Mom & Me Two Archive

...and, technically, you'd be right. Mom suffered a surprise bowel movement today a few hours after arising, being cleaned, eating and playing Sorry. It is so rare for either of us to eat anything like 13.6 ounces of meat over a two or three day period, let alone one day, including holidays, that when my mother's bowels surprised her today I wasn't surprised. I devoured my meat as ravenously and completely as my mother and my bowels were a bit on the active side today, too. My mother's color, though, remained positively striking all day despite ingesting only 15 ml of iron in the morning. Previous to her bowel incident she was pretty lethargic and talked a lot about taking a nap. I didn't discourage her but waited her out. Once her bowels had cleansed themselves she regained some sparkle and remained up throughout the day, eating lightly, mostly complex carbohydrates: V-8 juice, popcorn, a couple of pieces of oat bran toast. We did try the cake today, modest pieces some time in the afternoon between movies. It was good but awfully sweet. We both tend to forget that, in the case of food, sometimes absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Later in the evening, because she'd meandered through the kitchen looking for cigarettes and noticed the cake still on the counter, she considered aloud the possibility of more cake. I waved away her suggestion. One piece of cake every few months is enough for me, regardless of what kind it is. This seemed to convince her, too. "I was just trying on the idea," she said, "but you're right, it doesn't fit."
    Today was my day to be surprised by tiredness. I fell asleep on the living room floor this evening, not one of my habits. Mom, though, stayed up till past 2300 and had to awaken me to bid me goodnight. When I zonk on the floor I always make sure that I am close enough to her perch that any movement will wake me. Previously I've never had to be awakened. Tonight I did.
    I think my exhaustion was part psychological. Although I made the decision more than a few days ago to forego my mother's endoscopy and lived with it for a few days to see how it felt, over the past 24 hours I became so comfortable with it in the context of my management of my mother's health that I finally reached the point where, unless I am asked, I feel no need to explain to these particular doctors why I'm canceling. If I'm asked I feel sure I can explain my decision succinctly and without upturns of voice at the ends of my sentences. Why the difference? In the last 24 hours I made a concerted effort to review all my actions on behalf of my mother's health since 1999. I systematically listed and reviewed all records from mainstream medicine and its practioners and all records from other sources. I realized the following:

1. While having been valuable for medical, testing and lab prescriptions, all mainstream health practioners have tended toward over medicating my mother. This over medication endangered my mother's life on one occasion and nullified the action of an antibiotic on another occasion. I have tended to undermedicate and have caused no critical episodes as a result. The only critical episode that my administration of medication to my mother has caused is that my informed decisions to feed her ibuprofen in the absence of any other available pain medication and to monitor her metformin for excellent blood sugar control at the same time during her critical convalescence from her back injury contributed to her current bout with anemia.
2. My mother has been tested from stem to stern in every way possible except endoscopically. The cause of her iron deficiency anemia continues to elude mainstream physicians. It eludes the non-alternative health community as well but it is this community that is helping me successfully treat her anemia, not the mainstream medical community, and helping me treat it without bothersome side effects that require more medication, like constant constipation.
3. The mainstream medical community has yet to offer me any help with her back injury except for x-raying her back and determining that nothing was broken. The only adequate and thoughtful help I've received so far in this regard is from the alternative health community.
4. I have never been indifferent nor incompetent in my consideration of and treatment of my mother and her health. The alternative health community has performed likewise. The only indifference and incompetence my mother's health treatment has experienced is from the mainstream medical community.

    When I understood the above (in somewhat more complex detail) I realized that an enforced vacation from the mainstream medical community, if this happens, is not going to hurt her even if this means a further delay in physical therapy. Although my mother still tilts to the right when she stands and walks, the acuteness of the angle depending on how rested she is, her strength improves daily, we continue the wheelchair-as-walker therapy every other day (sometimes every day) and her interest in the outside world is reviving. Once reliable healing took hold her improvement began registering exponential leaps.
    It is a a mind blower to watch someone heal whose body is so obviously winding down. Human resilience is astonishing.
    An Observation:  Sometimes I hold one of my mother's blood test reports in my hand after attempting to imagine, graphically, what her blood is doing from the numbers (MCS is particularly good at encouraging this process) and realize, at a sublingual level, that I am looking at a snapshot from the story of existence.