This weekend was Dori's birthday weekend and she, Chad, and their 4 boys came to our house to celebrate. They arrived Friday night, Dori's actual birthday, and since they got here pretty late, decided to wait and open presents and eat birthday cake until Saturday. This was so the boys could participate and Dori's Grandmommy was also coming over.
Saturday started out mild enough but soon grew into a monster of a day for everyone in many different presentations. Chad and Dad stayed home with the children, while I took Dori to my doctor's weekend clinic. She had developed a pain in her back that was so severe she couldn't talk. We all mostly decided it was kidney stones so we were just going for the pain medication and diagnosis, just to make sure it wasn't something life-threatening. When the doctor finally saw her after 2 hours of waiting, she promptly sent us to the emergency room and called them to let us know they were coming.
However, when we got there, as you hear so many times they treat patients in pain first, we were still put on a waiting list. They did see her before many of the other patients who had already been there though.
Before I talk about Dori, the main character, Chad and Dad were waiting at home, while taking care of 4 boys, to hear from us. Their day must have been agonizing. I tried to keep them posted, but when there's no news, what do you call and say?
In the meantime, Dori was in such pain she couldn't function - walk, talk, stand, sit, lie down, nothing made the pain dissipate. Sometimes she could not even communicate and it seemed she was not aware of her surroundings. She said later that if there was a scale to 20 that's where she was. Six hours later she finally got relief with pain medication, passed a kidney stone and found out she still has several in each kidney.
She was over the worst part and was now purely exhausted. While I, who had been waiting in quiet desperation, was not over it yet. I, although not suffering real pain, suffered a mother's anguish where you pray to God that he would transfer that pain to your body. Today's Monday and I still can't stop thinking about the raw look of Dori's face during her trauma.
But it also makes me think of something else. My mother is 86 and I hope she lives to be 100, but even then, when she's not here anymore, I will have lost that one person who would take that pain for me. This weekend made me realize I will miss it sorely.
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What an historically awful day. And yet, in it I learned the very same thing. I remember on more than one occasion praying for God to take the pain away for just a second. And, before I became unaware of my surroundings, I was thinking about how awful it would be for a mom to go through what you were going through. The helplessness. I realized that, even as a child starts to worry about her crow's feet, there's still something divinely comforting about her Mommy's lap. If it had been Dad, I might not have felt any shame in crawling into his lap to listen to his heartbeat and try to measure my breaths with his breaths.
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