Mothering Never Stops - Especially on Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all my female family and friends out there! Whether you are a mother or have never experienced being a mother at all, I still say Happy Mother’s Day to you. Being a mother does not necessarily mean giving birth to a child. I think being a female puts “mother” in part of your job description. There is hardly a female that I know that hasn’t at some point in her life taken on the role of care giver, mothering someone whether it be a younger/older sibling, parent, another relative or friend. It is in our nature.

And, Happy Mother’s Day to me, too, if you don’t mind if I say so. My Mother’s Day has not started out as I wanted, as I am writing this from the early depths of the morning of Mother’s Day, awaiting a call from a doctor one-hundred-and-sixty miles or three hours drive away from me. I have been told to stay put until I get that call. That is hard to tell a Mother Bear to stay put when there is something wrong with one of her cubs. I have packed my insulin and pills, my G.P.S. is set to go, I have researched, but I am told to sit and wait, so I decided to write. It is 3:00 a.m. on Mother’s Day, but let me go back to Saturday, the day before Mother’s Day to fill you in on how my Mother’s Day weekend started.

It is Saturday, and untraditionally, today is my Mother’s Day. My boys and Bob are taking me out to eat today as both the boys will be gone on Mother’s Day – Casey back to Chicago for his football game and Brady off to play Home Talent baseball. Casey and I had to take a quick trip to pick up the boys’ present to Bob for his birthday (which was last weekend). When you have one son out of state, you learn you have to wait on gifts sometimes. After milking and chores are done and Bob comes in, he opens his gifts – two glazed donuts, a bag of peanut M&M’s, and a new chain saw. Happy that he has another new toy to play with, he jumps in the shower to get ready to take me out to eat. Casey and I are showered and ready to go. We are now waiting on Brady, who has been golfing since 8:30 this morning. It is cold, rainy and windy — not ideal weather for golfing, but it is a fundraiser for one of his good friends who has cancer. People learn to tough it out when it comes to doing special things for people close to us. Nine holes later, Brady is at the house and we are all off to eat at Longhorn Steak House in Madison.

Back at home again, after eating and I have a new addition to my gardens. For Mother’s Day the boys bought me a gorgeous blue stone/ceramic bird bath. It adds a little extra needed color to the dreary day in my gardens.

Brady headed back out to the golf course to help with the rest of the day’s fundraiser and Bob headed to the barn. While waiting for some of Casey’s clothes to dry, we decided to watch one of the Netflix movies I had recently gotten in the mail - Brothers. Casey initially said he would only be able to stay for a half hour, but probably a half hour before it ended, he headed out. It is now between 7-7:30 p.m. After the movie finished, the rest of my non-traditional Mother’s Day evening was spent working on my recipe books. I grab something to eat. Bob, in from the barn, isn’t hungry. It is now 10:00 p.m. and Casey calls to say that he is now home in his Chicago apartment, safe and sound. So tired from the day, I head to bed.

At 11:30 p.m., my phone (charging on my bed stand and after the last four months with my Aunt, never far from my reach) starts to ring. It announces the caller, saying “Casey.” I wonder as I quickly grab for the phone, why he is calling at this hour. The caller speaks, “This is Bobby, Casey’s friend. He wanted me to call you right away to tell you that I just rushed him to the hospital.” I “calmly” shout into the phone, “Bobby, what happened?” Bobby say, “I don’t know. I only live five blocks from Casey and he called me and said he felt like he was having a heart attack, he couldn’t feel his left side and he had been vomiting black stuff for 20 minutes before he called me. So I ran over and got him and we are at the hospital.” “Which hospital,” I inquired. He said, “UIC (University of Illinois Medical Center).” I quickly told Bobby that I would pack up and be out the door in just a few minutes and would head right down. He said he didn’t know how long he would be able to stay and I said that is okay, I will get down there right away. I’m packing my insulin and pills, chargers and speedily getting ready. I tried Brady, but to no avail, so left a phone message and then texted him. I started texting his girlfriend, Jenne, (knowing that she was out at a bachelorette party, but maybe she had caught up with Brady by now), when Brady called me back. I told him I was heading to Chicago and wanted to know if he wanted to come along. He said Jenne was just meeting up with him and he had been out at the bar next door to his house with his friends after the golf fundraiser. I said that is okay, and I could pick him/them up. Then my phone rang again, the phone calling system on my phone announcing Casey’s phone. This time when I answered, I was greeted by still another new voice - the charge nurse from UIC. She immediately told me that Bobby had mentioned to her I was going to head down. She said, “I don’t know exactly where you are at, but I understand you are a few hours away.” I confirmed that I was about three hours from the hospital. She said, “Can you just hold tight until we get a diagnosis, because I know the weather is not conducive to travel and we don’t need you out on the road in inclement weather, if you don’t need to be. I should be able to let you know something in 45 minutes”

