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elfsI’m getting worried about my mother. She’s 82 and still whip-smart, although she has her days when all the technological demands of the modern world overwhelm her and she calls Omaha or myself looking for help.
82 is an age when medical issues have long ago become paramount concerns. Three years ago I helped my mother through a medical crisis, sitting with her for two weeks while she recovered from colon surgery. It was a harrowing time for me; Mom fills her days with loud television that battered my ADHD so badly in the end it took me weeks to recover. Intellects are delicate things.
But now the news is worse; she has a stiffening of her aortic valve, and the doctors aren’t giving her much time to live without surgery, but she can’t survive open heart surgery in her frail condition. They’re talking about replacing the valve with an artificial, stented valve; this is a new procedure that shows some promise, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a great track record. While the invasiveness and recovery time are minimal, the stent-plus-valve combination is mechanically weaker than a single-purpose valve and their estimated time-to-failure is five years.
It’s not easy preparing for the death of a family member, especially not one who’s so clear-eyed and communicative as Mom. And “some time in the next five years, definitely” is still vague enough, still long-term enough, to make anyone feel weirdly guilty about contemplating it now. But it’s time to start contemplating it for sure.
82 is an age when medical issues have long ago become paramount concerns. Three years ago I helped my mother through a medical crisis, sitting with her for two weeks while she recovered from colon surgery. It was a harrowing time for me; Mom fills her days with loud television that battered my ADHD so badly in the end it took me weeks to recover. Intellects are delicate things.
But now the news is worse; she has a stiffening of her aortic valve, and the doctors aren’t giving her much time to live without surgery, but she can’t survive open heart surgery in her frail condition. They’re talking about replacing the valve with an artificial, stented valve; this is a new procedure that shows some promise, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a great track record. While the invasiveness and recovery time are minimal, the stent-plus-valve combination is mechanically weaker than a single-purpose valve and their estimated time-to-failure is five years.
It’s not easy preparing for the death of a family member, especially not one who’s so clear-eyed and communicative as Mom. And “some time in the next five years, definitely” is still vague enough, still long-term enough, to make anyone feel weirdly guilty about contemplating it now. But it’s time to start contemplating it for sure.
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Date: 2022-11-08 02:15 am (UTC)