Not even 12 hours after surgery, my mom's nurse suggested she try a Percocet instead of her IV Dilaudid for pain.
12 hours.
After having more than a dozen feet of her intestines and a tumor removed.
At age 76.
With stage iv cancer.
The image in my head of once again catapulting myself across my mom's hospital bed at the nurse fortunately showed me that I could injure my mom in the process.
I wanted to scream, "How 'bout I rip out your colon and then offer you a Percocet?!"
I opted to use my words to explain the situation and that we would like to stick with the doctor's order, which included Dilaudid, whenever the hell she needed it. I glared at her in silence after that, and she came back with the Dilaudid. I'm frankly shocked I haven't been kicked out of the hospital at this point.
Also, if you're reading this, you know my dad and I are adamantly against the overuse of pain pills. This was not one of those scenarios. These high-strength opiates were created for this reason. Yes, I am very sympathetic to the opioid crisis, and we have lost hundreds of friends to it. Again, this was a valid reason for pain medication. Also, that nurse can shove her 5mg Percocet straight up her ass.
I wanted my mom to be comfortable, and this nurse had no idea how much pent up fear/sadness/anger would be unleashed had she not acquiesced.
Again, she acquiesced.
The rest of the hospital stay was fine. The saving grace through all of it was Dr. Nick Bellicini, who was helpful and straightforward with us. He was the colorectal doctor who had called my parents right after her CT Scan the day before surgery and said
"GET TO THE HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY!"
Each day, we would all take turns spending time at the hospital with mom. It was hard because COVID restrictions meant that only one person could visit at a time. Always testing the limits, my dad and I would try each day to visit at the same time for at least an hour.
My time spent away from the hospital included hours and hours of up-all-night research to learn everything I possibly could about my mom's pending diagnosis. I also researched her past medical records to see if I could find trends in her blood work, scans, and labs from the last 10 years.
By the time she was released on Monday, April 12, 2021, I had read every study, resource, and public case file on Stage IV colon cancer with lymphovascular invasion. I felt (somewhat) equipped with enough information to stand beside her to fight the fight of her life if she should choose to fight.
At this point, she was choosing to fight.
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