Personal Note: The Mothers in My Life

Well, I haven’t mentioned my personal life much lately, other than the vacation we took to Florida in March, and of course the occasional Matthew post.  So let me honor the three mothers in my life with a little information. 

First my mother.  The last time I posted on my mother was over a year ago when she fainted and fell and broke her little finger.  She was seventy-nine then, she’s eighty now, and what I haven’t mentioned is that the finger required a second minor operation (to pull out a stitch that got stuck in there and was driving her crazy, believe it or not), she has had several fainting episodes, of which she got hurt a couple of times and needed emergency room visits. On top of that her blood pressure had gone out of control.  It kept crawling up until finally it was regularly over 170/90, and the medication seemed only to give her headaches.  We went through a number of adjustments, and they didn’t change much.  And then one day at the cardiologist, while undergoing an EKG, she went into atrial fibrillation.  It seems that this had been part of her problem all along.  A-Fib is when the top part of the heart starts beating at a different rate than the bottom, usually faster.  It happens sporadically and can last from seconds to days.  For my mother it only seems to last seconds to perhaps an hour.  It was never detected before because she’s never gone into A-Fib while actually being monitored.  The other problem with my mother was that her heart rate when not in A-Fib is extremely low.  She’s always seemed to have a low heart rate, but lately it was regularly in the fifties, and when sleeping down in the forties.  The cardiologist sent her over to a cardio electrophysiologist after the A-Fib episode to be assessed for a pacemaker and within a couple of weeks she had one implanted.  It’s only been a couple of weeks now but so far the change has been dramatic.  The pacemaker keeps her heart rate above sixty, which in effect I think keeps the blood pressure down.  I’ve only recorded in 130/75 range or less.   So far I’m very happy and hoping the fainting never happens again. 

 

Next, my mother-in-law.  She’s been a great boon to us, helping with Matthew when we’re burdened.  She’s a few years younger than my mother, and in better health.  Other than a recent knee problem which she needed some outpatient surgery (I forget exactly for what) she doesn’t have any health issues I’m aware of.  When we’re running around trying to get something or other done, and Matthew slows us down, dropping Matthew off at her home is so helpful.  And she adores him, and he adores her, possibly more than mommy or daddy since she never yells at him…lol.  When I had to take my wife to the emergency room—I’ll explain below—we called my mother-in-law at eleven PM to stay with Matthew while he slept.  She came over and stayed until the wee hours of the morning.  She’s a great help, when she’s in town that is.  Ever since she retired a number of years ago she’s been a traveling maniac, hop scotching the world when she can.  Her next trip will be to Australia.   

 

Finally my lovely wife.  Ever since our Florida vacation, my wife and I have taken turns being ill.  At first nothing serious.  We both had colds with no fever.  First me then her.  We both went to a doctor independently and he said the same thing to both of us: it’s a viral infection, and so antibiotics are useless.  Just rest and you’ll get over it.  We both did and it did, and then suddenly my wife got it again, but this time with fever.  She emailed me at work to tell me it was up to 103F (39.4C).  I stayed home the next day to take care of her and get Matthew off to school.  At first the fever seemed to come down with Tylenol, and then by afternoon it shot up to 104F (40.0C).  Whoa, so I took her over to the doctor (we go to a walk in office) and this time the doctor (a different one) gave her Tamiflu and took cultures to identify the infection.  Her fever came down by evening, but she developed a severe pain in her right side.  It really hurt when she coughed.  It was on the rib cage above the liver, so we speculated she either pulled a muscle when she coughed or perhaps did something to her diaphragm.  When she said she couldn’t take the pain any longer, we made arrangements with my mother-in-law to cover and I took her to the emergency room.  As soon as the doctor there saw the x-ray, it was evident—she had pneumonia.  And it was a big pocket that took up one third of her right lung.  Normally you can detect pneumonia from listening to the breathing.  Her pneumonia was so solidly packed that you couldn’t hear any rasping sounds with the stethoscope, that’s why the doctor in the afternoon never suspected it.  She was admitted and she wound up spending three nights in the hospital to get an intravenous antibiotic.  I got to take off from work for a couple of days and play mother myself (do I get a mother’s day card? :-P), and I have to admit poorly at that.  My wife has since recovered nicely. 

I think I’ve also made her happy.  We’ve wanted to renovate our living room, dining room, and kitchen for the longest time, and it was supposed to be by a step by step approach.  However I said, let’s just get it over with and do them all at the same time.  It will be a hassle but it will be over and we won’t have to go through something like this repeatedly.  So we’ve found a contractor we liked and committed to it.  Now it’s just a matter of picking flooring, cabinets, countertop, paint color, and a couple appliances.  So now she’s really fired up and excited.  Of course what’s going to come afterward is new living room furniture.   

