A Lesson in Strength

The American West, in its harsh beauty, has produced a strain of women who are survivors, determined to prevail against whatever is put before them. My mother is one of those women, from a long line of pioneer mothers who raised large, healthy families out of the dusty earth. They had their babies at home, grew and canned their food, made their family’s clothes, made the soap they washed those clothes with, helped their husbands plow the land, and in their spare time, made quilts to sell in town. Only the strong in body and spirit could survive such a life.

My mother is the middle child of a family of eleven children, the first in her family to graduate from high school. Her life as the mother of three children in a comfortable suburban home has been less physically challenging than her mother’s was, but she has that same affinity with the land, and the same quiet strength. Never was this strength more evident than during her eighty-third summer, when she got tired of the pain of caring for her house and yard on two arthritic knees and chose to have both knees replaced with artificial ones during a single surgery. “To get it over with,” she said.

My brothers and I took what time we could away from our jobs to visit with her in the hospital, but it soon became obvious that she had a long recovery ahead, and that she would need full-time help for a month or two when she was released to go home.

My youngest daughter, Sarah, had just graduated from high school. Sarah was dealing with a medical crisis of her own. Suddenly, in the midst of that hectic last semester of school, one of her knees had swollen to twice its normal size, followed by one of the knuckles in her hand. After several tests, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. As her disease developed, she began having problems with both knees and hands. Until her condition was stabilized, the usual summer job was out of the question. While the doctors decided on Sarah’s treatment, she decided to help her Grandma by volunteering to move in to nurse her for the remainder of the summer. The two had always been close, both admiring the fierce independence and no-nonsense good humor in the other. When my mother was released from the hospital, Sarah arrived at Grandma’s doorstep eagerly, armed with her own crutches, multiple “Harry Potter” tapes, a stack of movie DVD’s, a DVD player because Grandma didn’t have one, and a burning desire to learn to crochet at the feet of the family master.

During the hospital stay, Grandma had been given strong narcotics for the surgical pain, but was taken off all her other medications because of fear of adverse drug interaction. This included medication for a bad back and restless leg syndrome. Her symptoms from these earlier ailments came back ruthlessly. Grandma had little appetite because of her medications, and her back and leg pain kept her awake at night. She declared that she didn’t like the hospital food, and had us bring her cans of unsalted tomato juice, the only thing she had an appetite for. After three weeks, her condition seemed to stabilize, and she was sent home with instructions to gradually wean herself off the narcotics. Now that she was home and taking less of the narcotics, she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t hold food down, couldn’t walk without her walker, and couldn’t sit or lie still because of her back.

Sarah soon realized just how sick her grandmother was. She became the gatekeeper, warding off Grandma’s many well-meaning friends at the door, answering the phone calls from concerned neighbors, monitoring medicines for a groggy patient, and watching her beloved grandmother pace with her walker from one end of the house to the other to escape the pain. When Sarah had time, she would take care of the household chores, struggling through her own pain to carry out a sack of trash. She scoured the grocery store shelves, looking for anything that might appeal to her grandmother’s non-existent appetite. She called to ask how to make custard and mashed potatoes.

“Don’t call us,” Sarah admonished after a few days. “I’ll call you. I never know when she will be able to nap, and the phone rings all the time.”

Grandma had lost over thirty pounds in a few short weeks because nothing tasted good to her, and little stayed down. The doctors suggested a variety of combinations of medicines, all of which seemed to make her digestion worse. Sarah knew she had to find something her Grandma could eat that would stay in her stomach. Her grandmother was starving.

When Sarah left her patient for a couple of hours to attend a family gathering, she confessed how worried she was. A cousin on her father’s side suggested a particular brand of nutritional milkshake supplement because it had helped his grandmother. Sarah was ready to try anything and picked up a carton on the way back to her grandmother’s house. The two experimented with the supplement immediately, chilling it thoroughly because Grandma thought that the cold liquid might sooth her raw stomach. When the vanilla flavored shake was ice cold, Grandma was able to drink an ounce at a time. Over several days, she built up to drinking two or three cans a day. Eventually she could eat small portions of cold fruit, and then pudding. She craved watermelon. The worst was over.

Grandma’s strength returned as Sarah fed her every delicacy she could think of. Her knees healed remarkably quickly because of all the pacing, and she enjoyed showing everyone her scars. Gradually, she was able to walk for short distances without her walker. The doctors finally found the combination of medicines that would allow her to cope with her pain and still have an appetite. She finally did listen to Harry Potter. And Sarah, whose selfless persistence pulled her grandmother through to recovery, did learn how to crochet.

By the end of summer, Sarah was off to her freshman year of college, and Grandma was well enough to care for herself. Both are doing well now. Eighty-five year old Grandma mows her own yard, and takes classes in water aerobics and line dancing to keep her new knees in shape. She crochets lap robes for the old people in the nursing homes to keep her fingers nimble. Sarah keeps moving through her pain, so she can keep moving. She has seen first hand how to walk through pain to get to the other side. She crochets to relax.