It's something I'm not proud of.
Sometimes....I don't pick up the phone when my mom calls.
DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.
Don't get me wrong, I'll call her within the hour, but sometimes I'm just too tired or busy or stressed or somethingorother to speak with her.
So when she called me on May 20, 2013 and I was binge-watching YouTube, I let it go to voicemail.
However, you can bet when the text "Ed was hit by a car in midtown. I'm on my way to Bellevue Hospital" came through, I dialed her number faster than that time I tried to win an iPad from an NPR radio contest.
The marriage so nice they did it twice. August 2001.
My parents were in New York preparing for my brother's wedding on May 26. Since Ed had been the toast of Manhattan in his day, owning a locksmith shop at Grand Central for decades and working with everyone, he hit the town on his own, despite Sharon's concern (he had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's, although it was completely mild and manageable).
It all started when a cab made a speeding right hand turn, careening into this big Irish guy in the crosswalk. The left side of his body was slammed onto the hood, and all he could do was continuously say his first and last name. I don't have much more information about the accident than that, because I purposely avoided reading the police report. A girl's got to sleep, after all.
One of the most surprising things about Ed was (is) his incredible strength. He hulked out on the ER staff, pinning a hapless resident to the bed like he was swatting a bee. "He's...so...strong..." the traumatized doctor squeaked as Sharon carefully pried Ed's hands away from the back of his neck.
As my mother tried to console her husband (and the resident ran off to cry in a closet), it became obvious that the emerging bruises along the left side of his body, ear to hip, weren't the biggest issue. Ed had endured two deep cerebral bleeds, and wasn't able to communicate effectively.
And then he puked.
Because my family doesn't do anything the easy way, Ed started choking on his vomit before the doctors could clear his airway. Science nerds, here's a question for you: when bacteria presents in the lungs, what do you get?
Give up?
A really gross pneumonia.
One of the most surprising things about Ed was (is) his incredible strength. He hulked out on the ER staff, pinning a hapless resident to the bed like he was swatting a bee. "He's...so...strong..." the traumatized doctor squeaked as Sharon carefully pried Ed's hands away from the back of his neck.
As my mother tried to console her husband (and the resident ran off to cry in a closet), it became obvious that the emerging bruises along the left side of his body, ear to hip, weren't the biggest issue. Ed had endured two deep cerebral bleeds, and wasn't able to communicate effectively.
And then he puked.
Because my family doesn't do anything the easy way, Ed started choking on his vomit before the doctors could clear his airway. Science nerds, here's a question for you: when bacteria presents in the lungs, what do you get?
Give up?
A really gross pneumonia.
This is your lung with aspiration pneumonia. Some hipster will make it into a tattoo.
By now you may be thinking, "Dude. The name of this blog is 'Do you even cancer', and we're talking about green secretions and beating up doctors and summers in ICU. There's, like, no cancer."
And I'd say, "Shhhhh, I'm getting there."
I think our little girl has anger management issues. New York, 2013.
Eleven weeks between the ICU, traumatic brain injury unit, and med unit (thanks, secondary pneumonia!), followed by a sweet private plane ride back home to Virginia, and Ed was settled in a rehab facility to see how much of himself we could recover in 100 days.
We learned traumatic brain injury isn't linear. This isn't Grey's Anatomy, and when someone suffers such a devastating injury, they're not up dancing after the next commercial break. There were days when my mother would leave rehab hysterical, because something as simple as Ed lifting a spoon to his mouth were monumental tasks.
And then, there were his outbursts. Jeez.
Medicare Part D did not let us keep the dog. Thanks, Obama!
For people who didn't know my dad before the accident, his intermittent sexual tone and requests for amorous favors came as a shock. We had to frequently remind staff and visitors that his asking for a "quiet little blowjob" or desire to "shove it up your ass" were part of his injury, not how he generally behaved. The first couple of times he solicited me for a handjob were jarring; afterwards, it just became par for the course. I began to come up with clever quips.
"Sorry blue eyes, I don't go for old men."
"You're lucky I like you Pops, I've screamed at street harassers for less."
"I don't do that for less than a thousand dollars."
Forget McKayla. Ed is not impressed with my witty comebacks.
It was clear before the 100 days were over that Ed was not responding well to rehab. He couldn't clothe, feed, or bathe himself. He could hardly walk. His Parkinson's had accelerated, and his doctors raced after his symptoms, compensating with a new antipsychotic here, a trial run of antiseizure meds there. We learned the difference between tremors and myoclonic jerks (pro tip: myoclonic jerks are terrifying), could maneuver his wheelchair like nothing, and became skilled conversational circumventers.
(Yes, I know "circumventers" isn't a word. I just made it up. Don't hate.)
Ed finally came home, unresponsive and presumably at the end of his life, in November of 2013. However, my mother's words rang true: "He'll only improve if he's home with me." He's still not "with it", needs constant care and is essentially bed and wheelchair bound, but the old guy is still kicking.
We poop on your dysfunctional family archetypes. January 2015.
OK. I think that's all the exposition. Are we all caught up? Because now we can get titular.
My mother is dying of cancer.
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