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Walking Out of the Hospital
After four days in the emergency ward, my mother had had enough
I remember, as a child, longing to be an adult. Adults had power. They could control their own life. No one could tell them what to do.
Later, as a working teen, I realized — of course — that employers can tell you exactly what to do. They did tell you what to do. And they could send you home, never to return.
And as an adult, people you had the misfortune to fall in love with could also send you home. Or walk out and break your heart. Out of control.
Now, age sixty, with a mother almost thirty years older, I’m seeing how others do have control over you. Or believe they do; society believes that some particular others can tell us what to do. Especially us old ones. Ripe for the telling!
The doctor
Yesterday I took my mother to an appointment with her GP, her family doctor. I was expecting a time of follow-up to a recent hospital stay, a time of sharing questions-and-answers, maybe a perusal of the possible cross-purposes of her list of prescriptions. In other words, a time of “adults checking in.”
Two weeks ago, my mother had a TIA — a mini stroke — in the midst of an afternoon nap. She awoke with a puffy lip and cheek, and she…
