Drowning

Tonight I'm realizing what a luxury it has been for me to talk about every single aspect of my mom's body. To be so aware of how every single organ is functioning. And, maybe, each time I sit here and write about her heart, her lungs, her liver, her kidneys, her brain, her skin, her breath, her voice--that's me diving inside of her, swimming around, getting to know her. It's the advice I give my students when they're having trouble learning how to closely read a text: dive into the words, swim around them, get to know them. Her body, the text. And I do feel closer to her because of it.

This afternoon when I spoke with her all she wanted was to hold the phone and know that I was on the other end. We didn't say too much to each other--it was hard to understand each other. But what I know is that when my aunt reached out to take the phone from her, she said, "No!" I promised I would call her back again. I did, and she sounded better the second time.

I thought I wasn't going to write for awhile because things have gotten bad. But I've realized that writing about her makes her present to me. Makes her meaningful to me. And she means a lot to me. And I need to know that and believe that--even when she's gone. Even when I don't have this physical, this body, this this this to hold onto.

I might be reticent about talking about things for a little while and I hope you understand. It's just too hard is all. My heart is breaking. But I still need you. I still need you.

Anybody want a peanut?

Piecing together what I learn as the cell phone gets passed from person to person in her hospital room. I spoke with my dad first who told me she isn't well. He gave me many details, but the one that sticks in my mind most is, "Sometimes when she talks, it doesn't sound like her." My mom then got on the phone and told me that she was actually doing fine. I let her humor me. And my aunt told me she would call me later.

Later, my aunt explained that, within the last 24 hours, her face has become sunken and small. Her arms are skin and bones. The bottom of her body remains swollen with fluid. It took my aunt two hours to help my mom go to the bathroom and then put her back in bed. She's spending the night at the hospital with her.

Am I downer or what? To quote from The Princess Bride, "BOOOOooooooooo. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

And also (unenthusiastically), "Humperdinck, Humperdinck ... Humperdinck."

Kidney

Kidney, not liver. But how was I supposed to know?

I mean, I should have figured. Plan C, to recall, is dialysis. I should have been able to guess from that that it was kidney, not liver. I think maybe I suspected. But then maybe everything surrounding "liver" (the vocabulary, that is) had become so familiar that I got attached to the idea that the symptoms she was exhibiting had to deal with liver failure. And plus, if it were liver failure, it would have been the fault of the cancer. But kidney failure is the fault of the treatment directed against the cancer. Fuck this disease. Also, fuck reading material on dialysis.

The dialysis machine sucks up your blood, cleans up the impurities, and then sends it back into your body. Blood is life. Blood is life. It's like a goddamn vampire machine.

Currently, my mom has just started Plan B ... meaning that she was admitted to the hospital early this afternoon to begin albumin infusions. Although the lasix helped to take off some of the water, it wasn't nearly enough.

Swollen

My mom has gained about 18 pounds or so in water. She called my aunt yesterday morning to tell her that she doesn't fit into any of her clothes. My aunt went to a sports clothing store and bought her some new sweatpants.

She went to see a nephrologist (my spellcheck doesn't know what a nephrologist is) today and he suggested the following:

Plan A: Up the dose on her lasix in addition to two more diuretics to try to get the fluid out of her system. Monitor her weight daily. If the lasix works, she should lose 2-3 pounds a day.
Plan B: If after 5 days, she doesn't show any improvements, go to the hospital for two days to receive albumen infusions.
Plan C: If plans A and B don't work, she'll have to get dialysis done. Two times a week.

Given that, she sounded good when I spoke with her today. Better than she did the last couple days, anyway. When she laughs, though, it's a heavy laugh. I kept telling her I'll be visiting on the fourth, and she kept saying, "the fourteenth." Finally, she said, "Meh, it doesn't matter. I won't remember anyway. You just come to the airport whenever and give someone a call and someone will pick you up." We also laughed about something but I can't remember what now.

And her oncologist is an asshole.

Help wanted nights

All I've been listening to lately is The Good Life's new album, Help Wanted nights.

