I intend to post snippets of Donald Hall’s Without on this blog, however this post is about something else. That is to say, this post is about how beguiling and frustrating this disease, which afflicts my mother, is nothing greater than the manifestation of a vindictive hell – one that is bound with the Old Testament ideas of retribution through denial or excess. My mother has neither eaten nor drank anything in several months. A tumor slowly grows in her biliary tract where it blocks off the passage of bile (ta-da). Moreover, her stomach becomes less pliable and coarser as the cancer continues to conquer her body. For sustenance, a nutritional bag keeps her alive and bags of saline are attached to her PICC line twice a day. Though nothing passes her lips, her brain delivers a message to the stomach as it attempts to digest a product that isn’t there. The slow build of bile and acid fills her stomach so that she begins to feel the sensation that a belt is tightening from within. There is no pain, per se, so the administration of narcotics is less an attempt to quell the pain but to eliminate consciousness. Here, have another.
This of course contributes to her weakness. She sits all day and refuses to lean or sleep on her left side where the PICC line is inserted in her upper left arm and follows the vein towards her heart. This, they tell me, is okay. Her hesitance stems from the time when the line was occluded, and we spent a day in the emergency room. As with all patients who are prone for far too long, she has begun to develop a pressure sore.
I say this disease is about absence or excess. There appears to be no moderation. She can’t drink but vomits bile steadily (by my count she averaged 18 times a day before we upped her anti-emetic). She doesn’t eat, but the administration of the TPN starts the digestive process, which causes her considerable discomfort. She can’t sleep but drowses constantly. She takes Reglan to encourage her digestive system to move, but the narcotics she receives to stop her pain slows the digestive tract. She has a son, but there is only one and he is ineffective.
