SANJAY SAYS

Hospitals, Helplessness, and the Illusion of Control

My Mom is in the hospital and I feel unequipped to help her

Maybe I can still go back to medical school — created in DALL-E

My father suffers from many ailments — a recent cancer diagnosis, multiple heart attacks, and a slowly worsening arterial aneurism that has a 15% chance of killing him in any given year. So of course it was my indomitable mother who almost died from an unexpected infection.

My mother, suffering from a fever and energy loss, didn’t want to go the the ER because she hates hospitals. Who could blame her? But my sister was visiting from Boston and forced her to go.

It was a miserable experience. A five hour wait while she moaned in pain. Then two days in the ICU in pain and with fever. They finally managed to break the fever by covering her in ice packs, and that’s when they found the infection. Broad spectrum anti-biotics were followed by a targeted regimen when they discovered it had spread to her brain.

Listeria is a bacteria that comes out of nowhere and has a 30% mortality rate for the elderly. She had gotten to the hospital just in time. My sister and I took turns sitting by her bed, feeling helpless.

Each day though my mother has been getting a little bit better. It’s been a week now and we’re out of the…