Let’s assume, just for a moment, that you are impatient or neurotic (quite a stretch, oh yeah). Imagine you are hungry and you extend an invitation to a friend or loved one for grabbing a bite wherever. And the very worst thing possible happens:

“I dunno. Where do you want to go to eat”.

Well, if I knew what I wanted, I would’ve just said it and we’d be on our way, wouldn’t we? Why don’t you air out an option. Is that too heavy a burden? Getting a question for an answer grinds at my being like Bears fans reacting at 31 examples of competent QB play.

Of course, this is overreacting by me. “Where do YOU want to go to eat?” could be an attempt at courtesy or an innocent reaction* before the overwhelming array of options—pizza! Oily Chinese takeout! Sushi that will sate me for 45 minutes! Mollusk turducken!

* In the absence of obvious passive-aggression, e.g.: sigh, bored tone, searing stare, etc.

The abundance of choices that are at hand is nip and oxygen for procrastination. A crisis, though, is a situation that requires action or else: the circumstances are forced, there are limited choices, and overthinking could kill. Hurricane Fiona passing through Puerto Rico two weeks ago was another reminder of that, but Imma tell instead the story of how my mother almost died.

It’s a happy story. I swear on my car.

Two months ago my mother fell face first to the floor at her Apt. Her husband called me and we took her to a private hospital and ER. After waiting a couple of hours, I told a nurse that my mother was bleeding in the head and, you know, she is over 80, has several ailments associated with that age, she’s incoherent since the fall, CT Scan, medical emergency, bleeding in the head, what was triage for etc. etc. Guess what: stroke!

Seven hours later, my mother was transferred to the main trauma unit in PR, a public hospital and also the campus of the best medical school here. A day later, my mother lost her speech. She had intracranial bleeding, inoperable. My two sisters and I made turns to be with our mother bedside daily, until the evenings. This, of course, is a cultural imperative for boricuas my age raised by a dedicated mother. But there was another reason to be by her side: the trauma center staff, while second to none in expertise, was seriously overworked.

The trauma center is a huge ER with some spaces wrapped in curtains to make “cubicles”, but is full of patients in stretchers everywhere, even in the corridors. Every single patient is in pain, whether from motorcycle accidents, stabbings, gunshot wounds, serious beatings running the gamut from domestic to inmate, car crashes, failed suicide jumps… Every complaint was loud: I’m in pain / hungry / soiled / alone / in fucking pain / tied up, why? untie me! / AAAYYyyy / lonely / thirsty–everything. My sisters and I came equipped with anything my mother needed (bare necessities being clean clothes, coats, sweaters, a comforter, socks, water, etc.), so I did not get the chance for this interaction:

Me: Hi. Hi! My mother is cold. Could you please bring a blanket after you’re done with the… screaming gentleman’s stump?

Nurse: [searing stare]

Me:

The last Sunday I was at the trauma center, my mother suffered a seizure. This was the advice I received for seizures:

-turn the person’s head sideways

-make sure that the arms and legs are in a position that cannot cause damage (say, untrap them from the bars of a medical bed), and stretch the limbs if necessary

-if the face becomes dark or the lips lose color, open the mouth with an object. Do not use your fingers.

A good outcome of the seizure was that my mother was transferred to the University Hospital, in a shared room. After several days and several head imaging studies, the doctors told us that our mother’s condition was delicada, with the good news being “the intracranial bleeding is not a concern”.

-So she still has intracranial bleeding—I asked one of the specialists.

-notaconcern HOWEVER, [rapid-fire list of other conditions]

Now it was almost two weeks after the fall and my mother had been bedridden. So the medical staff told us another thing I learned: folks die from being in bed a long time. Bed sores become ulcers and could become open wounds in some patients. (You have to change the patient’s position regularly, to avoid that.) Muscles atrophy, so it’s very difficult to set a line for an IV. And being bedridden and horizontal also diminishes lung capacity, and eventually pneumonia creeps in—just because the patient spent weeks horizontally in bed. That meaty talk was followed by dessert: the “Do Not Resuscitate / Intubate” orientation. I had studied DNR / DNI agreements before and that still did not prepare me to hear, for reals, that resuscitation efforts would likely crush my mother’s ribs. We came to a decision, because my mother could barely recognize anyone. Two days later, I was with my mother when she had the second seizure. Folks, find an object; don’t use your finger.

By that time, the only sounds my mother made was yelping in pain (which we’d never heard, not even as children), and portions of Hail Marys and Our Fathers (on character). My mother’s husband went to visit her at the hospital for her birthday, and brought a rose that he put in an empty water bottle. My mother reacted. And within two days after the second seizure, my sisters and I started to hear our mother say quiero mejorar: “I want to get better”.

My sisters and I were lucky: we found a lot of understanding folks who accommodated our pending work obligations, so that we could each spend two or three whole days a week taking care of our mother. All this time, my sisters and I put music for our mother, read for her, talked to her, put up the bed for her to make breathing exercises, and try to get her to move as much as she could. She was still very weak, but nonetheless transferred to a rehabilitation facility. I sat in in one of the early therapy sessions and had to rush to the bathroom to completely lose my shit in private because my mother was struggling to move her limbs and even maintain eye contact.

To nobody’s surprise, my mother is much tougher than I. In two and a half weeks, my mother recovered most of her faculties and was able to return to her apartment. In the interim, my sisters and I cajoled and pleaded with health insurers, hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, therapists, case workers, caretakers, and every other person necessary to ensure my mother received the most therapy sessions and remain at the facility as much time as possible. And then delay her discharge enough to allow a contractor to modify my mother’s apartment to make it safe for her (which included two days of demolition work, in the bathroom, while the was no electricity because of hurricane Fiona). No biggie; my mother’s wish to live and her effort to improve demanded no less.

I’ve heard the English phrase “Virtue is its own reward”. A close idiom in Spanish is Haz bien sin mirar a quién or “Do good regardless as to whom”. Noble sentiments, fo sho, but the subject proved very important in this case.

My mother had always been a congenial and generous person. If she did not hear from you, she called to see if you were OK. She prepared meals for sick acquaintances and visited friends who became bedridden to cheer them up. For the people who knew my mother, helping her became imperative. All we had to do was order by priority a discrete set of tasks and perform them, with zero time allowed for ego. And that’s all you have to do in a crisis: either help or get out of the way.

tWBS used to say repeatedly that “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it”, which is the jaded corollary to “Virtue is its own reward”. The common idea is right: have empathy, cooperate, expect nothing in return. And I would add: it’s a blessing to have the opportunity to repay someone’s generosity and dedication when it is needed.

My mother never did receive a definitive word on the state of her intracranial bleeding. However, she has spent the last week and a half in her apartment with her husband, and she has been receiving care around the clock, including daily house calls for health services. She can move ably with a walker and is as lucid as she was before her fall. From a side-eye she gave me yesterday, I can say my mother is showing signs of getting back into full nagging-shape.

tl dr: Git!

All gifs via giphy.com