Last week, my brother-in-law Dustin called me. I knew something was wrong as he never calls me and he was supposed to be at work. He asked me to come and watch the boys. “I have to run your sister to the ER, she’s not making any sense when she talks.”
The first thing that crossed my mind was that she’d had a stroke. Four years ago, our mother had a series of strokes as a result of her bile duct cancer. She died five days later on January 1.
When I got to the house, George and Whit were eating lunch and watching the new Matilda movie on Netflix. After a moment, George said, “Mom told me to get in the white, but I think she meant the shower.” Other than that, he seemed unfazed. I was still worried he remembered what happened with Mom, his best friend. He never saw her after the strokes, but he kind of remembers her being sick and in the hospital.
Dustin kept me and our sister Trudy up to speed with the tests they were running, what the doctors were saying, and how Sarah was doing. I tried to focus on getting my own things done, keeping the boys entertained, and trying not to fall asleep. There was no point in letting myself spiral, freak out, and scare the boys. As far as they knew, Sarah was tired and sick, but the doctors were going to help. I don’t always condone lying to children, but sometimes it’s required. Like about Santa. Who is very real and gives wonderful presents.
I made dinner and George informed me that he had macaroni and cheese yesterday and “I refuse to eat it every day this week.” Whit, however, couldn’t have cared less and ate it anyway. The biggest question of the night was, why do they call chicken fingers, chicken fingers? I don’t know kid, because they’re shaped like fingers? The answer satisfied him enough for him to keep eating. They stayed the night with Trudy and I came to work for a few hours.
The next morning I drove to the hospital and prepared myself for the worst. Dustin said Sarah was better than yesterday, but that was still not great. I stood at the foot of her bed and smiled. “You couldn’t have waited until next month? You just had to pick this one.” She gave a half smile and threw her hand up while her nurse looked at me like I was crazy. January has been historically terrible for our family. It started the year Mom died. This January has proved no different. I told her I was just going to stand at the foot of her bed and stare at her until she fussed at me. Apparently, she already did with Dustin that morning.
Short sentences were okay, yes and no, but anything longer than three words and she struggled. She was trying to tell me it was better than yesterday, but instead, it came out: “It is better it is yesterday better it is than it is better.” Her lunch came and I told her that her soup smelled good, she laughed and said she was going to say it smelled. Then she made fun of me because I dropped her lemon ice spoon in her soup and “now it’s extra gross.” Then came time for the spinal tap discussion. The first experience was a nightmare for Sarah. She was having a hard time asking if she would have to go by herself, and kept repeating “themselves”.
The next morning, around 7:30 a.m, Trudy and I got a text in the sister chat from Sarah. “They’re asking me if I had an mri at Huntington before I can’t here… shouldn’t they know?! Like ma’am, I barely even know what tests I had here.” She was texting! She meant “came” instead of “can’t”, but she was making sense. Trudy commented on it and Sarah responded that she was texting all the right words. “Mostly.” An hour later she was telling us they gave her real food. “Look at you!” I said. “Communicating and eating real food!”
We joked about how her favorite word was “themselves”. She laughed and said, “Well now you know what to look for if I get old and get dementia.” We made fun of Dustin for having to leave while Sarah was getting an I.V. You could tell that she was still having a hard time finding her words, and her voice was a little shaky, but she was talking, and she was laughing. A pastor came in later that day to talk with Sarah and for a moment a look of horror crossed Trudy’s face. I texted her and she replied back, “Scared the crap out of me for a sec. I thought maybe they knew something we didn’t.” And then we both had to hide our laughter.
Turns out, Sarah had what is called a hemiplegic migraine. All the signs and symptoms of a stroke, without being one. She likes to think she’s special and gets the rarest form of migraine she can.
We use humor to cope. After the things we’ve gone through, it’s usually dark humor. Sarah and I talked about it one day when I mentioned I made a joke about our mother and someone got upset about it. I’ll spare the details. I told Sarah, she’s my dead mom, I’m allowed to make jokes if I want to. We both agreed that we would rather laugh about the terrible things than be miserable about them constantly. Why settle in the fear and the hurt, when laughter feels so much better.
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