I had no words. I couldn’t very well scold my friend for something she hadn’t done. However, even though the apartment was large, it would not contain all that stuff adequately.
It was “Mrs. Camborne to the rescue” time. Fortunately, the dear lady had watched the men as they were getting the large pieces of furniture into the elevator. She came up with the last load of boxes.
“Oh my, my,” she said, looking at all the boxes still standing in the hallway and the ironing board in the middle of the floor in the living room. “You won’t be able to fit all that stuff in the closets and cupboard, now will you?” She looked at me.
“You know we won’t, Mrs. Camborne, and we don’t want our place to look like we’re holding a rummage sale every day either.”
“It’s my fault,” Tiffany murmured. “My mother packed everything she thought I would need in the next three years, I guess, even though we live in the same city.”
“Maybe we should send half of that stuff back,” I suggested.
“Oh no, you don’t, dear girl,” Mrs. Camborne countered. “That would offend Tiffany’s mom. And that’s something you don’t want to do.” She paused and looked at the boxes standing in the kitchen. “I tell you what. I’ve got a storage room at the back of the garage. You girls sort the stuff you really need and re-pack the rest. When you’re ready, we’ll move the boxes downstairs, okay?”
“That’s great of you to offer, Mrs. Camborne, thank you.”
“Don’t you give it another thought. You girls need to keep your mind on your work and not on sorting out kitchen utensils. And, please don’t forget to store that ironing board; it would look terrible anywhere!”
Tiffany and I erupted in laughter. We totally agreed with the suggestion. No ironing in our schedule–forever.
That night, after several hours of unpacking and re-packing and up and down trips to the storage room, we were pleased to put our feet up and order Chinese for the evening we planned to spend in front of the TV.
We were in the middle of eating a delicious combination of shrimp Chow Mein and noodles when the phone rang. I was surprised. It was late for anyone to call.
As soon as I picked up the receiver, I heard my mother’s voice. She sounded horrified.
“Mom? What’s the matter? What’s happening?”
“It’s your dad, Heather. He’s not well.”
“Is it his heart again?” I abandoned my box of shrimps and sat on the edge of the couch.
“Yes, but there’s something else. I should have told you before, dear.”
“Come on, Mom, what is it? What did Dr. Bernard say?”
“He said that your dad will need to have a pacemaker pretty soon, to help his heart beat regularly.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, it is. But it’s the other thing that’s really worrying me.”
“Alright, Mom, what’s going on?”
“Your dad has dementia, Heather. He doesn’t remember half of the things I say, and he can’t remember most things he does. I have to watch everything he does, especially his meds. I have to hide them from him. Sometimes he believes he’s taken them and doesn’t want me to give them to him. Or other times, he believes the opposite. I tell you, it’s getting worse now than it’s ever been.”
“But he was fine at Christmas. What happened since then? Did he have an accident or a traumatic experience in between?”
“Well, yes. I don’t know that you can call it a trauma really, but last spring, he almost killed someone on the road because he was distracted. He already was absent-minded then, but ever since that accident, he’s getting worse. Dr. Bernard thinks that since he’s got dementia and that it likely Alzheimer’s causing it.”
“It should be better when he gets his pacemaker. It will stabilize his metabolism. He won’t have these anxiety attacks at least.” All I was doing was trying to explain away something that could not be explained.
“So, anyway,” Mom was saying, “I was thinking that maybe we should move.” I sat erect now. I was all ears. “There are too many memories around here. And maybe if we were close to you, in D.C., you could give me a hand from time to time?”
Good Lord, no! How do I explain to my dear mother that I don’t even have time to think about washing, bathing, or even jogging anymore, I am so tired? How do I tell her that I work twelve hours a day and that I’m a wreck when I get home?
“Why don’t you wait until Dad gets his pacemaker, Mom? Once he’s recovered from the operation and feels better, we can re-examine the situation. Besides, dementia and Alzheimer patients have a hard enough time dealing with familiar surroundings, let alone moving them from one city to another.” I paused when I heard my mother sobbing quietly. “Just stop that, Mom. Dad will be fine. You’ll see. You’re the strong one now. And he needs you more than ever. Okay?”
“I hear you, Heather. I know you’re busy. You’ve got a whole future ahead of you, and all I ask is your support…”
“I know, Mom. And all I am suggesting is that you guys wait until Dad gets his pacemaker. Apart from that, you should talk to John and Eliot (my brothers). They might have a better solution than the one I can offer you.”
“But they’re not doctors, Heather. You are. You would know what to do.”
“No, Mom. Even if you asked me, legally I cannot help Dad. It’s against the law to treat a member of the family. Too many things can go wrong when a doctor is emotionally involved with a patient. Besides, I could not stand you hating me for the rest of your life if anything happened to Dad while I was treating him.”
“So, in the meantime, all I do is wait, is that right?” Mom sounded frustrated.
“That’s not what I said. Ask John and Eliot to lend a hand from time to time. They live next door, for Pete’s sake. And after Dad’s operation, we’ll see how he is.”
“Okay, okay. I understand. I’ll phone you to let you know when they’ve scheduled him for the pacemaker.”
