rowan. She will not be at my son's baptism scheduled for June. She is slowly and carefully being edited out of my life entirely.
I am struggling to maintain homeostasis while I finish my thesis and go through recontracting. And you wonder why I have been quiet.
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