Well, today is Mother’s Day, at least here in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere.  I want to wish the three mothers in my life, the mothers who frequent my blog, and any other mother that just might be stopping by and seeing this.  I truely believe the whole of society rests on the love of mothers.  Happy Mother’s Day!

 

 

Faith Filled Friday: Thanksgiving Prayer

Well, my mother had her operation on her finger Wednesday.  You can read about the need here.  All went well.  The only hangup was trying to get one of her earrings off.  She was to take all jewelery off, but no matter how we tried we couldn't unclasp the right one.  The nurse put tape over it, something about it getting too hot during the operation and burning her.  I can't say I understand.  It had no bearing on the operation.

The operation took under an hour.  She went in at 12:25, and I went out to get lunch.  I also took a little walk since it was such a beautiful spring day here.  I got back to the waiting room at 1:20 and the doctor had gone.  He had stuck his head out to look for me and I wasn't there.  Mama was in a recovery bay sipping a cup of coffee and looking like she had slept pleasantly.  I had them call the doctor for me and he said it all went well.  The tendon/ligament (not sure if that's the same thing) had torn and was in need of reconstruction.  I think he used that word, but I'm not sure.  Then he put pins in to hold it together for the next ten days when he will see her again.  We were home an hour later.

Thank you for all those who prayed for her.  The finger will be the finger, but my biggest concern was her going under sedation.  One never knows with that. 

And finally I thank the Lord for this little blessing.  His blessings are too numerous to count.  Special devotion to the Holy Family on this instance.  I'll end with this Thanksgiving Prayer.

Blessed are You, loving Father,

For all your gifts to us.
Blessed are You for giving us family and friends

To be with us in times of joy and sorrow,
To help us in days of need,

And to rejoice with us in moments of celebration..

Father,

We praise You for Your Son Jesus,

Who knew the happiness of family and friends,
And in the love of Your Holy Spirit.

Blessed are you for ever and ever.

Amen.

Prayer source from here.

Personal Story: Mama’s Finger

Let’s start with my mother being seventy-nine.  She’s a strong seventy-nine, but still she’s actually closer to her eightieth birthday than the one she just passed.  She has slowed down since her hip replacement from four years ago, but still she gardens and walks, and now that my brother has been away she’s living alone.  Living alone actually gives her less to do because when my brother and his wife are at her house, she cooks and cleans for them as if she was forty years old and they were teenagers.  She’s one of those tireless Italian ladies that just need to be doing something.

She lives about a half mile from my house.  I stop there every day on my way home from work, just for five or ten minutes to make sure everything is OK.  In the spring and summer she’s usually in the back gardening, and sometimes digging trenches and moving buckets of dirt.  Half the time I shake my head and ask her why.  She just does.  Sometimes after digging a trench where rain puddles up, she’ll redo it if she doesn’t feel like it came out right.  Some of our biggest arguments are over what I see as meaningless heavy labor.  She’s incorrigible.  She’ll tell me this will be the last time and I find out she did it again any way.  Or I just catch her at it.

I stopped there last Thursday and no one answered the door.  I knocked and rang the bell for ten minutes.  The side of the house was nicely raked with dirt turned over.  I used my cell phone to call.  I heard her phone ring.  Still there was no answer.  I keep her keys, and so decided to open the door.  I did and called inside.  No answer.  At her age I worry about her collapsing and either being unconscious or incapacitated.  I went through each room and she wasn’t anywhere to be found.  I sighed. 

The next possibility is she walked about a mile away to where the commercial street resides.  There she could have gone to several stores.  Under typical conditions she would have planned walking there and being home at the time I normally get home from work.  But there have been a few times where she didn’t plan that well and was out.  Those times I drove toward that commercial boulevard and found her walking along the way.  She would be grateful for the ride home.  So I drove and didn’t come across her.  I drove back and didn’t see her.  I stopped back in her house—nothing.  I drove back toward the boulevard again and this time I stopped at the little supermarket where she might be.  I walked through every aisle—nothing.  I gave up.  I called my wife (at this point I was late for home) and told her what had happened and that I was on my way home.  I got about a block when my cell phone rang. 

“Are you Maria _____’s son?” asked the voice.

“Yes.  Where is she?”

“The Emergency Room at Staten Island University Hospital.”

