One Really Bad Day... Sunday, August 7

As the elevator doors opened up on the fourth floor our ears were greeted by some loud groaning and moaning. My father, Snickers and I had just returned from morning service and lunch and had just arrived to see my mother at the hospital. Little did we know though that it was my mother doing all that groaning and moaning.

When we entered her hospital room there she was, curled up on her side, clutching on to the side bed bars, all in tears, and making so much noise. The people visiting the older lady in the next bed didn’t even so much as call the nurse on my mother’s behalf but instead had pulled the curtain around her bed, as to shut her out and ignore trying to help her.

Today was a bad day for my mom, a very bad day. The doctors warned us that there’d be good days and bad days but today was the worst we’ve seen yet.

I think she’s mentally given up and physically can’t take it anymore. I’ve never seen her in such a rough shape as I did today. Just the other day she was out in the park with her friend, on her wheelchair, but today her condition has taken a sudden nose-dive. She was in so much pain and so confused by it all. “Why am I sick?” she constantly asked over and over. I didn’t know if she meant “Why am I sick” as in why is she suddenly in pain when before she was relatively pain-free, or if she meant it as in she’s confused as to why she’s in the hospital. The whole ordeal left me in tears and feeling helplessly sad.

Arriving to the hospital and finding my mom in such a state was heartbreaking. I don’t what was more heartbreaking, seeing her like that or seeing the family visiting the other patient in the room so carelessly ignoring her obvious moans of pain. Up until today, my mom hasn’t even so much made a peep. She hasn’t been in pain so consequently she’s been relatively quiet with the exception of chatting with us visiting her. We often visit her just to keep her company while she sleeps or to help her eat her meals. She’s been quite demanding too with what she wants to eat, sending us out on errands for cravings of Tim Horton’s berry smoothy (“NO yogurt”, she insists) and vegetable soup, and Harvey’s hamburgers.

The family of the lady next to my mom are super annoying in that they complain about us always visiting my mom and yet they hardly ever come to visit their mother. Moreover, they’re all ridiculously out of shape and a couple of them have to rely on wheel chairs so when they do visit they take up so much space and block the doorway. They huff and puff and roll their eyes whenever one of us needs to leave the room, say to get my mom’s food from the fridge or to get the nurse. I’m almost tempted to tell them that if they put even half the effort towards their health as they did complaining, huffing and puffing then life would be so much easier… for us all.

“If I ever get so ridiculously out of shape like them please shot me” I told Snickers.

The palliative care unit doesn’t have strict rules with visiting hours so my father has started to sleep over in the chair next to my mom. The family next to them complained about that too. They even went so far as to tell the nurse to restrict how many people can be in my mom’s side of the room. Apparently we’re restricted to three whenever the neighbor’s family decides to visit, which isn’t often. The nurses are stuck being the middle person here but one of them joked to me, telling me that they picked the number three only because that’s the maximum number of people the other family can possibly fit in the one half of the room. I think it’s more like 2. My family can fit about 11.

“I don’t complain about you not visiting your mother so please don’t complain about me visiting mine” I told them.

Just late last week my mother got moved from the palliative care in the neighboring city to that of my hometown, making it much easier for my father to come here every day. I find the nurses at this particular hospital are much friendlier, as is the overall feel of the hospital. I think my mom is the youngest one on this floor and we’ve been told that she’s the one with the most visitors. I feel bad though because of this point so I often comment to the other patients when I see them in the hall.

There’s this one guy, Al, who wheels his wheelchair around in the halls, asking everyone to guess his name and telling all that he works here. I guessed his name correctly, only because my brother told me of his story, and it totally freaked him out. He went on and on, asking all the nurses how I knew his name. He’s totally innocent though, just lonely but I find he’s kind of a refreshing break from the sadness of being on this floor, the palliative care floor.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Would you want to know when your time is up?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Life is too short.
-- Dr. Ngo