Going From Bad To Worse

As I was beginning to realize that I needed more help than I had with mom, I asked my brother if he would be willing to help out in exchange for room and board. He quickly agreed, so we sat down and discussed the situation with our mother, and how we could work things out to our individual benefits. We scheduled our times so that he would be available for mom while I was at work, checking in with her on occasion. Needless to say, mom was not too happy that he moved back into the family house. Overall, everything went well for about a month or two, and then things began to change for mom again.

Late in the year of 2005, I was just finishing up with some courses that I took in college when mom started to become more pensive over some symptoms that she was experiencing. For one thing, she was becoming more agitated and depressed about the changes in her vision. However, she was beginning to complain more about having a strange pain in her chest near the area of her pacemaker. Mom was taking various drugs at the time—for high blood pressure, estrogen, thyroid, and at least two types of heart medicines. On top of that, she also wanted to take supplements, particularly vitamin C, D, and E. Originally, I just discounted her complaints because of the medications, but also thought that there might have been some interactions with the supplements. When I could finally convince her to see her doctor, the doctor basically related the problems to the medications and the fact that she was getting old, and that was about it.

I would like to make a comment at this point about mom’s doctor. I have never really liked this doctor from the very beginning because of her apparently lackadaisical attitude toward my mom, and from past experiences that she had with my father. This doctor cared for both my mom and dad at one time. Of course, it did not help that my mom would not take her physician’s advice every time, and canceled many of her regularly scheduled visits when she really needed to be seen. Mom had a love-hate relationship with her doctor, and preferred to “self-analyze” her many issues, too. This did not make for a good relationship with the doctor, but I was also skeptical about the doctor’s true feelings and intentions. In any case, no matter what the complaint was, my mom was basically told that she was experiencing the effects of old age and not much more could be done. When mom began to complain more about the chest pains, I knew that I had to do something soon. It was one week before Christmas in 2005 that everything changed again.

I had just began what I thought would be a nice Christmas break when mom became very upset about having pains in her chest. When she finally agreed to let me take her to the ER, I never thought that we would be facing anything close to traumatic. After taking some x-rays and tests, the attending physician said that they wanted to admit mom to the hospital. It had little to do with the actual chest pains, but more to do with a urine analysis. I had to convince mom that she was going to be alright, and that they just wanted her to stay for observational purposes. So, that’s where I left her, all the while wondering what I could expect to hear.

The next day, I received a call from the hospital and was told that they had found a mass on her right kidney. They said that they could not be sure of its extent, but that it was the size of a small golf ball and only a sampling of the tissue could offer a better scenario. I was told, however, that they were hesitant to perform the biopsy because of her condition and the other implications involved, so they wanted her to stay for more tests and observational purposes. I was just stunned! Mom never complained about having any type of pain, severe or otherwise, at least nothing that could be related to a tumor.