The Sentence

So we finally had the appointment with the neurologist, yesterday.

I had expected to hear about epilepsy, about irrecoverable memory, about finding the right drug regimen to even things out. I had thought we would eventually get us to a place where mum relearns what she can and can't do, and then we would go on from there.

Was I blind? Stupid? Optimistic?

We met Dr B. after a 40 minute wait in a noisy waiting area. I had been reading a year-old gardening magazine. Mum had been wandering up and down straightening the other magazines.

Dr B. showed us the MRI of mum's brain.
"The grey areas are the brain matter..." said Dr B.
Mum laughed at this. "The grey areas are my grey matter!" she said.
"...And these black areas are where there is atrophy." -Dr B.
Mum still chuckling. "Grey matter! Ha!"
Me now. "Atrophy?" I know what that is. Do I? Perhaps I'm mistaken. "Is that...damage?"
"Yes."
Shit.
Mum hasn't heard. She is hard of hearing, has only one hearing aid though she needs two, and this doctor is particularly softly spoken.
The softly spoken doctor keeps pressing a key on her keyboard.
With each click, four new images, cross sections of mum's brain, fill the screen. Each has more and more black encroaching into the grey. Just black lines, mostly, then some with bulges in them, bending, stretching through different areas and spreading out. Wriggles, they look like. Worms. Claws.

"Given the amount of damage, I would think your mother has probably been having small mini-strokes for years. This is now small vessel damage."

"Small vessel damage. Small? Small damage to the vessels?" I am grasping. I know what she means already. I just don't want to know it.
"No, no." she smiles at me. "It is damage to the small blood vessels."

I half glaze over as she explains that these tightened, thinned, blood vessels no longer deliver enough oxygen to my mother's brain, and so there will continue to be tiny, imperceptible mini-strokes, leaving more damage. The epilepsy is not the problem. The epilepsy is the side effect.

There is no way back. Memory and cognitive skills will worsen. At first gradually but expect, she says, to see deterioration occur in sudden, deep steps. She draws these deep steps in the air with her forefinger. Down, down, down. Like a child skipping stairs.

I bite back some badly timed salt water and reassure mum, who has just started to ask what is being said, that the tablets are still OK and that she must just continue taking them.

"Oh! I see!" Mum smiles and nods.

Dr B. asks mum her address. Mum remembers her door number.
"Ah! Hang on!" she has a glint in her eye as she pulls out a phone bill from her bag. I'm not surprised she remembered that, as she took it out and looked at it four times in the waiting room. "Here you are! I'm going to cheat!" She smiles, and reads out her address from the bill.

A few more memory tests.
The day? No.
Date? No.
She turns to me for a clue. "Ah, well, it was Kevin's birthday yesterday wasn't it?"
"OH YES! Chocolate cake!"
"So," presses Dr B., "What does that make today?"
"The day after Kevin's birthday," says mum.

Mum carried on chattering away, as Dr B. advises me not to let her go out on her own, and with that one comment, the title of "Carer" becomes capitalised and affixed to me, as clear as if I had been passed a badge with my name on it.

I had already known this, accepted it. But hearing it all out loud is different. In my mind a long road opens up in front of me. Structured, timetabled and full of sadness.

"I'll refer her to a psychologist to assess the memory damage," Dr B. interrupts my grief. "then she will come back here. There are pills to improve thinking and memory, she can have these."
What??? So...... there is hope then????? But then she adds:
"I'm afraid they only work for about 6 - 8 months. It's only temporary."

I am 43, and till yesterday had never had the experience of having to leave a doctor's room hearing the parting words, "I'm so sorry..."

*** *** ***

Last night, I wept in great sobs in a scarcely lit room. Great, big belly sobs, each coming with no sound till the last bit of breath. So angry: it's so unfair. She is only 68. I want our lives back. I want my mum back. I want my life back. Then another groan, for my own selfishness. I want I want I want. When I was a Christian I prayed every night for her. I specifically prayed for a long, healthy and happy life. I remembered that request for health. I remembered being careful to include that..... so all that was left was to spit swearwords towards the ceiling deity I no longer believe in, "If you want to punish someone for me dumping you, why not me? why her? you sick bastard. You sick, sick f--k. You think you will make things so bad that I come back, in need of a crutch. Not this time."

*** *** ***

Today, I was left guessing how much of it she understood. One little sentence of hers, just a few words, I don't think she knew she had said them out loud. "I thought I would have more time." No violent anger in her tiny, newly-frail frame. Gentleness and tremendous sorrow, but no anger.