Love

non-subjecct: pain
aww ~ 12/11/13
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Mom's rheumatologist's name was Dr. Payne.
Her final psychiatrist's name was Dr. Downs.
Sometimes she'd joke about the irony of their names.

Before Dr. Downs, she saw a psychiatrist whose name was Dr. Kim.

When I was hospitalized at Catawba Memorial Hospital after swallowing jimson seeds, Dr. Kim was my attending physician whom I only remember meeting after the affect of the jimson plant had worn off. I had been admitted to ICU on a Tuesday and hallucinated through sometime Friday. On Friday an antidote to the jimson was administered and I was able to sleep. When I awoke sometime Saturday, I looked around the ICU room. I was able to identify objects that my mind had warped into roaches and witch doctors and people and castles and arm casts and an aquarium and the passageway to the outside world beyond the hallucinatory asylum wherein my mind and body were trapped for four days.

I was released from ICU on Saturday or Sunday and was admitted to a regular hospital floor but not to the psychiatric floor. That's when I remember meeting Dr. Kim for the first time, though I must have met him in my hallucinatory state. I was puzzled as to why I was kept in the hospital for a one week observation; I felt perfectly fine. Each day for that week I would arise and dress in street clothes and take walks, including walks outside around the building and in the patio area of the hospital. My plastic bracelet identified me as a patient. I was fifteen years old.

I didn't see Dr. Kim again until sometime in my thirties. My brother and I went together for a consult with Dr. Kim concerning Mom after she had lapsed into a series of severe bipolar episodes. I wonder if Dr. Kim remembered who I was; I certainly didn't bring up what had happened some fifteen-plus years previously. My brother did most of the talking at the consultation about Mom.

Those were hard years, the years after Dad's wreck that left him paralyzed with quadriplegia. Mom became a wreck. In many ways caring for Dad was easier than maneuvering through Mom's mania and depression.

Yet, what a strong woman Mom was. She cared for Dad almost the full thirteen years of his quadriplegia. Day in and day out. Bathing Dad; dressing Dad; changing his condom catheter; making sure his bowels moved; cutting his food; holding his drinking glass so he could drink from the straw; lifting Dad from his bed with the Hoyer Lift and then swinging him around and lowering him into his wheelchair and then positioning him so he could sit comfortably. All the various details of life. Buttons; zippers; hygiene. Day in and day out.

Mom was the one who found a used camper for sale and had it set up at Green Mountain Resort in Lenoir about 45 minutes from the home place. All Dad's equipment had to be hauled along so Mom could dress and lift and feed and care for Dad. Mom would drive herself and Dad in the converted cargo van and spend multiple nights at the camper. Mom bought Dad the wooden card holder so they could invite friends over and Dad could play bridge.

Mom couldn't give up caring for Dad, and it drove her to extremes. But she loved him, probably doing more than most people would do in a similar situation. She couldn't bring herself to have Dad admitted long term in a care facility.

And Dad, he too was a trooper. He would cry from time to time. He probably cried much more in private; tears that others never witnessed.

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Added note: Home health did come by three days a week in the mornings for some of the years. My brother and I lived close by and also helped in the care of Dad. My sister lived out of state and would help whenever she came to visit. But Mom was the one who was always there, and she carried most of the burden. It was a labor of love.