Bad News

The news from here isn't very good right now, and though I said I was going to quit writing "the daily report," I'm going to today so that those of you who still come to read the blog will understand if the whole things goes wonky.  

My mother called the pain doctor yesterday while I was at the gym.  Then she called me to tell me that she had made an appointment for Friday at 8:30 to get a steroid injection in her spine. 

O.K. 

This morning at two a.m., she opened my bedroom door and told me we had to go.  She was dressed and ready.  I told her to go back to bed, but she was manic and wouldn't listen to me.  I had no real idea what to do since she would not let me go back to sleep.  I tried as hard as I could to tell her she was wrong but she just kept staring at a piece of paper on which she had written "8:30 Friday" and telling me we had to go right then.  What to do?  

I put her in the car and drove across town to the doctor's office to show her no one was there.  She said we were in the wrong place.  There was no making her understand.  After awhile, I got her back in the car and drove back to her house.  It was four a.m. when I got back to bed, but I couldn't go to sleep for a very long time.  I got back up at seven thirty and got her ready to go back to the doctor's office. She didn't remember what had happened in the night.  

When we got there, I found out that her appointment was for November 4th.  They would not be able to give her an injection today.  When the doctor came in to look at the MRI, things went south very quickly. Anything that could be wrong with a spine was wrong with hers.  He said that he didn't think the shot would do any good.  I asked what could be done, and he just shook his head.  It would require a hard surgery, he said, that would have her under anesthesia for a very long time which she probably couldn't survive.  It involved fusing the spine and something else.  He said he didn't think any surgeon would be willing to do it. 

"What do we do?" I asked.  

He just shook his head.  He said he could give her a stronger pain med, Dilaudid, but that would increase both her cognitive breakdown and her chances of falling, and, he said, if she has a fall now, it is over.  I said let's do the Dilaudid because my mother was in constant pain.  He said he'd do that and we could try the injection on the 4th, but he didn't have much hope that it would help. 

There was no good news.  Now I must make some big decisions.  I can't be here in the house twenty-four hours a day with her.   I'll need to make some arrangements.  But everything at this point is headed in the wrong direction.  

I won't report on my own failing health except to say just that doing this alone for so very long has had a profoundly negative effect.  That nothing lasts forever is ok in the abstract, but when the reality takes hold, it is another thing altogether.  

My mother heard it all.  I can't imagine what is going through her thoughts just now.  There is nothing to be done.  When we got back to her house, she went to bed.  

There is to be no joy, I think, this holiday season.