Thanks and Tomorrow

I haven't been answering the comments, not because I don't want to (do you have any idea how choked up it makes me to see 9 and 10 comments on a post of mine?) but because I just can't: y'all are too kind and sweet and thoughtful and I get all kind of teared up. I'm avoiding choked uppedness like the plague just now because once it starts I can tell it's going to be hard to stop, so I read your comments and sniffle a little and then I just can't answer them. Except like this, in post form, to tell you how much I appreciate it, and how welcome it is, and how incredibly thoughtful and sweet y'all are. I really, really do genuinely appreciate all the kind thoughts and love and the prayers that I know are flowing our way right now.

We need them. Keep them coming, because tomorrow is the surgery.

Tomorrow is the surgery and here, right now, in the name of catharsis or honesty or some such thing, is where I say the things that are never supposed to be said out loud. I was in there today and this mean idiot LPN (we're batting a great average at St. Joe's - we have encountered uncounted but deeply appreciated wonderful, smart, and dedicated people and only the one mean dumb one, which is amazing and breaks every law of averages and of human resources) gave my mom another release to sign, a consent to surgery. "She's done that already," I said, "A week ago, when we decided on this." The mean LPN sniffed nastily. "Still need to do it." she said, and thrust it under my mother's nose even though I was holding my hand out to read it.

"I don't like number four." said my mother and started to refuse to sign it, which was the cue for mean dumb bitch to get snifty, so I took it and read it. Number four is the thing that says, "We the surgeons and we the hospital have your permission to do whatever surgical shit we find necessary once we actually get right up inside you and really get an idea of just what the fuck is going on in there." Which is another one of these gray area things that are understandable from both points of view: i.e., it's like your mechanic discovering, when he starts to take apart your car to replace the spark plugs, that the head gasket is shot. In mechanic world, he is then supposed to call you and say, hey, there's something else wrong with your car, and it's going to cost you approximately $600 more than we originally said. In mechanic terms, of course, this is called The Norm. In an interesting side note to that, my mother's name is Norma, and we have often called her The Norm, or, occasionally in my father's case, just Norm. Mostly everyone calls her Tucky and has since she was a small child for reasons she has shrouded with secrecy, but I digress. At any rate, the mechanic analogy breaks down here, because the surgeon can't just call me up and say, "So, do we have your permission to put in a new head gasket or would you rather we just did the spark plugs and you can try to talk your old boyfriend into putting in a new head gasket for free?" In a perfect world, you see, you could then say, "Well, I'd rather keep my gallbladder, thanks, so just do the original work." But you can't say that, in surgery.

No, the surgeon has to just go ahead, hell for leather, into the breach and so on, since opening up a human again for further repairs is far more problematic than opening up an 87 Honda, which I explained to my mother, along with the fact that this was just another CYA document, of which there are so many. My mother had never heard the term CYA (it means Cover Your Ass) until a week or two ago when we got launched into this new world we are currently inhabiting and it charmed her, as changes to the language usually do. She was thrilled a couple of years ago when my daughter explained "24/7" and she told all her Deerfield retirement community friends who were dutifully impressed with my mother's hip and happening grasp of the latest slang, especially since she then started trying to slip it in wherever possible, which was difficult since my mother's lifestyle doesn't really accomodate "24/7" except, of course, in terms of peeing.

But anyhow, the surgeon just going ahead is exactly what my mother does not want, because she believes that too much energy is put into keeping old people alive. She says she is damned if she wants some kind of surgery that will keep her alive but miserable and in pain for an extra couple of months. She says, "That's what happened to Jack - that operation was supposed to only be a couple of hours and it ended up being five hours long and they gave him a bag at the end of it and then he died 8 months later and I don't want that."

None of us want that. I am no doubt going to some kind of unfilial hell - I know I shouldn't think or hope or gods forbid say this, but I am - for hoping, as I am right now, that if, when they open her up tomorrow, it turns out that she is eaten away inside with cancer, that she dies on the operating table. I would rather she died tomorrow than go on for a few months in constant drifting pain like she's been in for the past couple of months. These haven't been good months. This is not what you would call fucking goddamn quality of life, constant pain and nausea and dizziness and bloody diarrhea. The last two or three weeks have been essentially unmitigated hell, for her and for all of us who love her. I love her terribly, utterly, awfully and because I love her so much I do not want her to go through any of that kind of soulless living hell, that kind of slow cancer dying that my father went through. Among other things, I don't know if I can take it. If this is just a dress rehearsal, if this is just the prelude to slow, agonizing months of dying - I don't know. I just don't know if I can stand or take it or anything else at all. I wouldn't let a dog of mine go through what my father did six years, six long years, ago, and when I think of it, and think of my mother facing that, well, I guess I'm damned myself, because then I pray that she just gently, quietly dies.

I know, it's still very possible that she'll be fine after all this, and please oh gods, oh all you gods (because I'm not a monotheist at heart - I always think, well hell, if one god is a good thing than 12 or so is clearly far better) please let that be so, and let us go back to our driving around and our rum and cokes at 5:00 pm and our amicable wrangling over the rose bushes for another 10 or 15 or even, gods, 20 years, but if it isn't so, and if we're going from this to slow death, to wasting illness, to the terrible kindness of hospice, than please, please, just let her go.