From the Hospital in Mexico: Of Love and Family

(prayer before surgery - close-up)

It had been months of anticipation to the surgery, an incognita from the beginning whether she could do without it or not. With hope and discipline, she had adhered to a strict vegetarian diet with a nutriologist that made her lose 15 kilos (after years of carnivorous fares – albeit light ones – and acidic Mexican food), she had retaken some of her appointments to the acupuncturist, incursed into “magnet therapy” (that despite not sparing her from her current ailments did improve recurrent knee problems and other misalignments) and of course always continued with her homeopathic visits.

Nonetheless, eye-glasses on her nose, I found her reading on the couch of the hospital room in Mexico City when I arrived this past weekend. She looked well and was in high spirits, however, her underlying worry would come forth often. She would ask to as many people as would listen multiple times – I was one of them – “did you know that I am going to be operated on?” I would gently deflect the statement telling her that going to surgery was “like going to the park” and hence my last minute visit to her from Brazil. Could not let her “have all the fun”, and wanted to partake in it. Each exchange would terminate in endless comical and sarcastic comparisons between her current abode and the park, which would distract us from the subject – albeit temporarily - which was my motivation.

My mother had been close to very serious illness in the previous months. After having her appendix removed after a Boston summer visit to my middle brother’s home, for some reason, she had never recuperated. There were multiple studies and diagnoses. Summer festivities, including my brother’s wedding and the inevitable runaround preparations did not help. I did not remember her being ill at the wedding or complaining too much at the time. Yet, being here in the hospital, I remembered the reason why I had not heard any complaints, as one day one of the nurses came into the room post-operation. She questioned her on any pain, to which she replied negative to all her questions (she would feel pain beginning the second day however), reminding her that she was very strong and did not cry for pain but due to the anticipation of being pricked with needles only.

  (departure to operating room)

Apparently, ill she was, and at some point her rectum had been so inflamed that they feared a rupture and internal contamination.  Thankfully it did not happen. She was able to follow her diet and do all her activities for 3 months until now, when she was to be operated “in her own terms”. The decision had come after much worry that there was a volume in her body that had grown increasingly stiff during the interim weeks.

So here we were, in Mexico City, the city where she grew-up and her side of the family lives. She had interned herself into the hospital on a Friday, I had arrived a Saturday morning and after tests throughout the weekend, doctors were going to decide whether to operate on a Monday or Thursday. We waited. I spent my first night there, relieving my father, whom had been there since the beginning.

 (father reading at my mother's bedside)

And truly since the beginning he had been there.  They had married 36 years ago to the date, and they would spend their anniversary this year in the hospital on November 30^th, that morning he wrote a poem to her while we were all in this hospital room. They had never really separated for long periods of time, except after the Mexico City earthquake of ’85 when my father moved to a new hospital in the interior of the country and we finished school in Mexico City; then again when my mother had gone to Mexico City to take care of her mother, my grandmother, in her own debilitating struggle with cancer. 

I have always marveled and felt extreme happiness at the consistency and endurance of my parent’s marriage.  As all individuals, they were not strangers to strife and differences, yet they had managed to solve or at least tolerate them. I was reminded of the “glue” that held all, in a conversation over breakfast in my second, and last, morning in the hospital.  After a long exchange, my father said, “you know that I may not be as intelligent as your mother (he is an oncological surgeon, so that was an unnecessary phrase), but I love her, I have always loved her”.  So in my eyes and I believe in my other two brother’s eyes, that had always been true and unquestionable.  Likewise, when mother had come out of surgery just 24 hours before, her comment to us on her experience in the prep room to the operation and her conversations with the doctors and staff in the room on her “tears” and other, she mentioned she had told them that she had missed her husband in the room. Fact is that in the previous surgeries she has had, my father had always operated on my mother – this time he had abstained – he has his own reasons for doing so and due to hospital policy he could not be in the operating theatre. 

  (praying)

The night prior to the operation – tests coming out well, twas decided that Monday it would be. She had taken laxatives, until “all coming out was clear”. We had been up many times in the night as she rose from her seat and rushed to the bathroom after ingesting the 4 litres of this laxative liquid.  I helped in disconnecting her mechanical contraption and off she went every time until past midnight.  We were to have only a few hours of rest as the staff began entering promptly at 5am, she was to enter the prep room at 7am and there were things to do, needles to probe etc. To the constant probes into her body, she kept asking to the staff, “I have been ‘discovered’! what do you want to know? I can tell you all about me without you poking me!” or she would add, “I lent you my ipod, and you give me needles! Why are you so aggressive? I am not going to lend you anything any more, I don’t want to play with you people”. She questioned the anesthesiologist on whether she could be lucid during surgery, and maybe she could convince the surgeon to recant the diagnosis and need for the surgery after all. I loved the wit, yet she was worried.

Despite all the kicks of “witticism” – more like gallows humour if you ask me, the moment, where she would be taken to her surgery rapidly came. After all, two hours only have 60 minutes each, to her must have felt like some very short minutes. Before leaving, I found her against the bed, her hands together in prayer, crying. Shortly thereafter, the male nurse came, wrapped her in one of those generic hospital sheets and took her away for her surgery.

She had mentioned before to nurses that she only cried in two circumstances, when in the presence of needles and when her kids leave – because we were always far away.  I think there may have been punctually other circumstances / reasons, but yes, I can attest that is when I have seen her cry the most often. She cried again this time on her hospital bed, when I left back to Brazil. I hope that her tears were short-lived as Oliver, my middle-brother, arrived the next day from Boston and Christopher, the youngest, is due arrive before the holiday season from his Colombia project.

  (sleeping post surgery)

Mother came out marvelous from the surgery, better than the doctors expected. We were all ecstatic. Moreover, for a brief but important period, the family had been reunited. She is currently recuperating and now is walking again - with my father.

 (walking again)