Perspective

When the phone rings early on a Saturday morning it's startling. When it's one of your parents, your heart leaps into your throat and you hardly can talk. You just listen. 

This time it was my husband listening to his father. 

"Son? I've got some not so great news. Mom's in the hospital..."

Mom has MS and has endured this like some superhero since my husband was four years old. Currently, she and my father-in-law are spending months in Las Vegas where they often like to winter. They were adamant about going this year despite the pandemic and her worsening health conditions, perhaps having an extra travel itch or perhaps concerned they wouldn't get too many more chances to make memories like that together.

So Mom fell while transferring herself back to her wheelchair, a task she can accomplish with some sort of willed superhuman strength and special maneuvers. That was Thursday night. Dad was unable to deadlift her. He was also forbidden to call for help. That superhuman strength Mom has also applies to her will and protectiveness of giving up any control of her independence. She's suffered a lot of it being taken from her. 

Dad managed to get her to a lower chair eventually that he brought into the room. She still refused him calling for help. And she refused water or food. She slept in the chair. She remained Friday until she became unresponsive and Dad just called 911 immediately, as he had been wanting to all along. The paramedics saw that she was unresponsive and said that it didn't look like a typical stoke but just in case that maybe she should go to the hospital just a little further away that specializes in strokes. It's a good thing that she went there. She did have a lacunar stroke, which are sneaky small vessel strokes...and it's not her first one. They found evidence of several prior ones. They discovered she has A-fib as well, which is a major cause of strokes. This will be treated and although it can't rule out future strokes, it greatly diminishes the chance. 

She hates being hospitalized. Her list of complaints was everything from the clock, to ads, lights, and sounds and she said they constantly play You Are My Sunshine which she said is about a woman dying (is this true because none of us know this and we all sang it to our kids regularly---let me know). This is from a woman who has MS for most of her life and doesn't complain about things. She has a lot she could complain about daily, no doubt. But she doesn't. Life dealt her a something horrible and she thought as a very young mom with a 4 and 5 year old under her sole care that she was going to die at any time. So she has perspective. She didn't die. Perhaps out of that sheer will and superhuman strength she summons or perhaps luck or some excellent health care along the way eventually. My guess is all of these things. 

Through the first day of knowing of this, my sister-in-law, husband and myself were all on the phone together a lot and trying to figure out what we could be doing, priority lists, and how to help Dad as well as Mom. Dad is pretty shell-shocked by this. He's a Vietnam veteran who saw action and I heard him cry twice this weekend for the first time. He doesn't cry. He felt helpless to help the woman he loves and has cared for his whole marriage. Their first date she was in a wheelchair (a temporary set back at the time, and partially blind--so it was a true blind date, a pun he loves to use). She had two kids. She'd been divorced twice. He was all in after a few dates and they got married a few months later. He adopted the kids. He's why we are Parkers.

Mom is fiercely independent, and protective of her independence that has been falling away more and more yearly, monthly and to her it feels like daily. She can't bear it. But what she didn't anticipate was that her husband was suffering with her when he couldn't pick her up and she wasn't allowing him to call for help. And that he had to watch her as she became unresponsive. He got 3 hours sleep in days and then only a few hours after he returned from the hospital the next day. The next night, he woke at 2:30am for the night still picturing Mom on the floor crying out for help but what could he do for her? He cried again telling us this. He won't tell her this because she relies on him to be that strong guy who stepped in and was there with no worries. He's worried. But a conversation can help this. Dad needs to be able to access the help he needs to help her. And she can't stop him when it's obvious she needs help. If she wants her outfit changed first or whatever, then he can do that for her. 

One of the things my sister-in-law asked us was how we were managing this after we've been dealing with so many big things lately. I told her, "It's Perspective."

You see, my daughter's ashes have been in an urn on the piano since September. We didn't expect her death and didn't get to her in time. She died in seconds. Since then, everything was put in perspective. Nothing else could possibly rank as painful as that--unless it was the death of our other children. It just is a whole different kind of painful experience. 

I likened it to the Homeland Security Threat Color Code System. 

My daughter's death was a Red (and still is).

Family in health crisis ranks in the Yellow (at first Orange, but once diagnosed it lowers one).

I'm awaiting a shoulder surgery and am in constant pain, but seriously, that's a Blue.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a Yellow but we might get to Blue by Summer. 

Our personal economics, same. 

I can't be sure when I'll see a Green again. But won't that be nice. It might be a shock to my system. Although, I have seriously been considering a young cat rescue/addition to our family while my youngest (the Cat Whisperer) is home. That's a Green for sure.