A Mother's Love

This is something that I wrote for my Advanced Composition Class and I actually grew to love this. It's extremely personal and I was 16 when all this took place. It was an extremely rough time in my life and I thought I would share.

A Mother’s Love
By: Amanda Pate

Mothers. They have such a powerful impact on their children. From a young age we were cuddled, cherished, and loved. What would happen if that one person, the one who made you feel special, the one who laughed and played with you –what would happen if you were told that there was a strong possibility that you would never be able to have a relationship with your mom again? You would never be able to hold a two-way conversation with her or ask advice. You would never be able to be held or cuddled the same way again. Nothing would be the same. And this is where my story begins.

September 30, 2006 was the beginning of a permanent life change for me. On that day, my mother started complaining about serious back pain; pain that burned in the lumbar portion of her back and would shoot down her leg in a searing bolts. Keep in mind, my mother is strong. She is the strongest woman I have ever come in contact with, yet this pain began crippling her day by day until she became completely and entirely bedridden. By the middle of October, she could not get out of bed by herself and could not take a shower alone for fear of her slipping or falling and furthering her pain. We (me and my family) would take my mom to the hospital at least twice a week, and soon, the doctors that were prescribing my mother pain medications, started dwindling because they thought that she was lying just to get prescription drugs. Only one doctor believed her.

Through this process of deteriorating agony, I learned to grow up and become ‘Mom’ to my two younger sisters (who were both in middle school, while I was only sixteen). I learned to cook for the whole family, to drive my sisters to school and events, and help them with their homework after class. I was learning to become an adult and a mom in the matter of months. My dad was gone all the time, both figuratively and physically. He was either at work, and when he wasn’t there, he was caring for Mom. As children, we had always had two parents to rely on, but life at this time was like being thrown into the ocean without ever knowing how to swim. But then, one day after she was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance, Mom said something that we could not wrap our minds around. With tears streaming down the side of her face to hide in her hair, she said, “Girls, all of the doctors’ tests and the prescriptions haven’t fixed me. The pain is so terrible; if they can’t help me, I’m afraid I may not be able to live through this.” Our hearts broke.

We cried for days after that. None of us had a desire to eat. None of us had a desire to go to work or school. We had no drive to live the lives we used to. Our family was breaking, and we could see it as plainly as we saw the Twin Towers crumble into a heap of destruction on September 11th. The time passed along with the diminishing health of my mother. By the end of November, my mother could not walk without assistance because her calves had little muscle in them. Her legs reminded me of malnourished children in Africa, they were so skinny. We were losing hope.

On November 30th, one of my mother’s doctors called to tell her that the results of the most recent test gave them the answer to why she was in such pain. We were so happy that one of the many tests that had been run proved that she wasn’t just crazy. The doctor assigned the surgery to be on January 4th. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was Christmas time, and rather than getting excited about opening presents, we were counting down the days till Mom’s surgery. Ten more days. Despite the terrible circumstances, we were able to buy each other presents. I remember specifically that Mom bought us cute journals from an online store since she couldn’t go shopping. To this day she doesn’t remember ever purchasing them.

The day before my mom was supposed to go into surgery, she became extremely sick. A bug had been going around school and we brought it home to her. She became so sick that the doctor was uncomfortable doing the 6 hour long procedure on an unhealthy body. Our anticipation for the surgery was crushed into millions of pieces. We would have to wait 14 more days.

January 24th finally came around, and at 6am, Mom went into surgery. Six and a half hours later, she was put in the recovery room. We were told that the surgery went well but that her bulging and herniated disk was surrounded by one more huge issue: scar tissue was wrapped around her lower spine like a tumor, causing the pain to increase tenfold. The doctor had removed most of the scar tissue and put the metal rods in her back along with multiple screws to prevent it from ever being that bad again. However, that is not the end of my story.

My mom was put in the recovery room, and unbeknownst to my family, she started having hallucinations, and without looking at the chart, a different doctor gave my mother a drug called Adavan. This particular drug is for people with hallucination problems; however, it reacts most severely when used with Elavil, which was what she had been on during the surgery. Once Adavan was absorbed into her system, she became comatose. She was completely non responsive for almost three days. The doctors told us that it was most likely that she had a brain aneurism, and the best possible outcome would be that she would wake up as a vegetable. Our hope in her survival was miniscule.

Now you can start to imagine what it would feel like to be told that there was very little chance of your mom surviving a careless doctor’s mistake. Again, all of us were thrown into an ocean, unable to swim. I didn’t know how to live without a mother; my sisters didn’t know how to live without a mother; my father didn’t know how to live without a wife. Our lives were absolute torture.

To get my mind off of everything, I decided to receive an invitation to a church function, and I will remember forever the events that transpired that night. I was hanging out with a few friends –something that I had not done in a very long while –and our host home dad came up to me and told me that someone was on the phone. I took it with confusion and answered. What I heard on the other end still makes me weep today. It was my mother’s lucid voice. I was so shocked that words couldn’t even escape my mouth, let alone form coherent sentences in my mind. All I could do was cry in joy. My mom was awake. My mom didn’t have a brain aneurism. My mom wasn’t a vegetable. My mom was alive.

After the surgery, was the beginning of the six-month long recovery process. She was able to wean herself from the multiple pain medications that she was taking including, Darvocet, Fentinal, Celebrex, Elavil, and Valium, as well as, work through the constant nightmares she endured while comatose. All of the doctors were expecting her to go through major withdrawals from all the heavy medications; however, at the end of the six month recovery process, the only pain medication that she needed was Advil and she no longer had to live in fear of going back to sleep. She was healthy.

Many people would think that our relationship went back to what it was before her surgery, but I will tell you that both of us were completely different people after those ten months of torture. She was a stronger woman for overcoming both physical and internal pain and I was still learning to become an adult in more ways than one. Even though things began to drop back into the same routine, our relationship hit a new level. We realized that we didn’t just lean on each other as a mother and daughter, but we leaned on each other as friends would. Over the years, my mom has not only been my mother, but I have been able to call her my best friend as well. She is the one who encourages me, who gives me advice, who hugs me when I’m crying, who loves me unconditionally. That is her impact on me.