Sudden Shock!

I did not know what to do but cry at the thought that mom might have cancer. I gathered myself together and decided to go to the hospital and see her the next day.
It was a beautiful but cold Sunday morning when I arrived at the hospital. I was still pretty shook up, and had to gather all of my strength to overcome any emotion so that I would not upset mom.

I did not immediately inform any of my family members about the situation until I could get a better understanding of what mom would be facing. When I walked into her room, the shades were drawn by the window, and the curtain was mostly closed around her hospital bed. There were no lights on, either. I came around and saw that she was sleeping, so I sat down and watched for a while. Then I decided to seek out a nurse or doctor to see if I could find out anything more about mom’s situation, only to discover that there were no doctors available to talk to. Since it was a holiday week, and a weekend, they were short-staffed and all of the senior physician’s were apparently out of town. I was told that some doctor would call me by the next day. Mom was pretty out-of-it, so I decided to go home.

Over the course of the next 4-days, more tests were taken, though it is not clear what was actually done. I was told that a bone marrow test had been done, and that it came out normal, but there was still a concern about mom’s kidneys. Mom seemed to be OK for the most part, but I soon became aware that something else was going on. Every time I came to visit her, she was usually sitting up on the side of her bed and apparently in good spirits, laughing even. However, she began to tell me about some curious things: that there was some kind of a “conspiracy” going on with her room mate’s teenage children, and also seeing strange things in her room. While it appeared that the conspiracy she spoke of was more like teenage fun to placate my mother, the basis for it was that mom was seeing imaginary, cartoon-like figures running around the room. When I tried to tell mom that she might be hallucinating, she laughed it off, claiming that they were real to her.

I questioned one doctor, who appeared to be straight out of med-school, about the hallucinations, and he indicated that they were likely due to the sedatives and medication that they were giving her. When I asked what medicines she was on, they could not give me any straight answers. That's when I started to get angry. It seemed that I was annoying them with reasonable questions, and I felt like they were giving me the run-around. At that point, I decided to pay real close attention to what was being said and done to my mother.

I later did a little research of my own and found out that the medication(s) that were causing the hallucinations, particularly anesthetics, were also negatively affecting her memory and thought processes, and likely irreversible. Little did I know then that the day mom was admitted to the hospital would be the last day that she was truly lucid, truly herself. It would be the last time that mom was "normal".

Note: Two great resources for medical information on the internet are The Merck Manual (for aging) and WebMD. They will offer answers that the medical "experts" can't or won't offer.