In a few minutes I will be accompanying my daughter to yet another doctor, an infectious disease doctor who she is seeing because he takes Medicaid, and, well, yes because of the other thing, the damn, insidious, persistent, cruel long covid.
We have been to many doctors of all varieties of specialties since lymphoma and long covid without a lot of expectation. That isn’t being negative, well maybe it is, but with reason.
No one knows what the hell to do for long covid. And she is getting worse. Just seeing that sentence breaks my heart. Brings on the perennial tears, tears flowing since her cancer diagnosis – which she has beat – 1 ½ years ago.
Oh, there are those who claim they have the answer, nicotine patches, supplements, very specific lymphatic massage, emotional processing. Well-meaning friends tell me what she should do, insisting she should do such and such right away! It has finally been confirmed that exercise is BAD causing all kinds of complications. Puzzled suspicious looks meet my attempts to explain that. What? Everyone knows you NEED to exercise. I am caught in a quagmire of misunderstanding.
From everywhere.
Over and over, I have to explain why Kelly wasn’t with me at the joyous family mother’s day celebration. Oh, I will go and take her out to lunch, they say.
They don’t understand.
SHE CAN’T TAKE A SHOWER. It exhausts her way too much. Even I can’t quite grasp that. Really? Just try.
Time to go. I will be there for her. Helpless as I feel.
A big piece, so well describing the overwhelming situation of the daughter's illness that no one can help with and even no one can understand. "Oh, I will go and take her out to lunch," WILL NOT WORK THIS TIME, HOW OFTEN DO I HAVE TO SAY THIS? The frustration of the other is clear, a thin film over the terrible sadness and fear.
ReplyDelete"mother," not "other"
ReplyDeleteWritten beautifully from the depths of a mother's heart that wants so much to heal her child...and the best she can do is to just...be there. And that has to be enough, and maybe never is.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator's best and most powerful offering to date, imo. So much depth and detail. Incredible portrait. Oh, I will go and take her out to lunch they say. As if that wouldn't serve to make things even worse than they, unfortunately, are.
ReplyDelete