"He's shivering," said J, as the man emerged from his icy enclosure.
"He shouldn't be shivering," I said. "When someone is hypothermic, that person doesn't shiver -- they feel warm, they're relaxed. They shouldn't be shivering."
My mom spoke up, joining the conversation for the first time in hours. It was about the only time she spoke except when spoken to. "No, shouldn't be shivering," she said. "Should be dead." There was a pause, and she went rigid. It was a grand mal seizure. Have you ever seen one of these? The body is utterly rigid, and shaking, the teeth clenched in a mask of pain. It hurts to watch, and I can't imagine what the experience must be like. It's terrifying.
J and I looked at each other for an instant. He threw down his computer and went to her. "She's seizing," I said, too late. It was clear what was happening. At that moment, I remembered my Siamese mix Sabre who died of antifreeze poisoning -- at the time of his death he seized, every muscle tensing in agony, digging into the warming gel packs the vet provided. They spurted, and he dug his claws into me and I cried and held his rigid aching body and he seized and he died.
My mom didn't die.
She talked. She talked and talked, mostly unintelligible mumbles, but when we understood, we didn't understand where she was. It would've been nice if she'd been talking to our grandmother or our grandfather, or if she'd spent her last semi-lucid moments giving us wisdom. But that wasn't it. It's biology, not theology that rules at this moment. She counted (if I'd ever wondered why I had obsessive-compulsive tendencies....). "Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty." I wondered if when she had been swiveling back and forth in her chair if she'd been counting.
She talked of Calvin Klein perfume. She talked of numbers. "Twenty-one. But divided by four." She repeated what she heard on the police band scanner she has by her bed (J told me that when he was in high school they'd sit in her room, eating popcorn and listening to the scanner. They'd take off and drive by the emergency if it was close and interesting).
Then, she tried to get out of her chair. "I have to potty," she said, as if we were toddlers, learning toilet-training. At that moment, I was crying on ana's shirt, telling my partner that my brother J's pain was almost more than I could bear. He called me, panicky. She was trying to get up, and nearly falling on the floor. He helped her up and we walked her to the bathroom. She urinated as we walked, and still when she got to the bathroom, she peed forever. She had a series of small seizures as she sat there, as she did before and after. Finally, after she tried to wipe herself, seized, and tried to wipe herself again, and seized, we got her up and walked her back and sat her on the side of the bed. It reminded me of the only Christmas ana and I spent with her -- it was just before she'd been diagnosed, and she sat on the side of her bed and rocked back and forth, trying to be a good host while clearly hurting beyond endurance.
The nurse had instructed us to give her Ativan for the seizures, and we tried. We put the pill in her mouth and she tried to crunch it. We wondered whether we should try to remove her dentures, but we couldn't get her mouth open enough then, and later, when it was open, we couldn't get them off. Finally, I said, "If they aren't coming off for us, then they're probably not going to come off in the middle of seizure, so they aren't going to choke her to death." Sure, she might bite her tongue, but really. She's got cancer devouring her body and, mostly likely, her brain. If that isn't causing her pain -- and she swore that she wasn't in pain -- then a tongue bite probably wouldn't make things all that much worse.
"I love you," I said, when I could talk without crying. "You've done such a good job with us. We just wanted to make you proud, and I hope we have. And we're proud of you, too."
"You're the strongest person I've ever met, " I said, looking into her unfocused eyes. "You just keep fighting. You can rest." I pulled her close and held her against my chest. I asked for a beer, and someone brought me one -- ana I think. Oh, and speaking of ana, I didn't have to make any phone calls tonight. Ana called the hospice nurse, brother K (who left this afternoon), brother P, Aunt L, Aunt A, the nurse again, and -- at my request but for ana's benefit as much as mine -- iGrrrl. It was stuff I didn't have to worry about.
I sat for a lifetime, holding my mother against me, aching, listening to her counting and repeating words and rhyming. And rhyming. Earlier today, when my mom was clearly kind of out of it, we were talking about Ogden Nash. Brother K gave SiL K a container full of foam farm animal stickers, one of which was a purple cow. I suggested that ana get a purple cow, since ana likes silly rhymes. Sadly, ana had never heard "I never saw a purple cow," which turns out to be by Ogden Nash, and which I learned as a very small child. One line, though, I couldn't remember, and when I told my mother, she recited the poem to us, her voice strong and clear, like it hadn't been all day. "I never saw a purple cow," she said, "And I never hope to see one. But I can tell you anyhow / I'd rather see than be one." [[Actually, google now tells me that Ogden Nash didn't write the poem, which might explain why ana'd never heard it. It does seem Nashian, though, eh?]]
