A short story on (my mother’s) health
I am staring at the TV and listening to my mother speak on the phone. She casually mentions that she has fallen a few times. I snap myself to attention and sit up a bit. “Wait, what? You’ve fallen? Where? How many times has this happened?” I ask. She hesitates to get some of the words out, grasps at the words to find the explanation I want to hear that knows she can’t give me. “You know, just a couple of times around the house, one time at the store. Thankfully, people in this town are so kind and helpful.” She says.
My face gets hot as she says this, and I’m not sure if it’s anger or frustration I feel. Then I realize it’s neither. It’s shame. I’m not there to help her, nor am I there to witness her current health condition. I audibly sigh, and ask her what could be going on. She grasps for words again, as if they are floating in the air, and she can’t reach up enough to grab them. Finally, she tells me that she has lost the feeling in her feet and sometimes her knees don’t hold her up and simply give out when she’s walking.
I look over wide eyed at my husband, and mouth the words she is telling me. He sits up, concerned. I put on her on speaker so he can hear what she is saying. I shake my head and wonder why she is just now mentioning it. I tell her my concerns, and ask her what the next steps are. She says she is meeting with the neurologist in a couple of weeks, and she will learn more at that time. I ask her to keep me informed, practically knowing as I request this, and not admitting to myself, that she won’t. My mother has so many health issues that it seems to be the bulk of our conversations these days. She has to walk with a cane, and her back is always hurting.
My mother reminds me of my childhood ailments oftentimes as she me reminds me of her current ones. She reminds others too. My husband has heard the stories so many times he says he can tell the family physician my medical history from the day I left the hospital. I smile sheepishly when my mother shares information with me and others. The way she discusses it almost seems an amusement to her, like entertainment. I am not sure if I should be proud for these health issues, like they are a badge of honor, or feel badly for the way my mother had to deal with me as a kid and then as a teenager.
I try to change the subject when the topics pops up, which is difficult to do considering I think health is my mother’s favorite topic. She presents each and every detail to me, like a slide deck in a beautifully put together presentation. The topic of health for me, however, is private and not a social gathering kind of topic. Maybe I don’t want to pull each topic out and hang it out to try on the clothes hanger in the backyard so they can soak up the sun. I’d much rather keep quiet and talk about the housing market, and how much we will make when we sell our house. Perhaps, I’d prefer to talk about fitness, and my favorite athletic wear.
The doctors started seeing me when I was 4 years old. I felt small but at the center of attention. It was my teeth that were the problem at first. Why didn’t they grow? I would ask. Then it was, why do I have three front teeth? My mother says it was originally my hips though. She reminds me that my hips were so bad “as soon as she came out of the womb” that I had to be triple diapered. When she brings up my hips, she always mentions her disappoint in not being able to put me in the cute baby clothes everyone had gifted because the diapers made them too tight on me . She usually talks about my hips, and accompanies it with the reminder that I was colic for the first three months of my life. I would cry to the point that she would cry, because she couldn’t ever get me to stop crying.
I woke up on different occasions as a kid to find acquaintances from church in our living room. They would tell me mother had to go to the hospital, and they would be there with me for the night, my mother being so ill from migraines that she would vomit. Treating a migraine at home with her condition could have been fatal. My father worked second shift, and I found myself with parental figures but not actual parents at home.
I was scared by health from any early age. My mother usually scared me the most, with stories of her own health and the health of others. She was very ill after giving birth to my older sister. She came home from the hospital, and my father returned to work. She describes this first episode as some big person wearing a boot, and pushing it against her chest. She couldn’t breathe or care for herself or newborn baby. I was five years when she almost died giving birth to my younger sister. Congestive heart failure they said.
Her updates on others’ health issues led me to believe that becoming an adult was a bad idea.
I remember when I was 8 or 9 years old and hearing,
“your aunt had breast cancer, and when they finally found it, it was everywhere and it was too late.”
Later when I was 15 years old,
“Your father waited too long to go to the hospital, the doctor said if he waited even 24 hours more he would have died.”
Now I sit in my living room, and worry about my mother’s health. I worry the way I did as a child but had yet to understand, and now I find that I worry too much about my own health as an adult. Health conversation has been normalized in my life, at social gatherings and family events that when the topic doesn’t appear I feel uneasy. Like something is missing. What is life if not a focus on health or lack thereof? This obsession and constant discussion regarding health has made it pervasive to the point it is everywhere and I hardly notice. Ensuring my exercise and nutrition are the best they can be have become an obsession of their own. Perhaps I can will my health to be its best and avoid any genetic ailments that may befall me.
