Brainstorms: A small Boat on a Violent Ocean
It was 1980, and mother had Asthma. She also had pneumonia, not a good combination. She had just finished the nebulizer treatment and had laid back down. The nurse had given her the treatment after mixing the Abuteral with distilled water using a syringe. It was already dark outside so I didn’t bother to close the drapes. I turned most of the lights off and leaving one on low. I closed the door, not slamming it, so that the sounds from the hall wouldn’t come in: even at night, hospitals were nosy places. I made sure that towels were handy and a couple of wash clothes. I sat and waited, hoping she would be able to get some sleep before the storm hit. It wasn’t just the Abuteral she had inhaled, it was the Theodure and Prednisone they had given her earlier. They were very powerful, and very necessary drugs, that would help her keep breathing long enough for the anti-biotics to kill the pneumonia spreading in her lungs.
Her eyes were closed but she was awake. I could see the first signs. Her hands had that tremor, she was breathing shallow, and she was licking her lips. I moistened a washcloth, warm now, and put over her eyes. She was crying, she reached for the bedrails and held on to them. I said: ‘Easy now, Easy now, this storm will pass.’
The nurse came banging in, she had too, nurses hate closed doors. I let the nurse watch mother for a moment and then ushered her out. I closed the door behind us. The nurse said: ‘I didn’t realized that it was going to be this bad.’
I didn’t bother to remind her that I had tried to tell her. It was her first night caring for my mother and this nurse wasn’t ready for it. When I had tried to tell her earlier, she had painted a condensing smile on and nodded in sympathy and then not listened to a word I had said. We argued about the Pain med, the pain had to be documented, and the diaper, well, it’s best that patient get up and move around as often as they could, and well, sometimes they would get lazy.
I lost my temper. I was tired. I was a full time student, I had a part time job and I should have been home with my brand new wife. ‘I know you didn’t know this was going to happen. There’s something else I don’t think you know, she’s a Manic Depressive, and we’ve just given her some very powerful stimulants. if you’ve never seen a manic episode before, just wait, you’re going to get the full picture. Now, get her some Goddamned pain med, because her neck is going to be killing her in a few minutes… if you don’t know why, there’s an X-ray in her chart.’
The nurse’s professional masked dropped for a moment. ‘I’ll talk to the doctor and see what we can do.’
There was a noise from inside, a cry of a child, frightened and alone. I left the nurse in the hall and went back in closing the door… gently. Mother’s knuckles were white. She was sobbing. I used the cool damp cloth to wipe away the sweat, the tears. I kept whispering to her that it was going to be alright, that we’d been here before and we would get though this again.
The nurse crept in this time with a syringe. She came over and as she injected it slowly into the IV tubing, she stared at my mother’s hands clinched on the bedrail. When the nurse was finished I walked out into the hall with her.
The nurse looked tired and worried. ‘The doctor order pain medication and a mild muscle relaxant, he said it was all we could do for her. I made sure it was charted, so next time there won’t be any problems. He said that you knew her as well as anyone. Can I ask you, why she’s has her hands on…’
I told her: ’Why does she hold on so hard? She’s afraid… sometimes that she’ll fly off the bed and hit ceiling, then sometimes she’s scared she’ll fall though the bed… and then she’ll just keep falling forever. It can be like that… it’s been like that since I was a kid. And yes, she’s seen dozen’s of doctors, she’s even been institutionalized, but there is only so much medicine can do, and all that’ left is love and faith.’ I check my watch. It was past midnight. ’This will soon pass, at least for now. And the shot will help a lot.” Before I headed back in I told the nurse, ’in a little while, send in a aide with some fresh bedding and another gown. She’s already wet the bed. We’ll get her cleaned up and then she’ll sleep for a while, I hope.’
It was about one that morning that mother let go of the rails and curled up on her side. The aide and I quickly got her washed up. Mother kept saying ’Danny’, the only time called me that since I was six… because she was embarrassed that her son was helping clean her bottom, although I had been doing it for years.
As I walked out, I stopped by the nurses station. ’She’ll sleep now, and Dad will be in this morning, before she has to go though it again. I call them Brainstorms, not in the modern sense but in the original meaning. Because it’s like she’s a very small boat and a very large ocean… sometimes the water is quiet, but sometimes you must ride out the storm, and pray that morning will come.’
Thirty years Later:
Some things had changed, the Abuteral had come in a little plastic tube and the Nebulizer treatment had been given by a Repertory therapist. When I had finished the treatment, the RT placed his stethoscope to my back and said, ’Another Deep Breath Please.’ I think he said ’Still quite a bit of dimished sounds in the lower quadrants, but you’re moving air, so the Asthma is better.’ I THINK he said that, I was to busy coughing by some nice yellow phlegm. He said something about Asthma and Pnu to be a bad combination. He had noticed the tremor in my left hand, and the twitch in my right food. I told him it was alright, that it happens this way. He lingered for a moment, he seemed like a nice kid, so I explained, ‘About three hours ago I took 450mg of Theodure and 60mg of Prednisone and now the Abuterual, it‘s just going to be like this for a while. I didn’t tell him that I was luckier than my mother, I wasn’t bipolar. I had been diagnosed with PTSD, probably because of growing up with a mother that was bipolar.
