The most helpless feeling in the world, the most gut-wrenching sadness ever, is watching someone you love in pain or struggling with an illness or disability and being unable to relieve their misery.
Sometimes it seems as if I have spent my whole life watching people I love in pain.
I watched my grandfather struggle with painful circulation problems in his legs, and pain in his hip. I went to see him in the hospital as a little girl and that memory is burned in my mind. He had played baseball for twenty years and it cost him a lot of physical pain. The last few years of his life, he spent a lot of time walking with crutches.
I was kept out of kindergarten for three months because my mother had a hysterectomy and couldn't drive all that fall, and I remember long days with her in the bed and me unable to help, except maybe to bring her aspirin. I remember the wicked scar on her abdomen and how scary it was to my 5 year old self.
My grandmother [Hasty, the only one I ever knew] taught me to read, and spent countless hours with me. We were a lot alike, in looks and temperament, and I adored her. She had a stroke when I was 14 and I took my turn sitting in the hospital with her and doing my homework every night so the rest of the family could have a break. She spent the last 15 years of her life bedridden, in a nursing home, not knowing any of us. Seeing her not know me, unable to walk, unable to do anything -it broke my heart.
I watched my father deal with a heart attack, an aortic aneurysm, and finally cancer, all in a space of 12 years.I lost him when I was 34.
I watched my mother nearly die from a stomach virus and dehydration in 1998 and again in 2011, with ventricular tachycardia.
I am a horrible nurse, but I will always make the effort to nurse those people I love. Nurses should be strong and capable, patient and kind. They truly do God's work. I just stumble along in the role.
I feel a terrible sense of failure and dejection for not helping my mother more with the edema that has plagued her for several years. I should've tried harder to figure out what was wrong. Apart from rubbing cream on her legs every night, and carting her to the doctor, I haven't done much.
Yesterday I took her to the Emory Wound Clinic. We are fortunate to live in a city with excellent medical care available for seniors. The doctor told Mother the Lymphedema is advanced, and she would have to wear bandages on her legs for a couple of weeks, then Unna Boots, and keep her legs elevated as much as possible for a while, or risk losing her lower legs to amputation. In a couple of days I will have to re-bandage her legs, and again a few days after that. The thought scares the daylights out of me. She has 4 layers on her legs, and even though I watched the nurse very carefully, and was given all the supplies and instructions, I doubt I can do nearly as well.
I am also impatient and short with Mother when I should be sweet. I was impatient with Michael this afternoon when we were going to the store. I guess God knew what he was doing, not giving me charge over infants or small children, because I am incredibly impatient. Worry and fear cause me to be very grouchy.
So it's been a day of sadness and worry for me. Mother is dealing with leg pain and trying to do what the doctor ordered. She has put her leg up as much as possible. I kept trying to fix ways for her to keep her legs propped up, but nothing has really worked well. I even ran in Goodwill to see if there was a hassock I could buy without paying too much. She cannot really handle a recliner, we don't think.
I am trying to help her stick to a low salt, lower carb less junkfood diet. She did real well today.
I guess if there's anything good about this, it's that I am not really thinking about my lack of employment.
I just want my mother to feel OK, and to stay with us for as long as possible. Please keep her in your prayers...
Me, Bruce and Mother in about 1999..
