The Video Phone Has Arrived

Several times a week, I speak with mom with Skype video, absolutely free. Thank you, Skype, for giving us this option! It's so cool to talk to mom, here with Sally and Klaus (the dog), this way - almost like being there. The video looks a lot sharper than what you see here, but because it's often after dark there when we talk (it's winter now, short days plus the time zone differences), they're often in semidarkness whereas I have sunlight coming through the window caressing my delicate skin!

Mom Update

Mom is doing better and better every day! At this point she is completely back to how she was except that she will need physical therapy for a while to regain full use of her legs again. She is now back to the hospital near her house in Castelnovo Nei Monti. Dr. Maccari, seen in the photo with me and my sister and my mom, is the head resident at the hospital and has taken a very keen interest in my mom's condition. Her illness and recovery is still quite a mystery and Dr. Maccari is also a very caring individual.

For the last two days, I recorded with my videocamera my mom talking about her life. She told some fascinating stories about when we were very small and about her life growing up. This is a priceless gift that we will always treasure.

The Miracle that is Mom

I've updated this last week's happenings and have saved the best for last so that it would appear at the top of my blog - mom is doing so much better that it's hard to believe.

She and I have had long talks in the last few days. She doesn't hear as well as she used to and she still has a hard time eating. She will not regain the use of her legs to walk any time soon. But the most important part of her body, her brain, seems to have come through this ordeal relatively unscathed. Her memories have returned, both those from a long time ago as well as those that are recent. The only thing she doesn't remember is the time she was in that catatonic state - no surprise there!

She has regained her sense of humor and is joking a lot.

Today was special. She asked to talk with me one on one and then asked me my forgiveness for not having done her best for me as my mom. I told her she had nothing that needed forgiving. She has been a wonderful mother who did all she could for her children after the death of our father when I was only two and my sister was not yet born by three months. I then asked her for her forgiveness for the hard times I put her through as a teenager especially and she too told me that I needed no forgiving. A lot more was said but suffice it to say here that it was wonderful to have the opportunity after being told she would not survive last month to be able to have such a deep conversation!

My main job now is to get her to eat more - something she finds difficult to do. She's now lost 60 lbs but she was pretty overweight before, so that's not as bad as it sounds. If she can get her strength back and start some physical therapy on her legs, she can get back to the point where she is self-sufficient again, at least as much as she had been.

Thank you all for all the kind thoughts and prayers. My mom asked me to thank you all too!

My Last Day in Italy...My Goodbye to Mom

The day I arrived in Italy three weeks ago, I cried when I saw my mom in bed. She seemed paralyzed and in a coma. Over the next few days, I saw her seemingly improve and had high hopes that she would return almost to her old self. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Friday, when I left her, her condition was even worse, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She no longer talks and barely moves anymore, except for the repetitive up and down movement of her head and her shoulders. Who knows if there is still some chance but I’ve lost my optimism.

Friday when I was with her I cried as I have not since I was a child. All I could think of was that this was the last time I would see my mother alive. The words of the doctor, telling us that my mom’s life would last only weeks or perhaps a few months more rang in my head. I tried to get an answer from my mom, calling out to her constantly, stroking her face and her hair, rubbing her neck, trying to get any kind of response at all. Nothing. My mother is gone. Her body remains but only a vestige of her mind is left. She is lost in some old memories that she can no longer even express out loud anymore. She doesn’t appear to be in pain - for that I'm thankful. She doesn’t appear to be in any state.

I gave my mother my goodbyes with kisses and hugs and strokes and tears. I thanked her for all that she had done to make me who I am. I hope she was able to feel the love that I have for her, the love that she instilled in me.

During times like these, life can appear so cruel. What was the point of gathering 73 years of memories only to lose them so quickly? I think I know the answer – her life is imprinted on those whom she touched in her life, most especially my sister and me. Having done so, all of us whom she touched continue to pass on a part of her to everyone whom we help and love in our lives. The butterfly effect will continue for as long as humanity exists on the planet, just like the passing of her genes to her children and her grandchildren and so on. Her legacy and her progeny will continue.

Her life, like that of a butterfly, like that of all of us, has been short. We pity the mayfly who is born, breeds and dies in the span of 24 hours. How much different are we? To the mayfly, a day may feel like a lifetime. Sometimes 73 years can seem like a day.

I feel sorrow and envy for my sister, who will continue to see my mom every day for as long as she lives. I'm sorry because every time we see her in this state, it hurts so much. I'm envious because she gets to touch our mother and talk to our mother and hug and kiss our mother for more time than I do.

I am thankful that I was able to go to Italy and say my goodbyes. I'm afraid when next I go, it will be for an even sadder reason, one that will take place in a cemetery. I do not look forward to that day.

Update on Mom...A Day Before I Leave

I am in Italy still. I leave tomorrow by train for Zürich, Switzerland and Saturday I leave from Zürich airport to go home. Mom isn't going to make it. While they are not absolutely sure yet, they are doing final tests to confirm that she has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It's a disease that affects one person in a million, but she has every symptom. "Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD ) is a very rare and incurable degenerative neurological disorder (brain disease) that is ultimately fatal."