“That’s good. I’ll also call you in the meantime, if I think of something else we could do to help Dad, alright?”
“Right, dear. Have a good night now. Kiss-kiss,” she said, before we hung up.
Tiffany looked at me when I turned to her. “Parents are the worst!” she said with a tentative smile. I trusted her to tell me exactly how I felt.
Chapter 11
It was a relief when, the next day, Dr. Kerry told us that for the next few days we were going to follow in the shadow of Dr. Slosberg. Apparently, he was the genius among the neuro-surgeons working along the eastern seaboard. He had published a number of articles regarding intracranial cancerous legions; various neurological diseases affecting the brain and a couple of monographs describing some of the difficult procedures he had undertaken. In short, the guy was a celebrity among neuro-surgeons. All of what he had written, I had read while at university. In his forties, the man inspired respect somehow. He was not taller or better looking than any other man I had seen, but there was something about him that commanded your attention. And I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Most of the interns seemed to be of the same opinion. Of course, we all had read his articles, we also had heard about his exploits in the operating theater and there were numerous examples of his successes described in most of our students’ textbooks.
So, that morning, Tiffany and I were looking forward to meeting the man. To listen to him describe his patients ailments and, strangely enough, I, for one, was even waiting for his questions with bated breath. Silently, I compared him to Jeff. To me, Slosberg was the surgeon par excellence. From what I had heard, he was attentive, respectful of his patients’ emotions, and certainly compassionate toward the families of those afflicted by irreversible diseases. Jeff, on the other hand, was all precision. He was the perfect surgeon. His technique, his dexterity, and his professionalism were irreproachable. However, his ego seemed to drop a large blotch of ink on a perfectly clean pad. He showed his skills to every one who cared to look. A
s for his manners toward his patients and their families, rumor had it that he visited them just enough to let them know what was going on, but stopped short of showing any compassion or any interest beyond his medical ministrations.
Dr. Kerry was always on about “detachment”–don’t get involved sort of thing–but I could not see myself being cold or “detached” toward a mother who’s just lost her son or daughter to a disease. I would be right there holding the box of Kleenex for her, while Jeff would hold the door open, waiting for her to leave. His egotism, I felt, was jousting against callousness for first place in the ranks of questionable behaviors on the part of a medical practitioner.
While I was churning all sorts of dark thoughts about Jeff’s demeanor, Dr. Slosberg came in our lounge room on the fifth floor. Dr. Kerry looked slightly surprised. She probably expected for us to go down to the dungeon to meet the great man.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Slosberg, you didn’t have to come all the way up here. Are we late?” She looked down at her watch.
“No-no, Kerry. You’re not late; I am early,” Slosberg answered, a broad smile on his lips. “I thought of coming up since our first patient is on the fourth floor.” He paused and pulled up a chair near our tables. “I wanted to describe what happened to the lady, before we pay her a visit.” Everyone nodded. “You see, there was nothing wrong as far as Mrs. Termini was concerned. She felt a bit light-headed from time to time and, as any respectable Italian woman would, she would put it down to the diet she was trying to follow. In short, she felt she wasn’t eating enough. However, that excuse didn’t stand any ground when she collapsed in front of her grocer. The man called the ambulance immediately, and she was soon assigned to me. When she woke up, she had lost all memory of the incident. She couldn’t remember her name, which year this is, or anything about the family members that were surrounding her bed by then.” He stopped and turned to Dr. Kerry. “Do you mind getting me a glass of water?”
“No-no, of course not. Would you like a coffee instead?” she replied, already up and going to the counter.
As soon as Slosberg drank a large gulp of water, he continued recounting Mrs. Termini’s tale of woes. “You see, we learn about dementia, about Alzheimer’s, and all of the many diseases affecting our brains, but we seldom pay much attention to the causes associated with such diseases. Although Mrs. Termini didn’t suffer from Alzheimer, dementia, or even from temporary amnesia, I was keen to find out why she suddenly lost her memory. Two days after her admission, she seemed to remember everything that happened in the last 48 hours, but nothing of the events that happened before that.
“To make a long story short, as you will read in her chart, she had a small lesion in the hippocampus, which is, as you know, one portion of the brain that controls memory retention. It transfers short to long-term memories. Although insignificant in the grand-scheme of things, like the old spark plug in your car, without it, your brain would simply be an elegant way to enclose scrambled eggs into your skull.
“After an operation that only lasted a half-an-hour, I was able to remove the lesion and have her back to her old-self within a matter of hours.”
“Could you tell us how the lesion appeared?” Gerald asked. “Was it as a result of a trauma?”
“No, Doctor. The lesion seemed to have been the result of an external damage which she sustained many years ago.”
“And it only showed up now?” Tiffany sounded puzzled.
“Like any cancerous lesion, an intracranial lesion takes time to grow. The brain is not a particularly friendly place for a tumor. A liver, lung, or even kidney makes for a better environment for any lesion to develop.”
“And it must be harder to prevent such a cancer from occurring than it is any other, one has to suppose,” Dr. Kerry said.
