Hold My Hand
I hate shopping. My mom does too. And why is that, do you suppose? Teenage girl, hates her body, hates looking into the mirror and seeing herself. Middle aged mom who used to love her body and now hates it. Middle aged mom who every time she looks at her reflection sees a rundown version of who she wishes she was. That would make perfect sense, wouldn’t it? No, it’s not that. It may be that money is tight. Dad works full time, Mom has two jobs, and both kids work after school, just to get by. Money is tight and when they buy clothes, they can only think of that mortgage they will not be paying or the empty space on their dinner plates. No, it’s not that either.
God, I wish it were any of those things. Sure, I am still a teenage girl who wishes her stomach was a tad flatter and her legs a little longer, but that won’t stop me from loving the new sundress I see in the store window. Sure, money is not falling off the trees in our front yard, but Dad works and we have enough money to afford a day of shopping. So what is it?
When is the last time, out in public, you held hands with your mom? Not for a quick second, or even a minute, but walked around hands laced with your mom? I would guess maybe six or seven, maybe even eight years old if she was over protective or you were the type to wander. Now for me, try 18. Try walking around with your mom, store-to-store, holding hands. A perfectly innocent act, but it looks strange, and it will look strange to everyone around you. When things look off, you will get stares and smirks and a look of disapproval from that boy in your math class when he sees you at the mall. Your mom hates it. You hate it. So why am I, an 18-year-old girl, holding my mom’s hand tighter than ever as we walk through the mall? At 45 years old she does not want to use a walker. My mom does not want to be stared at for a walker, for a wheel chair, for anything that she believes a 45 year old should not have. So we walk from store to store, holding hands, with her leaning against my shoulder, stopping as often as we can at benches, because that is easier than a walker or a wheel chair. Maybe it would make more sense for my mom to stay home, but she doesn’t want to miss out on shopping with her daughter just because of a couple of stares.
Even I struggle to understand, although my mom has explained it to me time after time. Multiple Sclerosis is not a disease you can see, but it gets worse with age and worse with exercise and worse with walking through the mall. The best way I can explain it to you is that when your brain sends signals to your nerves, those signals run through a tube. Or at least, that is how it should work. For someone with Multiple Sclerosis, their brain will still emit those signals, but the tube is full of holes. Your brain will try and tell your leg to walk, but to simply put it, your leg is not picking up the phone, straight to voicemail. Everything for my mom is a little slower, but especially her left leg. Making things, such as walking through the mall, significantly harder. I do not mind holding my mom’s hand, but I do mind the looks, I know she does too.
Not being able to see tangible evidence that my mom is sick is the most confusing part and it especially was as a child. In a picture, my mom looks healthy, weight is good, face full of life and so it is hard to see past that. It was hard walking through the aquarium when I was eight and having to wait an unbearable amount of time for her at each exhibit. Is it terrible to be frustrated with this? I understand more now, but I still clench my teeth when we have to walk around in public holding hands. To answer my own question, yes, it is terrible. Just walk, just walk! It seems so simple to you and me, but it is those simple things we take for granted. I cannot even see why she cannot walk. Everything is on a microscopic level. So when I heard she was getting surgery, I could not understand. What is she getting surgery on, how can they know how to fix this? How can they know how to fix something they cannot see?
What’s more, this surgery will not even fix it. It will help, but it will not fix it. Even further than that, they are not even sure if it will help; there is no guarantee. It was difficult to sit through the pre surgery talk. To have my mom’s doctor, Dr. Adalinda, explain how they could not guarantee improvement. The way Dr. Adalinda spoke made me trust him. He dragged out the ends of his words and seemed to focusing on his speech as if he cared deeply about the conversation. Dr. Adalinda claimed he could cure my mom. There is a new surgery that is being tested, one that could get rid of the Multiple Sclerosis completely. Tempting isn’t it? My mom sees past that fancy label though. High reward, but even higher risk. That is the issue with modern medicine. These new ideas and procedures didn’t fall from the sky. The kinks and faults are eventually worked out, but only through failed operations and endless testing resulting in tragedy. My mom refused to be a test dummy. Maybe that is weak of her. She looked past the good of the future for her current interest, but maybe it is also strong. She does not want to take the risk of leaving her family, so she will take the safer route. She may have to live with
Multiple Sclerosis the rest of her life, but at least she can also live with her family. This gives me peace of mind on surgery day, knowing that she will come out all right. Maybe not better, but if not she will still be the same mom to me.
Several weeks later, she had her surgery. Her surgery ended and so my father and I went to the hospital where she was recovering to have a big, “Hooray! You made it through surgery,” moment. No such moment occurred. Only whispers between the doctor and my father and my father telling me to stay put. Only my father rushing into her room and not coming out for hours. Only the nurse offering me soup from the cafeteria when my parents did not come out. I thought, like hell I was going to be left out here in the dark, but I was really left with no choice. I needed a special code to go to where my mother was being kept. I sat on a couch with my knees pulled into my chest. I was sitting like I was five years old, but I figured I deserved this moment. Then I saw security rush into my mom’s hall. What the hell? Then I saw security escorting my father out of my mom’s hall. What the hell? As much as I tried to piece it together, what could have happened in there, I could not. I pulled my knees in tighter to my chest. Was I supposed to cry, to yell, to run after him? How was I supposed to react when I did not know what happened. A nurse came out to talk. She assured me my mother was okay, but my dad had assaulted the doctor. This does not happen. My father does not go into hospitals and assault doctors.
If only I had known though, what that doctor had done, I would have gone in and taken the second punch. The third, the fourth. I would not have stopped. Every doctor wants to find a cure, to have a breakthrough in research, but although being a doctor is a noble profession, not all doctors are noble. He claimed that surgery would work, he claimed he could cure my mom. We did not agree to that though, we did not allow him to do that new surgery. Where are we now? My mom is paralyzed from the waist down and that doctor is being sued by my family for malpractice. He was sure it would work, and well honestly, we would not have had a problem with him if it did, but that is not the case. He is liable in every way and my dad took every cent out of his pocket and every cent from that hospital. So after the court case, where are we now? We are in a bigger house, one where my mom does not even leave her bed. We have more money for shopping trips, ones my mom refuses to go on anymore.
However, when we do go out, no one stares at me when I hold my mom’s hand. I have one hand on the back of her wheel chair and she throws her left hand over her shoulder to hold my spare hand. No one is staring at us holding hands anymore. Everyone only sees the wheelchair.