Here's "You Don't Feel Like Home to Me" and "Heartbroke".

That is all. Continue.

Blur

"Well that should be good."

My dad is making my mom pizza for dinner tonight.

"That should be gorilla. Gorilla?"
"Good ... or gorilla."
"Oh good. Gorilla. Yes, you ate gorilla, remember?"
"Oh not gorilla. I think you mean ... giraffe?"
"No, that makes sense that you ate gorilla. That's why there aren't too many left anymore."
"I don't think I'm the one causing that."
"You shouldn't feel bad."
"But the pizza sounds like it will be good."
"Yes, that should be good. There are two sizes. One is 13.5 ounces and the other is 17.5 ounces."

Before I got on the phone with my mom, my dad told me that she seems to be doing okay. Her temperature is stable and she has enough strength to climb up and down the stairs. He started telling me, though, that her memory and her mind aren't working ... properly? Was "properly" the word he used? Before I had a chance to find out what he meant, my mom announced her presence on the line. I don't think that she heard what my dad was telling me ... or if she did, she chose not to talk about it. Instead, we talked about pizza, and gorillas, and an argument she had earlier about 4 mg or 6 mg and her wanting more.

When I spoke with her yesterday, she was completely lucid, so this conversation ... well, it's not that it threw me. It didn't. I spoke with her as if the conversation made sense ... or, rather, as if what she said wasn't too unusual. And when I asked her questions, they weren't about what she did today, but about what she was doing now. Even asking her how her pain was, though, became difficult. When she finally got that I was saying the word "pain," she started making fun of the word's long vowel sounds: "aiiii. aiiiii." I laughed with her.

Her words. Her thoughts. Her memories. They all blur together it seems. And she depends on us to find her by reading between the lines. And I see her, in the care she takes in talking to me, and in the subject matter she chooses ... like our trip to Africa, years ago, when we all tasted giraffe (hey, at least we didn't have gorilla). She would always bring up that trip: "We had such a good time." And we did.

So it doesn't throw me. But it does break me.

Shorty

I'm a full 7 inches shorter than my brother. Still, I can't believe that the study featured in this article passes as acceptable research ... let alone newsworthy research.

I love that they use a photograph of Ben and Casey Affleck as evidence. Convincing.

Ah distraction.

l'update

I haven't been able to speak with my mom too much since I've been back. When I call her, she's too sleepy and tired to talk for more than a few minutes. I ask her questions about her day and she can't finish her sentences. I try finishing for her, and she acquiesces, but I can tell that she's frustrated. Just too tired to do anything about it. Her vocabulary has become blurred as well. "Backyard" for "background" yesterday.

Today I tried calling a little earlier in the day, but it was the same thing. Too tired to stay on the phone for very long. And my dad told me he fell down the stairs (!).

My aunt's sense of it is that she (my mom) sounds like she did when she went to the hospital back in June. Her talk is messy. I think it might be her liver again. I asked my aunt when I should come visit next and she seemed to think it might be better to wait. It was really hard on my mom, she said, when I left the last time. So ...

le weekend

Saying goodbye was emotional and difficult. All morning, she asked me when I was leaving. I kept repeating, “There’s still plenty of time. Plenty of time.” And then it was 1:45, fifteen minutes before I would leave for the airport, and my mom started sobbing: “You’re leaving so soon.” I answered, “There’s still plenty of time. Plenty of time.” And she started crying more, saying, “Get there safely. Go.” Again and again. I held her and helped her wipe her tears, holding back my own until I left the room, when I, my aunt, and my dad, all broke down. I left seven minutes earlier than we had planned.

Last night, she had a fever of 101.7. It abated toward the morning, only to return again a few hours later. She has no appetite. For lunch, she ate a couple spoons of cottage cheese with a couple slices of mango ... just enough so she wouldn’t get nauseous when she took her antibiotic. She walks in very slow steps, sometimes with help and sometimes without. Climbing back into bed is always a challenge. Sitting up in bed once she’s lying down (never completely ... I think it’s been months since she’s slept flat on her back) is also a challenge. Her breath is so quick. When I watch her sleeping, I’ll try matching my breath to hers and then I feel guilty and sad because such experiments--what a luxury.

