Something I found in some old scraps from high school that seems remarkably relevant to a passing mood that comes over me these days:

A Bird on the Bough

Brightly colored girls
smoke in the hallways, congregating
clouds of incomprehensible sound.

Through the windows the sun
beats rubber leaves,
a giant to the tipping plant
in what we will someday call home.

Like a bird I can hear and cock my head, unable to respond.
In the southern lakes of migration my plumes are a faded blue.

From the East, all of a sudden,
my clothing feels worn.
In the light no longer familiar---a sail at port,
my cotton sags.

Another Friday Afternoon

I brought my mother into the hospital again this Friday, as usual, but she had a fever and they wouldn't let her go home when she was finished with the infusion. They started with the intravenous antibiotics that they give prophylactically but I had to go to my yoga teacher training. So I left mom and the nurses promised to get her a car. Her health is such that she could handle going home on her own as long as nothing out of the ordinary happened. However, the fever failed to go down and so she was taken to the NYU emergency room for the second time in a matter of weeks. I was very reluctant to leave her and at the same time I feel like I have to fulfill some of my other commitments as well. My training is only one intensive weekend a month, yet something like this always seems to happen!
I went to visit her in the emergency room when the training got out at around 11 PM. The security guards wouldn't let me in because it was past visiting hours and my wiles were of no use with the very butch woman barring my way. So I made numerous telephone calls to the nurses who were just a few feet away, but kept on being put on hold and having to listen to a striking variety of elevator style music. In the end I called and told them, "Could you please tell my mother that I, her daughter, have been waiting to get in to see her for half an hour and no one will let me in." The nurse said, "I'll take care of it right away" and the doors swung open for me. As soon as I appealed to her heart rather than her intellect (why had I not been allowed in? What was her condition like? etc.) the obstacles were gone and the whole thing was a lot less frustrating. Luckily, the nurses have more say than the guards as soon as the doors open. My mother was lying in the middle of the chaos of the emergency room but she seemed to be fine. In fact, her face was a beautiful, shining oasis. I couldn't help kissing it all over.
I only stayed a short while and then walked home exhausted. When I entered the apartment I had the eerie sensation that ghosts were watching me. I don't like to sleep alone in the apartment when my mother is in the hospital. I checked there was no one about, despite my rational mind, and then I put the chain on the door. One of my worst fears is that I'll chain the door and then something will creep up on me and will prevent me from getting out quickly enough and I will be submitted to unthinkable, abstract tortures. So I always check all the rooms first.
I actually slept well and was up and ready for teacher training early in the morning. I picked up my mother in the afternoon against medical advice because she absolutely did not want to stay there any longer. I was slightly late because I had to walk circuitously about the hospital due to massive cranes blocking all the normal entrances, luckily I met a nice French student who is studying neurosomethingorothers and brain plasticity. He's from the Loire Valley, where I happen to have some family, and the converstation was a nice way to mitigate the frustration of having to take a very long and pointless route all around the hospital. When I arrived to pick her up she already had her coat on, her bag packed and was sitting up in bed.
She is home now and seems to be fine. However, when I got home tonight I discovered some disturbing medical bills and found my panic button was jammed. My heart races and I get so scared that we are going to be ruined by this horrible insurance company, which, for the record, is called Atlantis---ironic, huh?

A Sleet Storm

Today in New York City there was a sleet storm for most of the day. I ventured out with plastic bags inside my boots and my feet still got soaked somehow. I've never seen so much sleet. Strange how different snow feels.
On Monday afternoon I brought my mother into the emergency room again because she exhibited some symptoms in the morning that reminded me of the week before I finally brought her in and she had emergency brain surgery. Her symptoms subsided after I gave her some Tylenol, but the neurosurgeon said I should bring her in anyway. After hours of waiting and then getting various scans, it turned out that the shunt from my mother's brain into her stomach wasn't working properly, so her brain was swelling again, and there was some herniation of the stomach. So she had to stay over in the emergency room and then had surgery again the next day. This time around was very different from the first because she was totally fine---I mean she wasn't delirious or even ill---and we both felt a little blase about the whole thing. She was hungry while in the emergency room so I ran out and got her a Greek salad and we sat together on the hospital bed right in the middle of everything picking away at feta and olives.
She ended up having to stay for two nights in the emergency room because there were no beds free in the neurosurgery unit. When I went to pick her up in the morning after she'd recovered from the surgery, she already had her coat on and was all ready to go. We signed the paperwork and just walked out with a fruit basket with a get-well card that the hospital staff had given her .
We are getting so used to all this that we hardly think anything of the surgery, which involved slicing through my mother's stomach and accross her abdomen. I took over everything for a couple of days, which was much smoother than the first time around, and now we are basically back where we were and I'm hoping that some of the nausea she was experiencing was caused by the faulty shunt, so maybe she'll actually feel better now. We also managed to get the Marinol (medical marijuana in a pill form) approved by the insurance somehow. The young man at the hospital who does this stuff for us can work wonders.
It seems like everyone I talk to has family that has recently been diagnosed with something major, mostly cancer. Someone I was talking to today suggested that maybe it's the coming of the apocalypse and it occured to me that perhaps the apocalypse isn't this sudden, dramatic catastrophe but all these catastrophes at a microcosmic level. There are these little bombs going off everywhere I turn. Strangely, it doesn't exactly make me unhappy. I wouldn't say it makes me happy, certainly, but I feel calm and accepting at the moment. I feel prepared for whatever curveballs are coming my way. Although this may be totally delusional, of course.
I just look and I see my mother eating ginger candies I bought for her and wearing these funny house slippers I got when I was out shopping for something to wear (since all my clothes are still in England) and I can't help feeling peace. I don't care if we are in the midst of this mini apocalypse, if I may venture such a paradox, because she's like a happy child and I feel oddly proud that I can bring her little treats and rub her feet while I babble away about all my ideas about the body, language, boys or whatever I happen to be thinking about. In the midst of what could be the greatest tragedy I feel the most genuine love. It's a love I can't quite fit into any preordained box, it seems to transcend any ideas I may have had about love.
The good news we learned from the MRIs while my mother was in the hospital is that her 30 plus brian tumors have practically disappeared!

