HMJ

My mother, who lives with us, is increasingly frail, and is in another round of See this doctor....now see that doctor... and, oh what the hell, that one over there, too.

The family practice doc thinks she has a cardiac problem; the cardiologist thinks she has a pulmonary problem, or possibly a blood disorder; the pulmonary person says 'well, we can't get a pulse-ox number because she uses a walker, and that throws off our meter' (apparently, she's the first person in recorded history to need their services who uses one of them) so she'll have to go somewhere else to do the test, and then come back to find out the results... which may involve getting yet another chest xray, and possibly a CAT scan. The hematologist (are all hematologists in practice at cancer centers?) was the only one with definite results; they were that her anemia had improved, slightly, so that she's still anemic, but not so much that they can give her some kind of shots. But they'd like her to come back, anyway.

When all of this comes crashing down, my mother will sometimes slip into what we cal Help Me Jesus mode, where she will sit, rocking back and forth, muttering that and variants over and over. Its very easy to mock, and we get pretty tired of hearing it. Whats difficult for us to remember, and yet we have to, is that she doesn't do it because its fun. She does it because she's old, and frail, and probably scared, and religion has been the only palliative that she can rely on.

Getting old sucks.