The RT had to ask, ‘Isn’t there something they could do?”
I shrugged, ‘Sometimes the cure is worse than the cold.’
I waited til he left, my God I was already starting to sweat. I was free for a while, there was no IV tying me to the bed.
I still had the Oxygen tubing, but I was use to that. I got up out of the bed, and closed the drapes. It was a beautiful day outside, but it was far too bright. The Price is Right was on. I turned the TV off, it was too loud. I made sure that there were several towels on the hospital table, two wash clothes, one cool, one warmer. They asked me why, the caregivers, but even if I told them, they wouldn’t understand. I was shaking all over now. I had to concentrate. A urinal. I made sure there was a urinal. I made it to the bathroom… I had too sit down… I had too…
I finally made it to back to the bed, it look so soft and inviting. I took a towel… they always wanted to know what I did with all the towels… I put it between my legs, up high… you sweat a lot there… you hope it’s sweat. I rolled onto my side and grabbed the bedrails.
I said the same thing to myself that I had said to my mother all those years ago. Easy Now. This is just a storm and you’re but a small boat on a angry ocean. The wind and the waves were batter you and frighten you. But you have to try and keep an even keel. And remember, always remember, this brainstorm will pass.
The world became small, and very dark for me. I closed my eyes, and the bed felt like it was almost moving. I tried to keep an even keel, and hold on. I was losing control, I was losing myself.
Some stupid little girlie bustles in, asked me in a shrill voice if I was ready for my lunch tray? Are you ready for your Tray? Can I take the lids off? Can I move these towels out of your way?
Someone screams, ‘GET OUT’… ‘GET OUT!’, the voice is mine, and I can not stop it. I would have thrown the crap at her if I could just get a hold of it. OUT OF HERE BITCH. Can’t she see the shaking, the fear, the monster I‘ve become. She runs of the room, crying, scared.
I grip the rails with all my strength, as if I was drowning.
Someone else has come in quietly. I hear April’s voice whisper, ‘It’s alright.’ She takes the stupid tray away. She comes back, hands me a cool washcloth, I rub the sweat off my face. She goes away, closing the door quietly behind her.
I’ll never understand: where does the love of God go, when the pain and the panic turn the minutes to hours, and the days to forever?
God help me. Please.
I realize I’m breathing easier now. I’ve let go of the bedrails and the shaking has slowed. I feel tired, wasted, my muscles are sore. I mange to roll over to the side of the bed, and sit up on the edge. The clock on the wall has travel two hours, almost three. I heard the door open, April came in, whispered if I was going better. I nodded. She took a cool wash cloth, undid the hospital gown, and gently washed my back. She came around, put some blanket’s in the chair next to the bed, and asked if I wanted to sit up now. I said yes and she helped me in the chair.
She disappeared, came back a moment later with the little girl I had shouted at. They changed the sheets on the bed quickly, neatly. April chatted the way she does, about her husband, and her kids. When they were done the little girl turned to me, I looked in her eyes for… revoltion, fear? I saw none, a little sympathy. She asked if I was hungery. I was, but I was shaking to much to hold a spoon. I said some juice would be very nice. The little girl smiled, April told her that they would put some apple juice, he like’s apple juice, in a ‘big’ glass, with a straw… April never made me ask. Before they left, they opened the drapes slowly.
It was sunny outside, Spring was here and a Wren sat outside my window. In the distance was the mountains, with just a hint of snow way up. The world was still there.
My friends and family would soon be in. They would ask me how my day was. What could I tell them?
I’ve been on both places now: I’ve sat in the caregivers chair, watching my loved one hurt; and I’ve laid in the hospital bed, trying to hide the pain. When I was in the Chair I thought it was the hardest place, and it was. There is nothing like wishing that you could do something for your loved one. You swear that you would trade places with them in a heart beat, and at the time I meant it. Now that I’m in the bed, it’s different. I see the pain their eye’s and I wish they would leave. It’s hard enough trying to hang on with them there, and then you want them there, anything to keep fighting this feeling of being alone.
But there is one difference between there and here. When the storm is over, the caregivers can smile and go home to the peace and quiet, and you want them too. But it will never be over for me. The truth is that the next storm will come, and there is nothing in this world that can stop it. It might not be today, or tommowow but it will come. And I might survive the next one and the one after, but sooner or later, I would lose my mind, or my life. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t live long, or fought hard: but cowardice creeps into ones heart, a little at a time.
I hear a knock at the door, and make sure I’m decent. I ask them to come in. And I remind my self of one more thing I use to tell mother, you either get busy living, or you roll over and just give up. And she was far too old then, and I am now, to learn something new, like quitting.