Hallucinations, Feeding Tubes and Drawings

When my mom had emergency surgery on her twisted stomach, a week after we found out that she had a brain tumor, she was in ICU for over two weeks. They had her on a ventilator for a day before she had the surgery and two or three days after the surgery. She would have a feeding tube that I had to clean and feed her through for months to come.

I would go and sit in the room with her everyday. It was dark in the room. The nurses made me get up and go outside every once in a while because I needed to keep my days and nights straight. When mom was finally able to get off the ventilator, and able to start talking, she would tell me the craziest things she was seeing. She saw candy that filled the walls with different colors. She saw candy falling all around me. She saw a little black dog that would come in and jump on her bed and sleep with her. She was mostly back to her 20s and early 30's. That must have been a good time for her. She would think she was in a friend's house she knew before I was born. Sometimes she was not really sure who I was. I went along with her stories and visions. It took her a long time to come back to any sort of reality, They call it ICU delirium.

The stress I felt the first week sitting in that ICU room listening to mom breath, hearing the constant beeping... was intense. I had to find something to keep me sane. The drawings came out fast at first, then the drawings started telling stories and became more intricate and detailed.

Sometimes when people you love get sick and change, the people that are closest to them are the last ones to see the change. Because when you are with them everyday, the gradual decline becomes normal. When someone from the outside has not seen this person in a few months, they see a drastic change. As Mom started to communicate more, it hit me that my mom was not my mom anymore. I mean... I sort of knew this, because I had been taking care of her, but it really sunk in that she was not really going to get better. Never again, will I have my mother. I was the parent and she was the child. I would be doing all the caring, holding, wiping.... from this point on. Sitting in that ICU room changed me, and mom changed, and it was permanent.

This drawing became my realization that the life I knew it was changing... As sad as it was to see this change, the tears from the old me watered the garden that was ahead of me. The new me had to grow, I could have grown thorns, but I wanted to grow something beautiful.

In reality, that garden took a long time to sprout, there were many hard days ahead.