My favorite one is “bricklayer” from THE DEVIL IN THE DARK.
Well, I’m not a doctor, nor do I, like DeForest Kelley, play one on TV. Nevertheless, after my mother’s hip replacement and subsequent MRSA infection, she was going to need care.
I wanted her in a nursing home, but her disastrous experience with Florida Hospital Nursing Home on Cortland Ave, left her adamant about not going back into a nursing home. ANY nursing home. She wanted to at home.
We had to rearrange the house. Move furniture, change the heights of things. My brother, Ted, installed a grip bar next to her toilet. All the carpets came up. The bedroom was completely rearranged.
My mother came home from the hospital with a PICC LINE into her heart. She also had a 12″ x 1″ x 1″ open wound on her left hip where the surgeon had removed the necrotic flesh. For a while she had a WOUND VAC (Negative Pressure Wound Therapy) which a nurse came to manage.
I was not thrilled about this, but she needed daily IV infusion of a very expensive antibiotic.
The nurse trained me how to do the antibiotics. There was something like 23 steps involved, which I carefully wrote down.
I’m not particularly squeamish, but I’ve not been trained to deal with, or spent much time around sick people. The idea of having to do something, that at least in principle, a trained Nurse is supposed to do, and that theoretically if done wrong (well grossly wrong, like well beyond incompetent to the point of moronic) could result in my mother’s death, left me less than eager to perform the required daily task of connecting and disconnecting her IV.
So there I would be in my little office off the living room, and my mother would say, “Dick, it’s time for my medicine.”
Before I moved in, I reviewed The Landmark Forum. I did so with the specific intention that would help me deal with the fact that I would be living with my mother. I wanted to know that I could do this, and that the commitment I was making was for the right reasons.
The intention I created (sorry if this language is a bit odd, but it’s very “Landmark”) is that my mother would have the experience of being loved.
So, when my mother would say, “Dick, it’s time for my medicine” I couldn’t just get up from my chair, walk into the living room and say, “I HATE THIS! It scares me to do this. I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake. I’m afraid I’m going to kill you. I’m afraid that you’re going to DIE. I’m afraid.”
Doing that would not be likely to give my mother the experience of being loved. Terrified maybe, but loved, almost certainly not.
And it’s more than just not saying what I felt. I knew that if she saw the look on my face when I heard those words, or noticed how my hand would shake as I was opening the packages, preparing the various implements of her imminent death at my hands, that she would not have the experience of being loved.
So, each day, when she would call out for me to come and do her medicine, I would get up from my chair, and stand in the doorway of my office. Breathing. Slowly. Until I was sure that the look on my face was calm. That my hands were not shaking. That the thoughts screaming at me were acknowledged and let go.
Then, and only then, would I walk into the living room to do what had to be done.
Some days that moment was longer than others. But in all the time I was doing that particular task, it was never quick.
Once the WOUND VAC came off, my mother required the bandage on her hip to be changed. Again, the nurse trained me how to do what needed to be done. Again, I wrote down the steps in great detail.
Unlike the IV, this particular task did not create the sense that I was about to be the cause of my mother’s demise. This task had a different kind of discomfort associated with it.
My mother would call out, “Dick, it’s time to change my bandage.” Which meant that when I got up, I would walk to her bedroom and find her lying on her right side on the bed with her panties around her ankles, flank exposed, so that I could remove the bandage, clean the wound, and apply the new bandage.
Wow… I managed to get all of that into a single sentence. I’m not sure if that makes it less or more creepy and disturbing, that for months on end, I basically was massaging my mother’s butt on a regular basic.
But I had made a commitment. A commitment that my mother would have the experience of being loved.
In that moment, that required that I do what needed to be done, respectfully, with consideration and compassion, as efficiently and caringly as I could.
Dignity is an interesting thing. I’m clear that dignity is something that is one’s own. Others can seek to deprive one of it, and mankind has in its history come up with many inventive ways to attempt that. One can relinquish it, which we have also found myriad ways to do. But in the end, one’s dignity is one’s own. It can’t be taken without our consent, but that doesn’t mean having someone try to take it a positive experience. It’s not.
To fulfill my commitment, I had to acknowledge my mother’s dignity, as she lie on the bed, physically exposed, allowing me to minister to her need. There was no possibility of my mother having the experience of being loved if through my actions, words, or thoughts, I did less than honor her; the position she was in, which required her to ask me to do what needed doing; or her essential dignity as a human being.
My entire life my mother had talked about GRACE. It’s a Catholic thing. One of the things she would say is that it is an opportunity for Grace to receive the help you need graciously.
Well, if Grace is something you can earn through your thoughts, words, or actions, my mother earned a richness of it during those months. As difficult as I might have found it to do what needed doing, I have no doubt, that having to have it done, was by far the greater burden to bear.
So, I’m not a Doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. But I had the honor and privilege to getting to do a small bit of doctoring for my mother at the time when she needed it.
My mother is well at this time. Very well, actually. We both hope, and frankly, work to ensure, that she remains well. But should she have need of that kind of basic medical care again, we both know that it is possible for her to stay in her own home.
Should we face a greater need… Well, we are both practical people, and no point in crossing a bridge that is not at the time on our route. But I am confident that whatever choice my mother makes, we will do it together.
I have faced illness in the past. I’m profoundly grateful for Antoine. My mother understands what he means to me, even if others never will, perhaps because I might never tell them.
No one knows what the future holds. I truly hope that I never require such care, but if I am faced with that need, I pray that I have a small fraction of my mother’s Grace and dignity, and compassion for whoever is unfortunate enough to have to deal with me.