Mom went to the Emergency Room Monday for pneumonia & aspirin overdose. She's 70 & sometimes forgets if she's already taken aspirin. This time she forgot too many times in a row and poisoned herself. After 4 days in the hospital she moved to a nursing home/rehab center to gain her strength back. She shares her room with a whale of a woman whose voice sounds like a screeching cat in heat. I'll call her Georgia to protect the innocent, and she's been nothing but nice to my mother. Georgia completely fills her twin bed and somewhat spills over. She's on pain medication but I haven't yet discovered why she's here except she's dangerously obese and has trouble breathing.
I've been summoned to her side of the curtain with a howl "When you're done over there come over here a minute & help me! Take this thing-a-ma-bob off my call button- it keeps poking me when I lay on it." There's an alligator clip attached to the cord of the call button so it can hang from the side of the bed when attached to a sheet. It's there permanently. "I'm sorry, this won't come off. Let's just hang it off the sheet so you don't have to lay on it."
"Well, okay, I don't like that poking me." It took will power not to ask why she wanted to lay on her call button.
My mom cannot concentrate when Georgia is talking, come to think of it neither can I. Her voice is loud, squeaks like the wheel on a shopping cart & gravelly at the same time. Yesterday my dad & I were trying to visit with mom & Georgia was having a conversation on the phone. Each time she yelled into the phone my mom's face went blank, her thoughts having been driven away & then she looked mad because she wanted to say something but now it was lost. She'd just flap her hand in the direction of the curtain that divides the room.
This morning I showed up when everyone was just waking up. "I'm not awake yet but I'll drink my coffee. I can't wake up, it's too early," mom says as she reclines in her bed with her coffee. She really does look like she's still asleep.
As my mom got around to donning her robe and eating her breakfast Georgia shuffled around the curtain toward the bathroom they share, which is on mom's side of the room. She hadn't bothered to put on her robe and only wore an open backed hospital gown, untied & without undies. I left before she came back out, "Gotta go mom, don't want to be late for work- see you tonight," I said & ran. If she needed help let the paid staff deal with her nudity.
My dad, being the subtle & PC guy that he is said "I hope she doesn't fall on mom." Mom's all of 95 pounds and looks like a frail delicate bird in her blue & white fleece robe. Georgia looks like a great black rhino in her solid black muumuu. She has long straight black hair that she obviously dyes, which reminds me of the heavy metal bands of the 80's.
I poke fun to keep myself from crying. It's not easy seeing the person who raised you become old and on top of that, seriously ill.
The morning after my mom was admitted to the hospital I stationed myself next to her bed & read a book as she dozed & came in & out of consciousness. She would clear her throat & sigh & whisper "oh boy." I had heard these comforting sounds when I was a toddler sleeping safely in her lap.
My mom is from a time when women weren't supposed to complain. She has terrible back pain due to an untreated injury from a car accident in the 1990's, but when the nurse asks her if she has any pain she says no. Now the reason she's in the hospital is because she took much more aspirin than is safe to control the pain she's not in. I nag her constantly to tell the nurses how she feels, how else is she going to feel better?
My generation uses complaints as conversation starters. Two women I work with became fast friends when they each found the other had fibromyalgia. It has become a competitive sport to be in worse health than the person you're complaining to.