On sickness

Mom was sick so long with so many different things that at some point they all started to run together. Cancer, strokes, etc...the consensus has been that from about 1980 until she died in '95, she almost always had some form of cancer ravaging her body. And her mind.
It was hard watching that once brilliant, talented woman descend into a pain-ravaged, helpless victim, bedridden for the last few months of her life.
About a year before she died, they gave her a blood thinner. It caused a clot in her brain that paralyzed her for a while and put her in the hospital. The doctors told Dad there was no possibility of her surviving it. Obviously, eventually, she did...but not for long.
Meanwhile, the chemo was ravaging her, the cancer was destroying her...so hard to watch, to go through....I am not much for symbolism, notmally, but I will admit to stopping typing this momentarily to light a couple candles in her honor and memory just now.
The last few months when she was in bed it was so, so difficult...we knew she was going to die, and soon...but not when. At first nobody did much of anything...we just hung around her bed or in the other room...but at some point you run out of things to talk about. You start avoiding looking one another in the eye. What is left to say? It is hard when an inevitable is approaching, but you don't know when. But you can deal with it, because you know what is going to happen.
Not too long before, a coworker had gone in for a minor surgery...gall stones, or something like that...and they had nicked his liver, I believe it was. That put him into septic shock. We would get reports a dozen times a day. The first report would be he had improved, they would be bringing him out of his coma momentarily. Then the next one would be he had taken a turn for the worse and might not survive the hour.
We all liked Bob and cared about him. Every new report brought either gut-wrenching sorrow and fear or bounds of joy, depending on what it was. It was so hard because we DIDN'T KNOW THE OUTCOME. We had no clue what would happen, would he recover or die? His nurse sister, also a friend of ours, did not know.
And that was the hardest part. No knowing.
It was excruciating to not be able to do anything except get continual updates. This was not a movie. This was not a play or a novel or a short story where you knew the outcome. There was real fear and concern. That was one of the most difficult emotional weeks of my life.
Until now.
Greg is practically family. He and his family participated in my upbringing just as, in some small way, we participated in theirs. I have so much love and respect for the entire family, think of the kids like sisters and brothers, think of the parents as aunts and uncles...or almost as surrogate parents...
and his stroke was a blow. Sitting there in the hospital tonight, watching the family, feeling their struggle, their pain, not having anything to help...no words, no brilliant ideas, nothing except the ability to simply be there. And not knowing. I hope, I pray that Greg will come out okay, that he will recover his ability to speak, to walk, to move...but I don;t even know for sure he will make it. And that is hard.
On the one hand, I wanted to stay there at the hospital. Not so much for Greg...his whole family is there to do that. But for the family, that needs something, some glimmer, something to alleviate the pressure and the gief, the thoughts of what they might have done different to change something that cannot be changed.
It hurts to watch the people you love suffer. It hurts to not know what the outcome will be. It hurts to be helpless when people you care about are suffering.
Sometimes, really the only thing left to do is pray. I am off to do that, if you are reading this and have some sort of faith, please...pray for Greg, pray for peace of mind for his family. You don't really need to know more than that...God knows who you mean. Will it make a difference? I believe it does, that people knowing there are others out there caring and sharing their concern at the pain and heartbreak does matter. And I can assure you I will be doing the same.