Two Crappy Weeks

I thought I understood pain until I heard my mother’s howl, raw and primal, like a trapped animal fighting for escape. Until then, I didn’t know anything about suffering. I quickly learned.

There was a week early on in the stroke experience when things took an odd turn. Mom had been returned from the regional hospital to a local stroke care ward in another hospital. After a week of being there, Mom would have bouts of extreme pain that would last for hours. With her limited communication, she wasn’t able to convey what she was feeling.

This went on for a week. The doctors had tried low-level pain medication, and that was in short supply because they didn’t want to mask anything else happenng. Day after day and night after night, she would go through these episodes until she would fall asleep from the exhaustion of it.

I started noticing that she would go through these times shortly after she ate. As I watched, the pattern was always the same: a little eating, maybe a couple of bites of food, and then massive pain. It would hit her like a steel trap closing around the leg of its victim, sudden and violent. Mom’s reaction was equally immediate and devastating. I asked the nurse if maybe she needed a laxative to help her. She indicated she would ask the doctor.

Getting medication outside what is prescribed requires an act of Congress. The nurse explains to the doctor, he may or may not remember it, she tells him again, he has no memory of it. This makes everything you might need take a few days up to a week or more to get, like something as simple as a laxative. In most cases, by the time you get it, the need for it has passed.

At the four-day mark since starting this, I’d been pushed to my limits. Listening to my Mom howl like a trapped animal every time this same cycle repeated. I wondered how the staff could remain so ambivalent to her pain. I was suffering right along with her as I was powerless to fix the problem, whatever it was. In the initial phase, I tried to assign some level of reason for this pain she was going through. In my desperation, I turned to God and asked for help. How can I fix this? I got no answers. Three days later, I simply begged to God, if this is it and she’s going to die, then take her so she doesn’t have to keep suffering like this. Still no changes and no answers. I didn’t know what was happening, and the doctors seemed unwilling to do anything despite my repeated pleas.

Eight days had passed of this when the nurse finally arrived with a small pod of liquid laxative. At first, Mom didn’t want anything to do with it. She had essentially stopped eating and drinking the day before. I took it to her and told her, “Mom, we’re hoping this will help the pain.” She gulped it down, following it with water to wash the vile taste out of her mouth.

I asked the nurse if it was going to work, how long would it take? She said typically it works in four hours. Five hours later, no results. They gave Mom a second pod. Two hours after this second pod, finally, results.

Mom hadn’t eaten anything, but her face was contorted in extreme pain. The intensity of it carved into her face. Her eyes bolted open as though someone had surprised her. It was that same look of terror you see in the eyes of a victim in a horror movie the moment they realize the monster has found them. A demonic scream ripped from her. It was like someone had cut her open. The last two weeks of pain were all focusing, pushing her body past its limits. Her body finally snapped. Nothing could stop what was about to happen.

All hell ripped loose.

She started going in the bed. They quickly moved her to a portable toilet seat, which she quickly filled. At a pause in the action, they pulled the full bowl and placed an empty one underneath her. The male nurse who was getting the full bowl out of the room said, “I don’t get paid enough hazard pay for this.” Mom was exhausted and drenched with sweat from the strain and effort. The previous look of pain had been replaced with exhaustion, her face drained of blood. She was still going to the bathroom intermittently. I sat in front of her helping to hold her on the chair. The smell was almost unbearable for all of us. Her hospital gown was saturated from the effort.

An hour after this purging had started, Mom’s process seemed to slow to a stop. It took two of us to hold her up while a third cleaned her lower body. She was slightly more than a limp noodle in between us. She was lowered onto a clean sheet to give her a bed bath. Afterward, a clean brief and gown were put on her. Her bed linens were changed again. Finally, she was covered and immediately fell asleep, exhausted from the strain.

The chair had been pushed aside while Mom was cleaned. The second bowl was about half full. One nurse commented, “It figures why she was hurting so much.” I thought to myself, “No shit, Sherlock,” but held my tongue. However, I couldn’t help but think, If you’d only done this a week ago, we could have avoided all of this pain and suffering. I chose to keep my big mouth shut and take the win.

Over the next couple of days, Mom was weaned back onto solid food, from liquids to soft food to regular food. Day by day, she would eat a little, pensively waiting to see if the pain returned. When it didn’t, she indulged as best she could. A week after that, one of the nurses stopped by and asked me how she was doing. I replied that it seems we’re past that crisis. The nurse mentioned that she wished the doctor would have listened sooner as well.

I learned this lesson.

No one in the hospital, doctor or nurse, will ever know your family as well as you do. After a period of time, you start to develop what I can only describe as a motherly sense about it. It’s the one where a mother can tell when her child is sick or there’s something wrong. It would seem I had started developing that sense for my mother.

There will be times in your care of family when a doctor or nurse will totally contradict what you believe. Remember to stand your ground. Fight for what you believe is best for your family. If the absolute worst happens, they go home at night, but you’re the one who has to live with the outcome of not taking action. Intent in a time of crisis is no replacement for action.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.