“Exactly. We can tell people not to smoke in order to prevent them from having lung cancer, or we can recommend managing your diet and exercising so that cancer cells have a harder time developing, but how do you tell your brain to react against a growing lesion. It doesn’t do what you want it to do most of the time anyway, so how do you expect it to react when it receives a sudden shock and cannot re-calibrate itself readily?”
“That’s what hockey and football players are looking forward to–concussions, I mean,” Corey remarked.
“Absolutely. However, in the case of Mrs. Termini, we were looking at a long lasting effect from a tennis ball that hit her just above the left earlobe some twenty-five years ago.”
“Wow, that long ago,” Tiffany said. “That’s unbelievable.”
“All cancers are unbelievable to a certain extent, Doctor, and more so when it comes to brain tumors. Yet, what I have described as the reason for Mrs. Termini’s intracranial lesion may be totally erroneous. Suffice to say, same as you do, we are all learning every day.”
“And that’s probably why she felt dizzy and as if she was losing her balance from time to time,” I added.
“As you said, Doctor. I even thought she had pierced an eardrum in recent days. Or she had suffered from an ear infection until she went through a CAT scan exam. The lesion was small, as I said, but quite visible.”
Dr. Slosberg did not leave us after our visit of Mrs. Termini. The lady was as cheerful as any one who’s just got a second chance at life. She was not only pleasant, but she explained that she planned to travel to Italy next summer to have it out with her cousin. He was the one who played tennis with her and whose ball hit her head all those years ago.
“He will pay, I tell you. He will pay,” she told everyone, meaningfully it seemed, although her smile betrayed her lack of persuasiveness in the matter.
Since we were on the fourth floor, Dr. Slosberg suggested a visit of the psychotherapy ward. Frankly, I was not particularly looking forward to that tour. Seeing people who have to face such challenges as leading a “normal” life every day, always manages to depress me. Yet, it’s all part of the learning curve.
Once again, Dr. Slosberg was quite helpful. The psychiatrist in attendance led the group through each room, explaining each of the patients’ conditions. The worst was the case of a little boy who had been so traumatized during an incident involving the murder of his mother that he had lost the faculty of speech. There would be months of mental therapy facing him, yet in the end, he would have a chance at life, whereas many of the other patients would not be so lucky.
That evening, Tiffany and I were truly glad to get home. I was exhausted and so was she. The twelve-hour days were beginning to take their toll on us. Fortunately, we had managed to do some cooking the previous Sunday and put a lot of our ready-made dishes in the freezer. Buying Chinese every night was not only unhealthy, but costly. So Sundays would be dedicated to cooking from now on.
After eating rice and veggies in a delicious sauce, I called my mother. I didn’t want her to call me in the middle of the night again. I wanted to know what Dr. Bernard’s plan was; when was my father getting his pacemaker was my question.
“Hey, Mom, how are you?”
“So-so, Heather. I really don’t know how to cope,” she complained again. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to Dr. Bernard yet, but I’ve spoken to Eliot and John today.”
“What did they have to say?”
“Same as you, dear. They want to wait until your dad gets his pacemaker before making any plans.” She paused and I heard my dad come to sit beside her. “Come, let me talk to my girl,” he said. His voice sounded as solid and in control as ever.
“Hello, Dad?”
“Yes, this is your old Dad, Heather. I just wanted to let you know that I am fine. Your mother is fussing again. She thinks I’m losing my marbles. But I can assure you, I’m not. I just have to make sure I do what Dr. Bernard tells me to do. That’s all. But you know your mother, unless she can control my every move, she won’t be happy.”
After a grunt or two, I finally had a chance to say, “I know, Dad, but Mom means well. And you should listen to her, too. Once you’ve got yo
ur new pacemaker…”
“What do you mean, ‘Pacemaker’? Who says I’ve got to have one of these things?”
Here we go, I thought, he doesn’t remember what Dr. Bernard recommended. Talk about the hippocampus malfunctioning–Dr. Slosberg was right….
“Dr. Bernard said you’ll feel better when you get it,” I said as reassuringly as I could.
“Did you talk to him?”
“Of course,” I lied. “He even spoke to Mom. Dr. Bernard and I agree that you need a pacemaker so that you won’t have any more problems with your heart.”
“I don’t have any problem with my heart, girl. What are you saying?”
Being argumentative is one of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. I had to tread carefully. I didn’t want to irritate him.
“I am saying that Dr. Bernard and I agree that you need a pacemaker, Dad. And the sooner you get it, the better you will feel.”
“Alright then; if you’re sure. I’ll ask Dr. Bernard when he can fit me in for one of those.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Here is your mother,” he added, handing the receiver back to her.
“Heather? You heard what I mean. He’s constantly forgetting things.”
“Yes, Mom. He will continue to do that. You need to maintain a very strict routine. Everything has to be done at the same time every day, so it becomes a reflex action rather than a memory. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, of course I do, dear. I’m not the one with a scrambled brain.”
“And you should stop making such remarks out loud, Mom. Alzheimer’s patients are very frustrated and if you irritate Dad in any way, he might leave the house on the spur of the moment. So, please, be gentle and careful with him, okay?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll do what I can. I’ll just feel better when I know he’s settled down and I know where I stand. That’s all.”
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