Helen, after her first office visit, admiring her flowers.
Yesterday reminded me of one of the camping group’s fall bushwhacks through the Maine woods. We have a plan, a view, we have a destination, a mountain top, but we never quite get there. A rocky outcrop, an opening through the trees, a glimpse of the lakes below, a settling for less than what we desired.
In the shortest form possible, her primary care physician said, ‘Move.’
Her gastroenterologist said she might have autoimmune liver disease or Primary Biliary Cirrhosis, but we won’t know until we do more tests.
Dr. Bieker. ‘Do you have a living will?’
Helen. ‘No.’
Me. ‘I am her health care proxy.’ I’m pretty proud of this now that Chris tells me it means I’m her favorite.
‘Dr. Bieker to Helen. ‘Does he know what you want?’
Me. ‘I do. At the first excuse, she wants to see what’s next.’
Dr. Bieker. ‘Many people are afraid to die.’
Me. ‘Not this one. she is not afraid enough and that’s a problem.’
Dr. Bieker. ‘And some people reach a point where they have had enough.’
Helen smiled. I knew she wanted to raise her hand.
jennifer
re: Michael being proud of being health care proxy, and the family squabble you’re having.
I don’t think it means she likes you best. Given what you’ve said (and I only have it from your perspective) that it means she thinks you’re most likely to listen carefully and withstand pressure if necessary to let her be in charge.
I don’t mean this to sound flippant at all — Does it make a difference to know whether it is autoimmune liver disease or Primary Biliary Cirrhosis? OK, so I AM still mad at my mother for deciding about 2 years before her stomach cancer must have started that she would never go through the unpleasantness of a barium enema again, and thus when it was finally diagnosed — after over a year of unintended weight loss and other symptoms which she refused to check out — it really WAS too late to do much of anything. But I would not choose to prolong the final part of my life if it was going to be entirely consumed with fighting for my own life. On the other hand, I don’t know the trick for predicting with 100% accuracy what the next chunk of anyone’s life will be consumed by!
One friend of the family was very sad for my mother at her memorial service because she said she was 10 years older than my mother, and that 10 years was, so far, the best 10 years of her life. That was 58 to 68, and I haven’t dared ask her for an update at any point in the last 16 years.