Just about every day since May 5th of this year, we have spent the day or majority of it in a hospital room. My wife and I go, sit with my daughter Ellen and try to make her understand that we will be there for her as she struggles for her life.
Her eyes are now haunted, that beautiful sweet smile seems to have been taken away from her. Her body, wracked with pain lies in almost a comatose state, not moving except to react to the excruciating pain that seeps out of her thin emaciated body and paints the grimace that takes my breath away.
Being how she is disabled, one of our fears all our lives has been that she would be in pain and not be able to tell us she is or where it is, that fear is now hard and real.
Since the month of February three years ago she has suffered a broken bone in her leg requiring first an exterior fixator that keeps the bone in place to start the healing, then the insertion of a rod into her leg.
She has fallen and suffered a brain bleed, then broke her hip and on May 10th had an operation to remove cancer from her colon. She hasn’t walked or stood since April and has been in a jerry chair since August. There are sores all over her body and then acquired pneumonia from the cancer operation and now has a tracheotomy that has to help her rid the accumulated phylum that has accumulated in her lower lung causing it to collapse.
Ellen cannot speak, does not understand and is frightened of all that is happening to her. And, so we go to sit with her to try to help her get through the rest of her life, which won’t be long.
No comments:
Post a Comment