We fed my mother more Ativan at the nurse's instructions, and she got a prescription called in. Every few minutes, there was another small seizure, though nothing like the first one that sent her into this spiral. The weird bit is that her blood pressure was stronger today than it has been in weeks. Her pulse is stronger. Her heart rate clearer. She vomited once today -- a mixture of blood and bile.
Brother P got out of the shower, after coming here straight from work (as a welder), and sat beside her, holding her close as I'd been doing. Her dog Rusti sat wedged between them, poking her nose at Mama and looking just kind of lost. Mama rubbed her compulsively, and I worried that her hand would go tight and rigid as she rubbed Rusti's throat. It didn't happen, though, and Rusti -- a hyperactive Jack Russell -- gently climbed into Mama's lap and smelled her breath. Since then, she's been touching my mom, napping, but alert, waiting until she's needed to protect her sick leader. Occasionally, Rusti comes to me and licks my nose.
Sitting here, with P and Rusti, my arm around Mama, she lost consciousness. She's been sleeping, her breath raspy but steady, for the last couple of hours. We joke that she'll be cooking us breakfast in the morning, since she just refuses to give up, but it's a hollow joke. There's a large part of each of us that hopes she doesn't wake up, and when she did rouse, mumbling more nonsense and refusing to let us remove her hand from her head, we rushed to her side to try to relax her. I rub her head, only stopping to type. She doesn't seem to know that I'm doing it, most of the time, but it comforts me to try to comfort her.
J, the cop and EMT, and I have talked, too, about the comfort we get from clinical signs. We take her heart rate regularly. We take her blood pressure -- still higher than normal (for her, recently). We, P and J and SiL J and I sit vigil. Ana has gone to bed. K & K have decided they don't need to drive back just now, but that we should keep them informed. That's okay, I've told J and P. People grieve and say goodbye in different ways. K didn't want to see Granddaddy just before he died -- he wanted to remember the man who knew who he was. It may be the same now, and it's really okay.
The most heartbreaking part -- and what made J cry as much as anything -- has been the reaction of Rusti, the dog. She understands as much or more than we do, and she's just like us -- just trying to do what she can to ameliorate the pain. She submits to what my mom wants, and she curls up against my mom, trying to warm her and to comfort her. When she reaches out a paw and tries to get my mom to respond? Or when she reaches up and very gently licks my mom's nose? That's when our hearts are broken all over again. And, of course, when I saw J crying, that's when I started. I held tightly to ana. "I can't make it better," I said, or tried to. And that's what hurts the most. I can't do anything now but pet her hair, hug my brothers, and react when I'm needed.
As for me, as long as I'm reacting, I'm okay. When I'm not, I just want my mama back. I want a grown-up, someone who knows what's supposed to happen, to tell me what I'm supposed to do now. Making this up as I go along? This is hell. Hell.
It's 11:45 pm, and she's breathing heavily and vocalizing with each breath. Not quite a moan, not really words. She coughs liquidly. Rusti snuggles in tightly beside her, and I rub her head and hands. We are both impotent and the noises continue. I tell her again, that I love her, that it's okay, that we're here, just relax. The almost words are the worst -- we don't know what she's saying, and it seems so fucking important to know what she's saying and what she wants. J coaxes her jaws open and feeds her another Ativan, just to relax her a bit. She manages to tell us that she's cold, and J gets her another blanket -- one her sister knitted. The sister who hasn't called at all since Christmas. "She deals with it in her own way," I told Aunt L the other day.
"it's inappropriate and only hurts ya'll," said L. "And N."
It's midnight, and her breathing changes -- it's liquid and gurgling. "She's suffocating," says J. We wait, and we tell her it's okay for her to stop fighting. We hope it's enough. I hold her head to open her breathing passages, and I pet her hair.
Every moment sucks, and every moment, we imagine it can't suck more, and then it does.
I believe that in the next few minutes, we'll be calling hospice nurse to pronounce her. I hope it's the next few minutes. I hope my mom doesn't continue to fight. I hope she can just put it all down, turn it over to God, and relax.
I'm so glad J is here, and P, and ana. I need my mom.
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