Hospital Fridays

Fridays are the day we spend in the hospital. Every Friday afternoon a little before two a car comes to pick us up and we drive over to the Clinical Cancer Center on 34th Street. We get a car back at 6. It all starts with a finger stick; the nurse jabs my mother's finger and collects a blood sample, which is used to check her white and red blood cell counts. If the whites are too low, she gets Neupogen, if the reds are too low, she gets Aranesp. As soon as we walk into the building my mother suddenly reverts from the intelligent and mentally capable woman I know her to be into a four-year-old girl who asks no questions and does what she's told. Her gestures change, her eyes widen and the nurses all flock around her. I watch like a hawk and ask lots of questions, I keep track of what they're giving her and I act as her voice because once we enter through the opening of those automatic glass doors, her's is gone. She's out of her element, the vocabulary is not of the body but rather of the pharmacy.
After we see the doctor we go up to the infusion room and my mother gets chemotherapy drugs pumped through her port. Today I asked how long they were planning to continue like this and, as I had already guessed, the answer was as long as it works to keep the cancer cells from proliferating. In other words, indefinitely. The longer the better, in a sense, because if they stop it means that the it's no longer stopping the cancer from spreading and they have to try something else. So we will, in this system, be going to the hospital nearly every Friday for the rest of my mother's life. So much for Thank God it's Friday! On the other hand, of course we should be grateful that my mother is alive and getting better all the time.
While my mother was getting treatment, I went up and spoke with the financial counselor because I'm working on getting her inurance plan changed and also I got her a prescription for medical marijuana to help with her nausea and stimulate her appetite. It has to be called in for pre-approval with all sorts of notes and such because it costs $400! Anyway, we should be able to get it covered, which would be nice. It was quite funny when the doctor suggested it after my mother continued to complain of nausea despite all the anti-nausea medications they've tried. He asked her, "Um, Cathy, did you smoke, hm, pot when you were younger? People who liked it usually do well with this...." She was not into pot, but hey, she was never into shrimp either and lately she's been devouring them.
I spent about two hours with the financial counselor, he kept on saying how busy he's been and then when I said we could talk another time, he kept on asking me to stay. So we made lots of three-way calls and figured out exactly what the situation is. It's a lot more fun doing this sort of investigation as a team. Basically, I'm going to send in my mother's application to switch to a new HMO tomorrow and, fingers crossed, there shouldn't be a problem.
When we walked into the elevator at the hospital my mother commented that I know the place much better than she does, and it's true. I know the place like the back of my hand, I know almost all the nurses and the receptionists. My way of making the whole thingh less of a nightmare is to make sure that I've scoped out my surroundings. If I have my allies, I'm not so scared that we'll be thrown out on the street and refused treatment.
I returned from speaking with the financial counselor to find that my mother couldn't get up at all after the chemo. I pulled her up, but she fell right back. So in the end I got the nurses and we managed to get her downstairs, but she seemed slightly delirious and when I asked her how she was feeling she patted her walker and said, "Gonna sell it." She soon appeared more normal, except her nose looked sunburnt, so I went out and got us some food, which is our usual ritual. I go and get takeout from the Greek or the Thai place and we eat dinner while we're waiting for the car to arrive. But in the meantime, some nurses saw that my mother's nose looked a bit funny and she was swaying and when I got there she was being nursed. I know they are doing the right thing and I'm glad that they're there, but at the same time, it's embarrassing to me----I feel like they're judging me and thinking that I'm not doing a good enough job. When they look so concerned it scares me. It breaks the illusion of trying to live a 'normal' life.
We got home fine with a nice driver who only seemed to know the phrase "Thank you" in English and kept on patting us both on the back and repeating it. When we got into the apartment I ran my mother a bath with epsom salts and lavender oil and now she's sitting quite happily with a mug of raspberry ginger tea. So another day passes and we are still alive and functioning. We can pinch ourselves and feel our own flesh. I'm beginning to unwind from the stress of being in the hospital but haven't had my own bubble bath yet.