Illustration by Seonhwan Jang
The night at the hospital is quiet yet busy. At 9 p.m., when the lights in the hospital room turn off and darkness falls, the patient and guardian lie down on the small bed as if they are finding their seats. A hospital room with little activity even during the day is like a still life painting with no sound or movement when the lights are off. Unlit hospital rooms and bright hallways, lying patients and busy medical staff. We seemed to live in different spaces and times. After being a caregiver for two weeks in an unfamiliar environment, I had a hard time falling asleep. The nurse checked her mother’s condition approximately every three hours. Perhaps a meaningful story will come out? I, who was lying on the cot, jumped up and gathered my scattered mind at the sound of a medical cart approaching, like a new soldier in full military gear. Against the wall of the cot, the mother placed 100 cans of bottled water, 60 cans of nutritious drinks, and clothes to drink for five weeks. Even my legs, which wouldn’t be able to support me with short shoes anywhere, couldn’t straighten properly here. I had to stay here for two weeks.
Check urine output every 2 hours throughout the night.
In particular, we had to check the amount of food, including water, and the amount of bowel movements to see if there were any adverse reactions to the child’s body due to medication administration, etc., but the mother, who had fluids hanging from her arms, had difficulty going to the bathroom alone, so she quietly said, “Soso, mommy’s bathroom,” every time. Urine volume: 350 ml at 11 p.m., 300 ml at 2 a.m., 200 ml at 4:45 a.m., 350 ml at 7:30 a.m. . My nights were as busy as her mother’s trips to the bathroom. It was difficult to sleep for more than two hours, so I wondered if mothers raising infants would feel this way if they did not get a full night’s sleep. The first time I received my mom’s urine in the urine container, I was quite embarrassed. If she was not able to properly place the urine container between her legs, or if her mother applied too much force to her legs, the rubber packing would inevitably separate from the urine container and fall on the bathroom floor. The urine that my mother couldn’t stop quickly soaked my hands, her mother’s patient gown, and her underwear. “are you okay. She told her mother, “I’ll quickly bring a hospital gown and new underwear,” but whether it was because of her fluid or the drinking water, her mother had to change the hospital gown as many as three or four times a day. It took time to get used to my mother calling me to the bathroom every two to three hours. My mother was hospitalized in a semi-sterile room for two. Before she entered the sterile room, she was in the hospital room where she stayed during the hematopoietic stem cell collection stage. Across from her were four semi-sterile rooms that could accommodate four adult female patients, four adult male patients, and multiple children and adolescents, but she was already assigned to a double room with multiple rooms. Unlike a regular hospital room, each bed had an additional layer of vinyl curtains in front of the cloth curtains. It appeared to be intended to protect patients with weakened immune systems. Mansong Mansong hair may seem unfamiliar, but my mother thought the bandana worn by cancer patients was cumbersome, so she took it off as soon as she entered her hospital room. I may have gained courage because most of the patients with similar illnesses had bald heads. My mother boldly showed off her bald head and walked back and forth several times a day down the hallway of her hospital room, which was only 20 to 30 meters long. As she walked down the hallway of the hospital room, she said hello to other patients and caregivers she encountered. Although her fractured spine has further reduced her short stature, her mother’s back looks much more comfortable, perhaps because she has people like her. Walking down the hospital hallway with her mother, there are four rooms with closed doors on either side of her hallway. This is a ‘sterile room’ where patients who have received hematopoietic stem cell transplantation stay. The only time the hospital room door was open was for meals and when the medical staff was providing treatment. Of course, just because the door opens doesn’t mean the people inside can get out. When a staff member places a meal tray in front of the hospital room door, the guardian who opens the door carefully takes the tray in, finishes eating, and puts it out in front of the door. As I was walking down the hallway, the view inside the sterile room through the small window of the hospital room door was even more motionless than the hospital room with the lights off. It was impossible to guess what the pores were like for those who had to live in ‘confinement’ in a hospital room for about three weeks without moving.
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Mother angry for the first time after cancer diagnosis
A day after my mother was hospitalized, a female patient in her 40s moved into the bed across from me. She was a patient who had completed a hematopoietic stem cell transplant and was moved to a semi-sterile room for her recovery. As a patient with lymphoma, he was unable to eat at all and was unable to move to the point where he had to relieve himself in a portable toilet next to his bed with the help of a caregiver. Seeing him, her mother was worried about him entering the clean room alone. “Ugh… I can’t do it alone, I can’t do it. How difficult is it in a sterile room? It’s hard for parents too! Originally, I said I couldn’t go into the sterile room because it was difficult, but I had no choice but to go in because the patient’s condition was so bad and there was no family member to take care of him. “The sterile room is so stuffy and difficult.” While her patient neighbor was away for an examination, the caregiver made a fuss about her and told her mother about her clean room situation. The more she listened to her story, the deeper the wrinkles between her mother’s eyebrows became. She said, “She is very worried about her mother going into the sterile room unaccompanied. Can you please tell her that even if she goes in alone, she will come out treated well?” At this point, the only thing she could trust was the nurse. It was only after hearing what her nurse said that Mom relaxed a little. Two days later, another patient was admitted to a double room, and her mother was moved to a semi-sterile four-bed room. In her four-person room, there were two patients with multiple myeloma and one patient with lymphoma, like her mother. The multiple myeloma patient was a pastor who had completed a hematopoietic stem cell transplant and a restaurant owner who was about to undergo a transplant, and the lymphoma patient was a person who came to Seoul in pursuit of his last hope after hearing from a local university hospital that there was no further treatment available. She said, “I was diagnosed with stage 4. The hospital said I had 3 months to live, but 3 months have already passed. The shaman told me that I would be fine as long as I survived Liberation Day, and it turned out that since Liberation Day passed, I started eating well. I don’t think I’m going to die. “I don’t think I’ll die.” The lymphoma patient said: She was so brave that she didn’t look like she was sick at all, and seeing the pastor who went into the sterile room alone and was recovering alone made me compare her to the mother who was in much better condition and couldn’t seem to frown even though she was with her daughter. “Mom, they are also living so bravely. “Cheer up, Mom, too,” she said, the first time she got angry since her mother was diagnosed with cancer. “I’m doing my best too!!” she said. Oops! I wanted to. K, who suddenly took on ‘mother care’ – her eldest daughter talks about the parental care that young people experience in an aging society.
2023-10-29 00:00:18
#mom #struggling #cheer #up.. #thought #gosh
