Don't call till after 5

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," my sister emailed me. "The steroids they are giving her might make her crabby."

A couple weeks ago, Mom started mentioning that she was feeling more confused than usual. Our regular email correspondence dropped off considerably, and when answering the phone, she sounded like she had just woken up.

These are not necessarily causes for concern. She is 82, and had gone through one round of radiation therapy a couple years ago which had depleted her once formidable energy. Most of her days since then have been spent listening to audio books she gets from the local library. She can actually stay awake long into the night listening to a good story. Imagine. Sometimes listening in the middle of the day, she will get so transported as to be almost in an altered state, which is shocked back to reality by a phone call. Also, her computers over the years have invariably gotten slower due to her lack of upkeep with spy ware and such, so sometimes she goes for long periods not emailing or responding to our messages.

But then she told my sister she couldn't use the computer. "Why?" sister asks. "Because I can't type," Mom replies, to which sister asks "Why can't you type?" to which Mom answers, "Because the letters don't make any sense and my right hand is numb." Couldn't play piano, couldn't write a letter, couldn't remember what she was going to say, or had just said.

So the MRI that was scheduled anyway for March took place the next available day, and that's when we learned that there were multiple lesions on Mom's brain. Actually I think my sister called them "spots" - they might be tumors, they might be mad cow holes for all I know. But the upshot is they had caused her brain to swell up and all the ensuing symptoms.

So here was the good news/bad news situation: They can treat the swelling with steroids/Mom has cancer in her brain. She has elected not to undergo any more treatment, and the window of time is something like eight months. We don't think she will make it that long, and neither does she.

Steroids worked like a charm, and within a few hours of the first dose, Mom was thinking much more clearly, finishing her own sentences even. Talking to her on the phone then was all business. Things to arrange. Hospice, Do Not Resuscitate orders, notifying relatives, figuring out who to tell what. And no blubbering.

When she was finally allowed to go back home (home being a retirement village where meals are served in a fancy dining room, and linen service and housekeeping are part of the monthly fee....when she first moved there, I thought- wow, this is it! I want to live here! ) she was flooded with social workers, care givers, and phone calls from her kids and neighbors. I sent flowers pre-arranged in a vase to brighten up her apartment.

"From now on, I don't want any flowers or anything. I don't want to have to thank anyone or fuss with them," she told me by way of acknowledgement. "And I am telling people NOT to call me before 5:00 p.m. You are just under the wire."

Now my sisters always claim I am my mom's favorite. I don't know about that, but I do know that she is usually delighted to hear from me and we have good long visits with lots of laughing and shared memories and this was shocking to be spoken to so gruffly.

Next day, when I mentioned it to my sister, she wrote back "I forgot to tell you, the steroids they are giving here might make her crabby."

I am not five years old and losing my primary caregiver. I am not a teenager losing a desperately needed, though severely abused role model. I am not even a young mother suffering under the curse of "I hope you have kids just like you someday", begging for advice, and looking for a built-in free babysitter. I am a middle aged married woman, happily ensconced in my own career and life, but the looming inevitability of losing my mother can reduce me to a glob of useless goo at any moment of any day.