Better Living Through Chemistry
It's 5:20 am and I can hear my mom shuffling down the hall way. I know she hasn't been up for too many hours because the shuffling tells me that her meds haven't kicked in. They are not the perfect solution to her war on Parkinson's Disease, but they ha
ve a tremendous impact on her ability to function. When she's on, she seems almost full strength. But when she's off, her body starts to work like a robot with busted joints. Her ON and OFF is complex, impacted by a long list of variables (a list longer than my last grocery list).
Better Living Through Chemistry should be the title of a movie about my mom's life. Twelve thousand dollars worth of drugs every year, in complex mixtures that need accurate timing, the right diet, perfect doses of exercises, and an environment void of stress. But the last one is not an option today so I fear that she will be shuffling more than usual, that her drugs will fail her when she needs them the most. I can't sleep either thinking of the day to come, so I get up and join her for breakfast.
We decide to clean house and I start making piles of stuff that I can take to the trash as soon as day break arrives and I am sure the raccoons have vacated the trash bins. She is stiff this morning so she asks me to help her with her laundry. I haul the baskets out across the hallway in her apartment building a
nd plug the quarters into the washing machine. She comes in the laundry room so she can tell me about the settings and about swirling water in the laundry soap container so we can use the last bit of liquid soap. I pause here. This is her life. Her washing machine. Her quarters. So I swirl the soap exactly as she tells me.
Before long, I find myself packing for the hospital, to go see my mom's boyfriend. We debate on what to bring; clothes, things to read, food. We talk about how long we will be there. And we talk about the medical records and other bits of missing information that we should track down today. These things are never simple.
I go back to the living room and start digging through his medical records. There are dates and times and a whole cast of medical doctors with complex tests and diagnosis. I put the papers into two stacks; those that look important and those that don't. The complexity of the paper work overwhelms me; I wonder why we can't have a simple org chart with the pictures of the doctors and with pointers to the body parts they are working on. Maybe different colors codes to help me tell if the results are good, bad or indifferent.
ve a tremendous impact on her ability to function. When she's on, she seems almost full strength. But when she's off, her body starts to work like a robot with busted joints. Her ON and OFF is complex, impacted by a long list of variables (a list longer than my last grocery list).Better Living Through Chemistry should be the title of a movie about my mom's life. Twelve thousand dollars worth of drugs every year, in complex mixtures that need accurate timing, the right diet, perfect doses of exercises, and an environment void of stress. But the last one is not an option today so I fear that she will be shuffling more than usual, that her drugs will fail her when she needs them the most. I can't sleep either thinking of the day to come, so I get up and join her for breakfast.
We decide to clean house and I start making piles of stuff that I can take to the trash as soon as day break arrives and I am sure the raccoons have vacated the trash bins. She is stiff this morning so she asks me to help her with her laundry. I haul the baskets out across the hallway in her apartment building a
nd plug the quarters into the washing machine. She comes in the laundry room so she can tell me about the settings and about swirling water in the laundry soap container so we can use the last bit of liquid soap. I pause here. This is her life. Her washing machine. Her quarters. So I swirl the soap exactly as she tells me.Before long, I find myself packing for the hospital, to go see my mom's boyfriend. We debate on what to bring; clothes, things to read, food. We talk about how long we will be there. And we talk about the medical records and other bits of missing information that we should track down today. These things are never simple.
I go back to the living room and start digging through his medical records. There are dates and times and a whole cast of medical doctors with complex tests and diagnosis. I put the papers into two stacks; those that look important and those that don't. The complexity of the paper work overwhelms me; I wonder why we can't have a simple org chart with the pictures of the doctors and with pointers to the body parts they are working on. Maybe different colors codes to help me tell if the results are good, bad or indifferent.
I notice my mom looks a little better than she did when I woke up. I am sure the stress of finding out her boyfriend has some sort of brain cancer cannot help her own health. We are not sure the outcome at the moment, instead we just go to the hospital and talk to the doctors.
The primary care Doc needs to talk to the lung guy, the bone guy, and the brain guy. But ultimately, the real decisions rest in the hands of the cancer guy, or so I have been led to believe. They all order tests .... every test they can imagine, every way possible to torture th
e patient.
In the meantime, I watch my mom and the ups and downs of her drugs and the ups and downs of the time she spends with her boyfriend. He too somehow seems to be part of her movie, Better Living Through Chemistry. She is the leading lady, and he is the leading man. A hospital romance made for prime time TV. Or maybe something out of the daytime soap, General Hospital, only so far nobody has lost their memory. And yes, my father is my real dad, but stay tuned in tomorrow. Anything could happen.
By Linda English
The primary care Doc needs to talk to the lung guy, the bone guy, and the brain guy. But ultimately, the real decisions rest in the hands of the cancer guy, or so I have been led to believe. They all order tests .... every test they can imagine, every way possible to torture th
e patient.In the meantime, I watch my mom and the ups and downs of her drugs and the ups and downs of the time she spends with her boyfriend. He too somehow seems to be part of her movie, Better Living Through Chemistry. She is the leading lady, and he is the leading man. A hospital romance made for prime time TV. Or maybe something out of the daytime soap, General Hospital, only so far nobody has lost their memory. And yes, my father is my real dad, but stay tuned in tomorrow. Anything could happen.
By Linda English
