You find us at an unusually low point here at casa Litlove, and what follows is not a cheerful post. So if February is being tough on you, you might want to read something else; I won’t blame you if you do. I think the last time I wrote an update on my family situation, my concern was that my mother wasn’t being properly cared for in hospital. Well, almost immediately after I posted that, the infection she’d contracted became worse and twenty-four hours later we were driving to Colchester as doctors feared she wouldn’t survive. In fact, she did pull through. When I sat with her that evening, I could see she was agitated and locked in her own world, and also that she is extremely thin, but what remains is pure steel. My mother has always thought of herself as an overlooked person, easily neglected because lacking in impact, but this is a misapprehension based on a difficult childhood. I know my mother to be strong.
So, she overcame the infection but the following week in the hospital wasn’t a great one. She didn’t ‘pick up’ the way the medics hoped, and she remained mostly asleep and mostly confused or absent when awake. Then, on the Thursday of that week, my father went to visit and was met by a transformation. Mum was sitting up and smiling. She was talking – even if no one could really understand her – and she seemed to have taken some food. My father was delighted. My brother, who went with him, said he could imagine a future in which she came home again. And then the very next day after that, the consultant rang my Dad and told him that Mum was refusing food and drink and he didn’t think she’d last very long, being so frail.
We were once again thrown into consternation. I went to the hospital with my father and found my mother looking much worse than she had a week ago (and I could scarcely believe it was only a week – decades seemed to have past). She was once again nominally sleeping but restless, seeming uncomfortable. She was holding her head at a strange angle, her chin up and tipped away as if she were straining to break free of her body. She didn’t acknowledge us until we were about to leave, at which point she suddenly came back into herself with a vigour I hadn’t felt in her for months. As I bent to kiss her, she opened her eyes and looked directly at me, her hand gripped mine, and she said, My beautiful girl. I’m 55 and I imagine I was looking quite haggard, but this felt like a last maternal gift of pure love. She was still talking, saying terrible things about hoping she’d die soon because she hated the hospital so when we weren’t with her. It was a wrench to leave. The following week it was decided that she should be moved to the local hospice, where she was put in a bed with a notice saying Nil By Mouth.
There she stayed, sinking, so we all thought, towards an end point. Until, the Friday of last week, when my father appeared to find, once again, a total transformation. Mum was sitting up in bed being fed a bowl of custard. Doing what? The emotional whiplash was extraordinary. I’d been grieving, trying to accustom myself to a quality of finality that I had never before encountered in any previous experience. I almost felt miffed; it was almost funny. What do you mean, she’s rallied? My brother sent me a text: #rollercoaster. We couldn’t help but wonder if this was terminal lucidity, a condition in which the dying suddenly appear to be perfectly okay again. But the following day when my brother accompanied Dad to the hospice, they found her smiling and delighted to see them and polishing off meringue and cream. My mother hasn’t eaten cream since she went on a low-fat diet for her gallstones when I was a teenager. She hasn’t just risen like a Phoenix from the proverbial ashes, she’s developed new capacities when we weren’t looking.
This past week has been less eventful. My mother has reverted to sleeping most of the time, which the nurses say is due to her most recent stroke; it’s exhausting for the brain to reroute all its habitual functions. But they also think that she is out of danger again. It’s quite something, her ability to cheat death, but I can’t help but wonder what it’s for. She can’t move, can’t really speak, and is mostly confused. At least whatever happens next, we’ve been told she qualifies for NHS continuing care, which is so incredibly hard to get hold of, it’s testimony to the very precariousness of her survival.
Anyway, as my mother was entering the hospice, Mr Litlove went rowing and caught the most horrendous flu-cold bug. I watched him wander round the house like Eeyore, the little thundercloud above his head composed entirely of germs, sneezing with such ferocity that villages beyond ours were registering cases and thought, I am not going to escape this one. And indeed, I did not. One of the eccentricities of CFS was that I stopped having colds that featured phlegm. This one has not just broken a 30-year-old duck but seems intent on making up for it. It’s reminded me of an old Spanish teacher of mine who used to call snot the last great untapped resource on the planet. The worst thing, though, is that I’ve lost my senses of smell and taste again. I lost them for the first time when I had Covid (and yes, I’ve checked, and no, it’s not that) and it was miserable; food is one of the great compensations in life. I do try to maintain a positive outlook, and not least because I have much to be grateful for. But I have to say that this past week, with my mother hovering in limbo, too much of a headache to read and eating food that had only texture and no taste, things felt somewhat bleak.
Next week I can only hope that the cold will clear (though Mr Litlove, a week ahead of me, is still in full-on mode with his) and I can get to Colchester for another visit. I feel I’m abandoning my family in its hour of need, though evidently the last thing I want to do is infect them all with some superbug. I really hope I feel better. I hope I get my sense of taste back. I hope my mother gets something back, anything at all. I hope she knows my dad and my brother are with her. I hope she feels our love.