So now it appears a matter of weeks or months at the most. She has not recognized me or my sister since I've been here, three weeks now. She has reached the point where she's in a waking coma, hardly seeing us anymore. The doctor at the hospital is very dedicated. We spent three hours today answering all her questions. She made family trees, she took lots of notes, and she called other experts. She told another doctor while we were there that this was the most serious case they have had in that hospital department in a long time. She also said that they were going to rule out any other curable diseases she might possibly have, but that at this point all signs pointed to CJD and that she would be surprised if that wasn't the illness that has invaded my mother.

So I thought I would share with your some photos I took tonight of mom's room. My sister and I went in there to surround ourselves with "mom." I was surprised to see an English book on her night table. My sister told me that mom was still reading in English before the disease hit her so hard. I didn't know that she had retained the language at that level. So you can see some of the books she had read or was reading in the first picture.

The other photos describe themselves.

Thank you again for all of your support. While there is still a little hope, there's not much left. I plan to return as soon as possible, though it may be for her funeral if the doctor's predictions are right.

Today's Update on Mom

The photo you see is of the hospital where our mom is a patient.

Today we were able to talk with the doctor. He told us they have determined that our mom has no virus after all and that they believe that the problem is in the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain. Specifically, it is not mixing or circulating correctly. They describe it as a plumbing problem in the head.

On Monday, mom will be moved out of Infectious Diseases, because she doesn't have one of those, and into Neurology, where they should be able to help her more.

In Italy for a sad reason...

First, this is not my mom. This is the other lady in my mom's hospital room with me and my sister behind her. More on this in a moment.

I came to Italy very suddenly Wednesday, arriving Thursday after flying from Boston, where I was working, to DC, and then onto Zürich, Switzerland, where I hopped on three trains to get to Reggio Emilia, Italy, where my sister's friend picked me up and took me directly to the hospital where my mother has been for two weeks as of today. She came because she had a bad stomach ache that wasn't going away and just when things seemed to be going better, she suddenly fell into a semi-comatose state. The doctors said they believed she had had a stroke.

As soon as my sister told me on Tuesday, I cashed in 100,000 of my 140,000 frequent flier miles on United Airlines to book my ticket and flew out the next day. I wanted to fly to Italy directly, but the airline won't allow frequent fliers to use their miles to fly to Italy because it's too popular a tourist destination, at least not from June 1st until August 31st. So I found the closest city I could to which I could fly, and that was Zurich. I would have spent the cash to fly more directly, but cash is short right now. After two days of traveling, I arrived at my mom's bedside.

What I saw of her frightened me. I am not prone to easy tears but I was not able to stop crying. She was totally unresponsive, alive but in a deep sleep from which she would not wake. I returned and spent the whole day there yesterday and finally in the afternoon she woke up some and tried to talk but was not able to make much sense; her words not even recognizable.

My mom actually woke up today and talked a lot, clearly. The only problem was that she kept repeating the same sentence over and over, one that didn't make much sense. She appeared to be reliving the same moment from many years ago over and over. Sometimes she would answer our questions. We asked her what her name was and she said she didn't know. After we told her her name she then repeated it back later fine. My sister and I asked her who we were and she said she didn't know. That much didn't change. Her body is rather swollen, including her feet, from all the IV liquids she has been getting, and my sister asked her if her feet hurt and she clearly answered that, no, they did not hurt! Believe me, after the last two days of seeing her do nothing but sleep and occasionally murmur something that I couldn't make out, today was a joy. I doubt she'll ever be back to normal but I do hope to see a lot of improvement in the coming weeks.

I'm staying for at least two weeks. The doctors still don't know what is wrong with her. They have done many tests and think it's a virus, maybe one like Mad Cow, though clearly it's not Mad Cow.

My mom is only 73. She shares a large hospital room with two ladies, one who is 94 and the other, the one in the picture above, who is 92. The 94-year-old does not look good, but this lady, whose name is Onesta, is perfectly coherent and a lovely person with whom to converse. Onesta means Honest in Italian - what a nice name, no? She keeps an eye on mom during the night when we can't be there, though she herself is a patient. Unfortunately, she had to miss her sister's birthday the other day - her sister who just turned 100!

Onesta doesn't know much about the States and so she has asked me some interesting questions, based primarily on old westerns she has seen, I think. Here are two of the more interesting ones:

1. Do people in America eat snakes? I saw it in a movie. What do they eat in America?
2. Are there really people with dark skins in America? Do they live in huts?

The second question pained me so I explained carefully how the situation really is. She seemed very accepting of my answers!

I will post what I can from time to time, and I will also post some photos I took getting down here and being a passenger in my sister's car as we drive back and forth to the hospital twice a day.

Thank you to all my blog fans (both of you!) for your continued support!