October 9, 2006 11:16 AM
Cheating Death
For the second time in a month, I'm writing about death. Well actually, today the topic of cheating death is on my mind.
About four years ago, my mother (then 74) had her first stroke. She'd had high blood pressure for more than 20 years, and had tried a series of medications with little success (or too many side effects). Her first stroke was serious, and two more strokes followed over the next two years. Add to that a heart problem and the onset of Alzheimer's disease, and it seemed that my mother was a time bomb waiting to explode. It wasn't a question of if. It became a question of when.
Nearly a year ago, as my mother was quicky deteriorating in an assisted living facility (in the full-care, Alzheimer's wing), her doctor called my sister and told her he would like for Mom to enter the Hospice program. He and Mom's neurologist felt she had about six months to live, perhaps a year if we were lucky. We proceeded with the paperwork and she was approved, then we moved her into a Hospice-participating facility. We sat back and waited, as we watched the wonderfully attentive Hospice nurses tend to Mom, preparing her (and preparing us) for the end.
Ten months later, we were still waiting. Then we got a call last week: "Your mother has improved so much, that we are recommending she be taken out of the Hospice program." After our collective "HUH?", my sister and I tried to determine how in the world this woman, who had been knocking on death's door for years, had managed to cheat death, again. She'd had a few hospital visits over the past few years when she wasn't expected to live through the week. But she just keeps on ticking and ticking.
Years ago, when my mother first became ill and was still able to communicate, she told me her secret, and it went something like this: "I won't die. Good, nice people die. I'm too fiesty to go." I assumed she was kidding, then I remembered how she'd been all her life, and fiesty was a great understatement. She was smart and funny and creative, but her difficult streak was a mile wide. She was quite proud to be called bitchy and grumpy and difficult, and just laughed when anyone would point out these traits. Once when she was still communicating, I told her I would fly down to visit her if she could behave for a few weeks. (The nursing home staff had told us she was being bossy and uncooperative at the time.) When I suggested the deal to her, she said "Well, I guess you won't be coming!" and hung up on me.
Is it true that only the good die young? Does a defiant, you-can't-take-me-that-easily attitude make the Angel of Death quiver in his boots and say "Okay. I'll be back in a few years"? I'm not sure. But somehow, my 90-pound, incoherent, ill mother has figured out how to stay alive for years beyond what her doctors and everyone else has expected. And for that, I think bitchiness deserves at least a bit of the credit.
