4 6
SPEAK
FACING LIFE'S VALUE
a son takes charge when his mother is in the hospital by Jonathan Kealing
Five years ago today, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room, wondering what had happened in the last two weeks. The worst had passed, but I had a new idea of how tenuous normalcy is. Especially with my mom.
Five years and two weeks ago, I had been called to my high school principal's office. When I got there, he pulled me into his office and shut the door. It must be serious, I thought. He asked me if my mom had been sick lately. Alarm bells went off. She had been in bed a lot during the weekend, and she hadn't gotten up that morning to tell me goodbye.
The principal told me to go home and find out what was wrong.
Looking back, I'm amazed I managed to drive home so slowly and calmly.
As you near my house, you can look through yards and see our front door. I saw two firetrucks and an ambulance outside my house. Suddenly, my slow and calm pace left me. I floored it through three stop signs and down residential streets at 50 miles per hour.
I got home in time to see the ambulance pull away. My neighbor drove my brother and me to the hospital. The two of us pieced together what had happened. My mom had extremely high blood pressure.
The paramedics said it was 300 over 190. Normal blood pressure is 120 over 80.The blood pressure machine stops reading at 300.She had been sick all weekend but hadn't gone to see a doctor.Her blood pressure had increased all weekend.Then, on Monday,she'd passed out.
My sister, a five-year-old kindergartener,
had been eating lunch and getting ready
for class when Mom collapsed. Instead of panicking, she ran to my neighbor's house to get help. To this day, we believe my mom would have died if my sister
hadn't gotten help. My neighbor tried to reach my dad, but he was in Minneapolis, Minn. With no family within four hours, I was in charge.
And, though insurance was the last thing I wanted to worry about, the responsibility gave me something to focus on aside from the seriousness of my mom's illness.
TO THIS DAY, WE BELIEVE MY
MOM WOULD HAVE DIED IF MY
SISTER HADN'T GOTTEN HELP.
By late afternoon my dad had arrived. During the next few weeks, I visited the hospital almost every chance I had. When my mom came out of the coma about a week after being admitted, I went to
When my brother, my neighbor and I got to the hospital, I had to take care of filling out the paperwork. I filled out insurance forms. I called my mom's parents to tell them that their daughter was in a coma from extraordinarily high blood pressure. I called my dad's parents, who my mom has always been close with, to tell them their daughter-in-law had passed out at home and was in intensive care.
visit even more. The doctors determined that her blood pressure was sensitive to salt and put her on a very bland diet, but allowed
her to eat smoothies. I was in charge of bringing her one every time I visited.
Every time I came to visit, I brought her a different smoothie. In the week's worth of visits, I must have visited every place that makes smoothies in west St. Louis County. I hit gas stations for icees. I went to Smoothie King. If they made smoothies, I went. My mom and I would sit and talk and eat our smoothies as we tried to make sense of what had happened.
As I learned more, I realized how frightening the whole experience was. For most of the weekend she'd been virtually
blind. Her blood pressure was so high that it had cut off her vision, but she still hadn't said anything to any of us. That's how my mom is. No matter how sick she gets, she deals with it herself and does whatever the rest of us need.
Fortunately, my mom suffered few enduring effects from the episode. Doctors warned she could have permanently gone blind. Her kidneys were greatly damaged, but they could have quit working altogether. She could have had brain damage. Somehow she has made a full recovery.
Now, five years later, we live with some of the consequences of those two weeks in 2001. I'm much more careful to keep an eye on my own blood pressure, though I'm not always as healthy as I should be. My mom continues to eat a diet that includes very little sodium, and her habit has spread to our family as well. I think I have a lot more perspective on life now too. Though I don't find time to go home much, I don't mind the fact that my mom calls me almost every day — and sometimes even more frequently.
And none of us think about my youngest sister quite the same way. Without her, I might not be looking forward to my entire family coming to visit Lawrence this weekend.
09.07.2006 JAYPLAY <15