Things Are Scary Even When You Know They Will Be Okay

I’m scared. Few things in life scare me. I’ve been through enough to realize that things work out, even when they seem the worst. What’s going on right now scares me a lot.

Now that I’ve created enough suspense for any of you reading this to scream “What the fuck is wrong Vin?!?!?” I’m okay. Nothing is wrong with me. It’s my mom. Before you freak out, she’s okay, everything will be okay, I know it, but this is the first time in a long time that the realization of mortality for her has set in, it happened once before, that was a while ago. Now she’s older, and it’s scarier.

A few years ago, about ten, I woke up for work at about 4:30 AM and my mother was awake sitting in the rocking chair in our dining room. She was struggling to breathe. This has started the day before, and mind you, she smoked a pack of Marlboro reds a day at the time.

I insisted that we go to the hospital. My mom is stubborn as shit. She refused. I argued, she refused. This went on until I said fuck it I’m going to take a shower. I got out of the shower and her struggle to breathe seemed to get worse. I emphatically insisted I take her to the hospital. She said, “I’ll just go to the walk in when they open at 9 AM.”

I replied, “You’ll be fucking dead at 9 AM.” THAT is what made her realize that maybe we should go to the hospital. She finally agreed.

We rushed to the hospital. I got her to the ER and got her admitted. They examined her have her a nebulizer, her breathing instantly became better and I was relieved. Long story short on this one, my mother wound up with pneumonia, a small bit of emphysema, and diagnosed with COPD as well. All shitty news but nothing too horrible.

My mother started to take care of herself after that. She’s done very well with getting her lung capacity up to a higher level, has been taking her meds, and knock on wood, so far so good. She’s even been going to her regular three-month check-ups and having all of her tests done.

This is why I’m now scared. Annually, my mother, has two tests done, a test on her adrenal gland and an echocardiogram. She had the adrenal one done a week ago, Saturday. Let me preface, my mother is a nervous Nellie, maybe from her years of my dad being as shitty as possible to her, but she doesn’t handle anything tense very well at all. She also doesn’t like doctors. She’s always been of the mindset, if nothing seems wrong, nothing is wrong. A trait that I inherited from her until recently, thanks mom!

Anyway, the following Tuesday she received a call from the doctor's office. They told her they wanted her to come in the following Monday to discuss the results of the adrenal test. This hasn’t happened before so of course, the mind starts to wander. She’s now worried. I have to remain calm. I have to be the voice of reason and logic. I have to remind my mom that there isn’t anything majorly wrong, if there was, we would know by now. If something needed to be done, it would have been done. But I have to watch her worry all week long. No matter how I generalize it, I can still see the worry on her face as each day goes by. This kills me. As each day passes, I ask my mom if she wants me to come to the appointment with her, and every time she responds “No, what are you going to do? Yhey are just going to talk to me.” So I agreed to not go.

Yesterday comes and I ask one last time. “Are you SURE you don’t want me to come?” I get the same answer. So I go off to work out. My class goes on, and at every chance I have, I check my phone, I hardly do that, but god forbid, I missed a phone call, I’d never forgive myself. No missed calls. Okay, good. Breathe Vin. No news is good news.

Class ends, I gather my belongings, say to a friend “I gotta get out of here, I’ll see you later.” Totally abnormal for me at the end of class, I’d typically stick around and have a chat and some laughs before I would leave. The unknown was killing me. I HAD to bolt.

It’s like a ten-minute drive from the facility to home. Yesterday it seemed to take an hour. There were even fire trucks attending to a building on the route home. At some point I said to myself, “Jesus Christ! When am I going to get home?” I was probably home in ten minutes. I walk into the house.

There she is sitting at the table reading the paper as she always is. I say hello she says hi, like I’m not waiting for important information here! I finally have to ask “Well, what did they say?!?!?”

I will spare you the long-winded, every finite detail version of the story that my mom would tell you and cut to the chase. The exam she had showed that there is some build up of plaque in an artery. It’s not a blockage, more like a speed bump. What’s happening is that the blood in that area isn’t flowing freely, it’s more speeding through. Picture how the water will shoot from a hose when you put your thumb over the spout. That’s what’s going on in my mom's heart. Scary shit.

So now she’s got to schedule another test so that they can see exactly what kind of build up is going on. Scary shit. After that, there will be another appointment at the doctor's to find out what the next step is. I’m assuming that my mom will need to have a procedure done on her heart to clear out that area. The time in between all of these appointments is probably going to be more stressful than whatever procedure may need to be done.

So now here I sit. At work, trying to do my gig. Just thinking. Thinking of how my mom is today, thinking of what’s going on in her head. Thinking of the many times I’ve said that I hope she outlives me because I do. She’s the strongest person I know. I watched my dad become feeble and weak. This isn’t supposed to happen to my mother. She’s too strong.

I will openly admit I am a momma's boy. My mother is everything to me. She is everything to my family. She has been through hell and back for my sisters and I, and she will continue to do that. I need her to be okay. I will pray every day that she can grow old and be that little cute white-haired lady that her mom was. She doesn’t deserve to be in any pain. She doesn’t deserve to worry, she’s already done too much of that in her life. She wants to see her grandsons graduate high school and my prayers every day will include that.

I guess as a child you come to a point where you’ll have to think of the mortality of your parents. I did that, I’ve done that with my dad. I’m scared to do that for my mother.