Medically, I have no idea about what to say. Over the summer, all the medication had a clear purpose and a clear goal. Everything seemed so concrete. I knew that albumin infusions would help compensate for her failing liver. I knew that blood pressure medication would help to reverse the damage done to her heart. I knew that some regular walking would help to strengthen her lungs. Nothing works the same anymore. Aside from the lasix (which does seem to be helping the edema in her legs and feet), all the medication seems to be necessary, but also counterproductive. And the recommendations (eat, exercise) seem like mockery.

I helped her put her clothes on yesterday. One foot at a time. Hooked her bra for her. Dried her hair. And now I’m home again. And I wrote most of this entry on the plane, where I had time to change words and sentences around. I think I may have deleted some stuff, too. Strange way of feeling like I’m in control.

Also, she now calls me "Miss Lotus-face" or just "Lotus" for short.

D

This post will need to be short as the wifi that I was using over the summer seems to have disappeared and so I'm using my dad's computer and it just feels weird to be blogging on here ... a little bit like it did when I was little and my parents said not to play in the car and I would anyway and I would always end up locking the steering wheel. And he keeps walking into the room. Either because he wants to use the computer or because he wants to talk ... I'm not sure which one. I'll find out soon.

My mom returned from the hospital today ... I think just hours before I arrived. She's very weak. Some strange combination of medication has given her pain in all of her muscles making it impossible for her to walk without help. Her blood pressure medication (which, her doctor explained, was supposed to help her body get rid of toxins in the process of regulating her blood pressure) has in fact raised the amount of toxins going through her kidneys. They've taken her off of that and she's now on a beta blocker for her heart. Her heart muscles also have stiffened quite a bit from the toxins.

And then there's just a lot of other stuff that is all jumbled up ... I think for everyone involved. A lot of poor communication. A lot of no communication. A lot of confusion. Her skin is very loose over her body.

And when should I just lie? The parking shuttle guy, as he was driving me to the airport, asked me, "So is this a fun trip?" And I said, "Umm, no, not really ..." "Business?" "Actually, I'm visiting family." And then I thought, "Well, I don't want him to think that I mean visiting family in and of itself isn't fun"; and so I added, " ... in the hospital." And he said, more meaningfully than this will sound, "Oh, that's a bummer." And then we were quiet the rest of the way until he said, "You said Alaska Airlines, right?"

S

My mom received a chest x-ray today that revealed that the amount of fluid in her right lung is starting to decrease. She was told that she needs to start eating more ... even if it's in the form of food supplements (Boost, Ensure, etc). Not ONE can of Boost a day ... THREE. Depending on her hemoglobin level tomorrow, she may receive a blood transfusion (she's at 8.5 currently). Maybe go home Thursday ... more likely Friday.

This information courtesy of three separate phone conversations. And the letter "S."

September. School. Sleepy.

Labor day 2

Here's why I don't ask. I've been there, in the hospital room, when the phone rings. And I've heard my mom trying to explain what she's going through. I've heard my dad trying to explain things that he doesn't quite understand. And it's painful for them. And so I think it's okay for me just to wait, patiently, to hear the answers they don't make clear. I can wait.

I just spoke with my mom again and she said that, yes, she's developed some pneumonia in her right lung. She doesn't seem to have a fever, though. And she feels well enough except for her returning panic attacks. Maybe one of the medications she was taking, or perhaps the small room, she reasoned.

And she told me not to worry. "Go prep for your classes!" she demanded.

Labor day

Last night, my mom went to the emergency room. The sense I got from the brief conversation I had with my dad this morning is that she was having a difficult time breathing and her chest was in pain. Once at the hospital, they learned that she has a slight case of pneumonia. I'm not sure at this point what "slight" means ... whether the doctor used this terminology, or whether my dad did so as not to worry me. Or maybe that's the word my mom used so my dad wouldn't worry. Words are loaded and loaded and loaded. And then emptied and emptied and emptied.