 

“What?  What happened? ”

“Don’t worry.  No need to get worried.  She fell.”

“How is she?”

“Don’t get alarmed.  It’s scratches and bruises and a dislocated finger.  When can you get here?”

“I’ll be right there.  Ten, fifteen minutes.”

I called my wife and told her I was headed straight there, raced over.   The Emergency Room was packed and they had beds in the aisles, and I found her in a bed in an aisle.  She looked rather comfortable laying there.  Her right hand was wrapped and she held it up.  The doctor was happy to see me.  My mother doesn’t speak enough English to really understand everything.  I guess they understood her since communication of pain is rather easy.  She had been there at least three hours.

So what happened?  She had been raking the backyard and needed to put down grass seed.  She had walked to that commercial boulevard to the hardware store and bought grass seed.  When she was just a few blocks from home she just fell.  She’s not sure why, but she fell forward catching herself with her hands and apparently also taking the blow with her chest.  A couple living nearby saw her fall, tried to help her up, but decided to call an ambulance.  They even checked up on her at the hospital. 

Her chest hurt all the way around.  They did an EKG and chest x-rays.  Her heart was fine and no ribs were broken.  She had scratches and bruises on her hands and legs.  The tips of several of her exposed fingers had band-aids.  She was grateful (with a weird sort of pride) that she did not scratch or hurt her face.  Her right hand had a splint with bloody bandages.  The doctor said she dislocated at the mid knuckle.  She came in with the finger bent in the middle literally at a right angle outward.  Yikes.  They had straightened it, and now they were going to stick it back into the knuckle.  When they unwrapped it I squirmed, especially my face.  The finger was swollen double the size, the color of the skin looked pale grey, and there was a slit down the inside that you could see into the finger.  The doctor shoved the front half of the finger into the back half.  It wasn’t going in right, so they needed to do it several times.  Finally they got it in, then x-rayed again, and then when they were happy, stitched the gaping wound. 

They finally let her out around eight o’clock with a follow up with a hand surgeon.  As I helped her with her coat, which had been lying on the hospital bed beside her, I noticed a plastic shopping bag that was underneath the coat.  I looked in the bag and it was a big bag of grass seed.  LOL!  She still had the bag all this time, ambulance ride and all.  The white plastic was smeared with blood. 

You would think that would be the end of the story, but no.  I checked in on her the next day, and there she was in the backyard, smeared with dirt, her right hand full of bandages and inside a plastic bag to prevent it from getting dirty.  “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”  “I had to get the seed down,” she explained.  “It’s going to rain tomorrow.”  And then she asked me to help her with her ice pack.  We walked inside and she sat down.  I assumed she had an ice pack inside the bag around her hand.  But she lifted her pants leg up and had a wrap with ice around her calf. 

“Is it swollen?” she asked. 

It was slightly swollen.  “What happened here?”

“A dog bit me.”

“What?” 

“A little dog.  It bit me.”  She extended her arm and with her other hand showed the length of the dog to be from her fingertips to the mid forearm.  “A little dog.  No bigger than a rat.  It bit me?”

“Where was this?  In front of the house?”

“No.”

So here’s what happened.  She walked back to the spot where she had fallen the day before.  For what reason, God knows.  To see if her blood was still there?  To see if there was something in the sidewalk that caused her to fall?  She really didn’t have an answer.  While she was looking at the concrete floor at the very spot she fell this little dog on a leash, possibly on one of those extendable leashes, squirted up around her leg and bit her calf.  At the very spot she fell…LOL. 

The dog’s owner was apologetic and what-not.  But here she was now with a swollen leg and two little fang piercings.  My first thought was, do I need to take her to the hospital?  I was pretty sure she had a tetanus shot in the last ten years, but could the dog possibly be rabid?  Given the dog was with the owner and on a leash, I figured it was fairly unlikely it was rabid.  I did not want to go to the hospital again.  I put an antiseptic on the bite marks, put a band-aid on that, and wrapped the ice pack again.  I looked at her.  “What is going on with you?”  I had my hands up, almost appealing to God.  She had an embarrassed smirk on her face.  “I don’t know.”

So in the last week we met with the hand surgeon and she will need an operation on the finger.  The front part of the finger won’t stay correctly.  He will have to put pins in and reconstruct (I think) the tendons.  The operation will be on the 17^th.  But since then we’ve had pre-op testing, medical clearences from her general doctor and from a cardiologist.  Oy vey.

 Here's a picture of my mother in her garden from several years ago.  As you can see, she's into her gardening.