Rae is waking up!

Friday, October 3, 2008

Hello friends of Rae Russel (my Mom),

I just got back from the hospital this afternoon and it’s official: Rae is indeed and absolutely recovering: Her eyes are now as often open as closed and although she’s not talking up her old familiar storm, we are confident she soon will in the days or at most weeks ahead.

Her condition over two weeks after surgery, while unexpected, is familiar terrain for our family, having been through (my brother) Andy’s brain trauma a decade ago. We see the small neurological improvements and know their significance more quickly than many doctors. And of course the angels who care for Rae (aka, “nurses”) see them too since they spend by far the most time caring for her, 24/7, usually in three 8-hr shifts.

And her breathing is no longer labored. And she can cough up phlegm on her own (sorry, but you asked, didn’t you sort of?). Which means more of her energy is now going to healing her brain, instead of being diverted to cleaning congestion in her lungs. You’ve all heard, and I hope don’t know personally, that hospital stays are bad for your health, brutal on the body. My Mom’s weeklong pneumonia is but one grim example.

My Mom’s progress is all Good News, and I keep thinking I should be reveling in it, yet I don’t fully (and won’t fake it either).

I’d bet, and so would my sister-in-law Karen who’s been here in these hospital trenches, that Rae Russel is going to survive this experience and think again and talk again, and live longer than if she had NOT opted for surgery to remove the tumor (that’s Stage 4 terminal Glioblastoma cancer folks).

But the reason I’m not dancing is there the reality of her situation, which I can call Bad News. We’re not confident she’ll walk again; she may not recover the use of her left arm and hand; and she’ll likely need 24-hr. care. We’re all getting used to these ideas, which takes time. Rae’s time to digest and accept or hate and wrestle with these facts has yet to begin. No one can say how my Mom will take all this hard news.

Will she be a trooper and deal with these big changes; be happy she’s around to gripe about them while sitting and talking and outside with her friends among flowers and rain and sunshine and birds? Or will she be pissed off and hate being more incapacitated, at age 83, than she’s been in 82 years? It’s easy to be philosophical about life being one poetic circle, that we both come into this world and go out in diapers, but it’s quite another to live it. Or so I’m told. If we’re lucky, we’ll all get our turn aging, too; won’t die of a heart attack in our fifties like an acquaintance of mine did last week. That’s if we’re lucky.

So I’m guilty not fully appreciating my Mom’s victorious healing this week. I’m leaping ahead to next week and beyond when we expect Rae to have healed enough to be shipped out of hospital and back into a nursing facility in Petaluma, just 2 miles from her house and closer to her friends. Last week, as she was unconscious after surgery, I would have paid handsomely to know she’d accomplish this feat. Oh how greedy I am…

I also keep thinking that if I were to show you some of the video footage I’ve taken with my point-and-shoot over the past weeks (easy to do in this forum), most of you, especially those not familiar with brain injury patients, would see today’s footage and think, as my dear father might put it, “She looks like death warmed over.” To which I’d reply, “Then you should see last week’s footage.”

As with all such assessments, it depends on your point of comparison. And isn’t this true of assessments for all of us? Feel old and tired today? Just wait 10 years. In fact you’ll never again be so beautifully young as you are right this moment.

Rae’s other son and my brother Andy will visit Rae tomorrow and likely will others will too. We all do enjoy sharing positive news for a change and today’s (and yesterday’s) certainly is.

Thank you all for holding Rae in your hearts—your love is working its magic.

Jack