I asked my dad whether they were giving her antibiotics intravenously (as they did the last time she came down with pneumonia) and he said no. But when I spoke with my mom, she said that she had been hooked up all night. I don't probe during these conversations. I don't know why. I think of all the follow-up questions I should have asked only after we hang up--all the things I could have said seem so obvious afterwards. The conversations go so quickly though the memory of them sticks, right there, still.

So I'm going to do some work now (it is Labor Day after all). Read up. Take notes. Get ready. Get excited. For tomorrow.

Biting the bullet

School starts on Tuesday.

My third-year review file will be due toward the end of October.

I've been watching the new Doctor Who series with Christopher Eccleston. It's funny, charming, sweet, and just all around a lovely distraction.

My mom isn't well. Last week, some test results indicated that the chemo was working and the recent kidney scare was in the past. This week, her fever has returned and her appetite is pretty much non-existent; her doctors advised that she skip chemo until she's feeling better. She tells me she's been trying to eat broth and jello and anything that doesn't taste like anything. I leave next Friday for a (planned) quick weekend visit.

I'm trying to think of ways to feel less like pavement. Like I guess I could wear earrings and paint my toenails--pavement doesn't do either of those things. But I'm open to any and all suggestions. So suggestions please!

Hippopajamas

All thumbs 2--or--blah blah blah blah blah

I've been trying to rethink Pan's Labyrinth in terms of magic realism (as a genre) because, well, theorizing is (stupidly) safe. And when you're feeling non-theoretically vulnerable, a little bit of heady BS makes for a nice palliative.

While Pan's Labyrinth is not clearcut magic realism, it does exhibit one of the most consistent attributes found in magic realist texts: real and magic components collapse into each other to deconstruct and then obliterate meaning. Despite Ofelia's attempts to find solace from loss (of nation, father, mother) in Pan's magical world, that world of fantasy suffers from the same problems and is similarly traumatizing for her. In weaving these two worlds together (with Ofelia as the desperate thread), the film leaves us not with meaning, or redemption, or hope ... but simply painful experience. Most magic realist texts have loving and happy experience side by side with the painful--but, yeah, NOTHING in this one. (In that way, it resonates with that one chapter in Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, in which Clara is being tortured.) There is no light at the end of the tunnel ... and Ofelia's (or, really, it would the audience's at this point) ability to imagine that end place in which she can rest in peace (king, queen, and princess reunited) is understood as a ridiculously desperate gesture. And, in some ways, it is. But it is what it is. Loss is loss. And you don't handle it so much as cling to it because ... what else are you going to do when something can NEVER be again?

The problem here is that we usually associate that "clinging" with hope--in the movies we see, that is. We've grown accustomed, I think, to films with ambiguous endings; would I be going too far to say that perhaps ambivalent conclusions are the new Hollywood kiss? Ambivalent endings once meant that the film was challenging the status quo--challenging our expectations. But perhaps, now, ambiguity is itself status quo. We live our lives so quickly and haphazardly that we expect ambiguity in all its shades of grey. So much so that we've grown (or I've grown ...) suspicious of a film that ends with the Hollywood kiss--unsatisfied, unbelieving. Instead, it's the ambiguous ending that seems weirdly comfortable and hopeful--the ending in which we can imagine the possibility of future happiness without having to commit to it. These wishy-washy films--they're losing something for me. Perhaps I'm starting to question why I always cling to the hopeful side of things, despite the simultaneous promise of calamity. Or perhaps I've grown tired of being lazy--that I'd like a clear decision rather than to have several options open to me. But now I'm just rambling.

