ill parent – Page 2

Mom at Home

Arlen Gargagliano September 8, 2017 3 Comments

Arlen Gargagliano ~

Aisha is lurking in the kitchen just outside my home-office door. I hear her rattling dishes and speaking to herself in Twi, a language of her native Ghana. I know that she wants my attention, but I’ve told her that I need time to work. I try to focus on grading my college students’ papers, but I’m distracted.

Aisha is one of my mother’s aides. My mother requires care twenty-four/seven,

Letting the Tears Fall

Dwight Thomas April 29, 2017 No Comments

In terms of size, I am a big man. But when I visited my dad in the hospital recently, I felt a “little boy” inside of me, resisting something I wasn’t ready for.

What’s Wrong, Dad ?

Anonymous April 13, 2017 No Comments

When I walked into my father’s hospital room, he began to sob. I didn’t cope well with his tears. I experienced them as a reaction to his seeing me and started to beat myself up, to think to myself, What have I done?

A voice at the back of my mind said, This is his illness–you can’t take it personally. But even so, I felt hurt by his crying.

Crazy

Ginny Hoyle April 7, 2017 19 Comments

Ginny Hoyle

I walked through my mother’s madness
in a coat of hungry colors.
Her eyes did not take me in. I was a child.
To win her, I hung by my knees from low branches

of the family tree, voicing nursery rhymes
from the hallowed text of her delusions.
And failed.

When they took her away,
I was older, careful. I hid my heart

Standing Up by Speaking Up

Jenny Kwak March 2, 2017 No Comments

My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Korea when I was two, in 1972. We were lucky we left when we did, or my father, a pro-democracy professor at Korea University during Park Chung-Hee’s regime, might have been jailed. We were also lucky my mother was a pharmacist, as the U.S. was accepting pharmacists and nurses then. We moved to Seattle and made our home there.

Complainer

Christina Phillips February 10, 2017 7 Comments

Christina Phillips

The patient, age forty-nine, complained of abdominal pain. She was taking both slow- and fast-acting oxycodone to manage the pain, and she also took antidepressants and a sleeping aid. She’d come to the hospital several times in the past year, always with the same complaint. This time, not feeling well enough to drive, she’d come by taxi. The veins in her arms were small, threadlike and collapsed, like those of a ninety-year-old

Wake-Up Call

Jenni Levy January 15, 2017 6 Comments

After my father died, I made sure I spoke with my mother every day. Dad’s death was sudden, if not entirely surprising, and there were a lot of logistical details to sort out. Mom, at 71, was living alone for the first time in her life. She wasn’t sleeping well. She was anxious. She didn’t understand all the paperwork that flooded into the house. I wasn’t surprised that she forgot things; she was overwhelmed with

Riñones al Jerez

Sarah Buttrey January 3, 2017 No Comments

“You do not need an MRI,” I told my father emphatically as he stood in my living room, explaining to me that his beloved doctor had ordered this for his low back pain. He was hoping for a quick fix before meeting his brother in Spain. “You need physical therapy.”

I dislike playing doctor to my family, not trusting myself to dissociate emotion from evidence, but this was just too much. Sure, his back

Knowing When to Let Go

Deb Skolnik January 2, 2017 1 Comment

I will never forget being told that my mother’s treatment options were pretty much over. A COPD/atrial fibrillation sufferer, she had been intubated and spent time in the ICU, then rehab and then home for a few days. She was very vehement about not wanting to spend life on a ventilator. And she documented this in a living will.

Hope in a Hopeless Place

Paula Mahon December 25, 2016 No Comments

In 2008 my father was committed to a long-term care facility, and our family visited him daily. We testified to the nursing home staff of the funny, smart, kind and generous man he once was.

last rites

Barbara Kaufmann December 23, 2016 No Comments

When You Don’t Know What to Hope For

Cerise Chappelle November 29, 2016 2 Comments

My mother lies quietly in the hospital bed that has replaced her regular bed, now that she can no longer get up on her own. Every day she stares at the TV, appearing to watch it with interest. When I come into her room, she smiles and tries to say hello–in a voice that is barely a whisper. Her eyes sparkle a little. In my own discomfort, I begin asking simple questions, hoping to

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: ill parent

Mom at Home

Letting the Tears Fall

What’s Wrong, Dad ?

Crazy

Standing Up by Speaking Up

Complainer

Wake-Up Call

Riñones al Jerez

Knowing When to Let Go

Hope in a Hopeless Place

last rites

When You Don’t Know What to Hope For

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: ill parent

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