Okay, as I grit my teeth – you want me to wait almost an hour while you diagnose my son which would then put my ETA at almost four hours. Hmmmmm....pretty brave to tell a Momma Bear to put away that maternal instinct of run to take care of a situation or just to be there, if need be. “Okay, a compromise of sorts then,” I said to Kathleen, the charge nurse. “Tell me what exactly what you are thinking is a possible diagnosis. I know (1) he is in a lot of pain, (2) that he didn’t have feeling on his left side, and (3) he was vomiting up ‘black stuff’ for almost 20 minutes before coming into the ER. Are we looking at possible appendicitis, something worse, or what” She paused for a moment and then said, “Kidney stones. My gut reaction at this point is kidney stones, but we won’t know anything further until we get the pain under control and we run some tests. Give me 45 minutes.” Okay, I conceded, “45 minutes.” She ended with, “here is the number at the ER and if I don’t call you back in 45 minutes, call this number and ask for me.”

Forty-six minutes later, I called the ER and asked for Kathleen. She came to the phone and said she was working at the moment in a different part of the ER and would put me on with Casey. Casey, in a raggedly painful voice, said, “they are 99% sure it is kidney stones, but I can let you know a little later. I just need to sleep so I don’t feel the pain.” Kathleen then got on the phone and said, “I would suggest that you don’t travel tonight, if you want to come down, but wait until morning breaks and then we will know more.” Morning breaks? Isn’t that what happened at midnight? Okay, then I will do what I do next best, research. Okay, if this is what they think it is, let’s find out what kidney stones have to say about themselves...

Well, a half hour later and I am now up to full speed on everything I needed to know about kidney stones, that I didn’t know before. I’ve never been up close and personal with kidney stones before, never had to research them. But what I did find, perplexed me (and later I find out has perplexed Casey’s doctors, too). Kidney stones are most common in men. More so, men in their 40's and up. Casey is today, one week shy of his 26th birthday. Hmmmm... Kidney stones are more prevalent in males who drink beer and pop. Casey does neither. He has never drank any alcohol and does not drink pop. Hmmmmmm... I have now learned how you treat kidney stones that are passable, how you treat those that are not passable, and that it is more than likely once you get a kidney stone, that you are going to get another.

It is now 3:30 a.m. and Casey calls me to say, “my phone is about to go dead, but the CAT scan showed that I have two kidney stones. They say that I can go home shortly, so I called my friend and co-worker, Kimberly, and she is going to pick me up and take me home.” Casey then went on to say that he felt so sorry for his friend, football comrade and hero, Bobby. Shortly after they arrived at the hospital, Bobby got a phone call saying that his best friend since fourth grade had just passed away from an overdose. Casey said he felt so bad, because this big guy who has Casey’s back on and off the field was crying and there was nothing that Casey could do for him at the time. He went on to say that apparently Bobby doesn’t “use,” had come from a bad neighborhood in Chicago, now lives a couple blocks from Casey, has turned his life into good and had been trying to get his friend to stop using. Sometimes, I have learned, even our best intentions don’t always turn out how we want them to. My sympathies to Bobby for his loss. My kudos to Bobby for having Casey’s back one more time. Casey then ended our conversation with “I will call you when I get home.” I told him I loved him and would wait for his call.

What to do until then? I started to write this post to my blog.

At 5:30 a.m., Casey called to say that he is home and needs to go to sleep to get away from the pain. I told him I would call him in the morning. He said that if he felt better and a little more pain free, he might go to his 11:00 game just to watch, not to play. This game, in which he, as he is called by the league as “Deuce Deuce” (because of his love of the number 22 – it’s a Dallas Cowboys thing – need I say anything more than Emmitt Smith!) where he will have to sit and watch. This game where this scrawny little kid runs as one of the best in the league, catching a broken finger eight weeks ago, then a broken thumb the following week, and two weeks later, a concussion. This game where his team is covered by ethnic diversity. This game where the teammates have your back, on and off the field. He’ll watch, just because he wants to be there if he can.

I called him at 7:00 this morning to see how he was doing and to ask the mother’s prerogative question, “Should I come down?” Hey, it is Mother’s Day! It is the one day I don’t have to explain my actions, just because it is my prerogative. “No,” he simply said. “I’ll be fine, plus I’ll probably be sleeping most of the time and there is nothing you can do.” Hmmm... “okay, then,” I answered. “Just promise me you will drink plenty of water. I mean two to four quarts. It will help.” “Yes,” he said. “That is exactly what the doctors told me. I’ll do it if it is what is going to help get these things out. But they said the first one is ready to come down through and it will pass in a day or two. The second is in the intestines and will take probably up to a week. They also told me that passing kidney stones is a lot like childbirth.”

Yes, I thought to myself, it probably is. But once you pass that stone, you don’t get to hold, cuddle, coddle and protect it for the rest of its or your life. Being a mother, that is my prerogative. I get to do just that and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As for me, for now, I'll stay put. I'll do my mothering from the every-reaching tentacles of my cell phone. But I'm there in a flash if either of my boys needs me -- its my prerogative. I'm a Mother.