What Not to Say to Your Mother in the Hospital

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who make good hospital visitors and those who should have their mouths duct taped at the information desk in the hospital lobby before being directed to an ailing loved-one's room.

In fact, hospitals should carefully review their policy of letting any child over the age of 40 visit a parent who is about to undergo major surgery. By then they know too many medical terms and have watched one too many episodes of "ER" to be of any comfort.

"Someone just flat-lined next door," Sister Number One (my mother numbered the four of us back when we were kids because she couldn't always keep our names straight) informed me matter-of-factly, pointing with her thumb to the next room as I walked into my mother's hospital room the morning of her quadruple bypass heart surgery.

"Hi , how ya doin'?" I said cheerily to my mother who was wide awake and approximately three hours away from having her chest sawed open and her heart stopped for about a half a day while a complete, "good looking" (her words, not mine) stranger would gave it a going over worse than her first schoolyard crush.

I shot a furrowed brow at my sister. "Ix-nay on the eart-hay," I admonished, as though my mother, after raising four goofy girls, didn't know how to speak pig Latin. Searching for a more appropriate subject matter I smiled and turned to my mother and inquired, "So, do you know if they will they be stopping your heart during the operation or keep it beating?"

D'oh!

My mother's eye's widened as if to indicate she hadn't really considered that particular horrifying detail until that moment.

I looked hopefully at Sister Number Three, who at the moment was putting a bandage on her thumb. "I don't want to pick up a staph infection," she said, ominously. "They're very common in hospitals and you can die from them you know."

Another comforting observation.

My youngest sister, Number Four, broke the ensuing silence by asking my mother how her angiogram had gone the previous day. My mother said the test wasn't bad, and described feeling a unique sensation of warmth that emanated throughout her entire body as the dye that was injected into her bloodstream made its way through her veins.

We sat quietly during my mother's detailed description of the experience when Number Four suddenly noted aloud, "I heard of a guy once who experienced sudden death during one of those tests."

Which brings us to the out-of-body experience Number One claims she experienced during her gall bladder operation several years ago, which she promptly began relating to my mother.

"If you hear a voice calling your name during the operation, answer it," my sister advised her pointedly. "You will then go back into your body, but it will be very painful. That's what happened to me."

My mother nodded obediently, and seemed to look longingly towards the door for the nursing staff that would take her to a nice, quiet chest-opening procedure where she could escape her four doomsayers for a few hours.

"And if you see a bright light, don't go towards the light, whatever you do," Number Two reminded her firmly.

By the time my mother was finally wheeled down the hallway towards the operating room, no one could say she hadn't been advised and cautioned of every possible earthly scenario that might occur, and even some that might while hovering near the ceiling of the operating room should she see fit to leave her body for any period of time during the operation.

Perhaps it was the quadruple dose of cautionary tales and graphic forewarnings that pulled our mother through her seven-hour operation, away from the light, and safely back to us. We like to think so.

Although she may have preferred the duct tape.