You could argue that there is ambiguity in Pan's Labyrinth, but I would probably disagree with you. If anything, the film is painfully and horribly in your face and unabashed about being so. And I think I've decided that I don't think that's a good or bad thing. It is what it is (though I would say something about why the female suffers and the male heir gets to survive--but that's all social commentary). Pan's Labyrinth leaves us clinging only to loss, loss, and more loss. Of course I'm not suggesting that all film should now follow suit and be as horribly brutal as Pan, but hey, maybe postmodernism's heyday is finally over. And that would be good.

In conclusion, thank god that I'll always have Mirrormask for when the Pan's Labyrinths get to be too much. Hooray for Mirrormask. You know what you get when you joggle the BA-NA-NAS?!!!

Oh and also--blah blah blah blah blah.

All thumbs

I really wish that someone had warned me that Pan's Labyrinth would not be a good movie for me to watch tonight.

A beautiful film. Definitely. Not a fantasy film, though. Realist to the core, when it comes down to it. And the reality it suggests is one of those that surprises you with your own reality in the harshest kind of way.

I don't know if anyone else had that experience or if it was just me and how I don't think my mom is doing too well right now. Earlier this evening, she asked me if I could come visit her sometime soon, just for a few days. How did she put it? To make her eyes and her ears and her thoughts light. I'm not sure what to do. I think I'm aiming for the first weekend after school starts (in September). Is that what I should do?

This apartment feels empty and my belly feels bloated.

Holy shit

I guess we do treat shit like it's holy. One must not speak of shit. One must not look directly at it. As for actually touching shit?--out of the question.

Unless, of course, there are circumstances in which you're forced to become rather intimate with your bowels and the movements thereof. One such circumstance is when your mom is dying from metastatic colon cancer and you've talked to your doctor about beginning early cancer screenings for your own colon. In other words, I, my friends, have entered the inner sanctum. Or is it rectum? The inner rectum sanctum.

Common wisdom dictates that you should have your first colonoscopy when you're ten years younger than your family member was when first diagnosed. My mom was first diagnosed when she was 55 ... which would mean my screenings should begin at 45. However, my doctor and I decided that, given that my mom was diagnosed somewhat later than ideal (are these things ever ideal?), I should have my first colonoscopy at age 40. Til then, we agreed that I might have yearly, get this, "fecal occult blood" tests done.

Nothing, NOTHING about a fecal occult blood test sounds good, right? Why, for instance, do they have to use the word "occult"? The test is designed to see if there is any blood hidden in your feces. But using "occult" (which I know means something different in medical lingo than in, erm, regular lingo) makes it sound like they're testing to see if you have haunted poop. Like it might start floating about of its own accord. Or start glowing. Or start spinning around really fast, talking like the devil. Something like Slimer, from Ghostbusters. Only brown instead of green. (Mr. Hankey was too obvious a reference so I decided to go old school, and, also, am I grossing you out yet?)

The fecal occult blood test is a take home test--only instead of giving you a booklet and test questions and the easy opportunity to cheat, you're given three paper sheets, three flat wooden sticks, and three slides. The idea is that you lay the paper down in the toilet before you have a bowel movement, "movement" onto the paper, and then use the sticks to collect a sample, which you'll then "smear" on the slide. Three times over three days. They make it sound easy ... but I don't know. There seem to be missing steps. Like how do you collect a sample without getting it wet? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you maintain your dignity in the process? (Oh right!--you let the world know by BLOGGING ABOUT IT.)

Oh and I guess you could cheat on the fecal occult blood test ... but, really, you can pick at your friends, you can pick at your shit, but you can't pick at your friends' shit.

This blogpost notwithstanding, I hear I'm really sexy and you should totally date me.

Hiking, hiking, hiking

See Jane run

RUN JANE RUN!!!!!

If we are to trust this blurb, featured EVERYWHERE (though I got it on the apple movie trailer site), then the new film, Becoming Jane, is all hooey:

The story of the great, untold romance that inspired a young Jane Austen, played by Anne Hathaway. Willful and spirited, Jane is not ready to be tied down to anything but her writing. That is until she meets Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), a charming rogue from London who spends more time drinking and socializing than on his law studies.

Blech. Ptui.

Carry on.