“What have the doctors told you?”

“Nothing. They all say they ‘don’t know what will happen.’”

“Oh. The neurologist was by earlier when you were at home. He said that the CAT scan was negative, but that her brain wasn’t receiving much oxygen during the time that her heart wasn’t beating.”

“Really? But… they were doing CPR…”

“CPR is effective, but still not as good as the heart beating on its’ own.”

“Oh, there she goes opening her eyes again. But she doesn’t see me. She just stares. Will she wake up, do you think? You must have seen this sort of patient before.”

<Averting eyes>”The neurologist and I agree that if she was going to recover function, she would have done so by now. It’s been 48 hours since her arrest. Because she has not improved, it’s not likely that she will. She may recover enough to have the breathing tube removed, but will probably remain vegetative. I know that wasn’t the answer you were looking for.”

“But it was a realistic one. No one will give me any answers. I just want to know what to expect here with my mother. I want someone to show me the reality of the situation.”

And so I tried. But then lamely ended it with “But you never know.” Because it is so terribly difficult to deliver news like this. I wanted desperately to make the doctor do it the next day, but that would have left an entire night of uncertainty. Uncertainty can be worse than the reality. Maybe subconsciously there’s an awareness that this isn’t going to turn out well, but there’s still hope, because no one has said otherwise.

Did this man know that his mother wanted to die? That she walked into her dialysis treatment and told the nurse that she had a plan to die? He talked about how he was going to call her the day she cardiac arrested, but didn’t… and now it was too late. He didn’t appreciate her when she was “here.” I tried to tell him not to go down that road… there was no way he could have known what would happen, and that he was here now. What a terrifically intense range of emotions he was feeling. I don’t know how he didn’t crack right down the center with the strength of it all.

About an hour later, his sister joined him at their mother’s bedside. I had been warned by friends of the family that she wasn’t going to take it well. She called from the waiting room and I told her to come in. I met her and her friend at the door. I led them to her mother’s room, trying to figure out if I should prepare her for what she was going to see, but I could tell she wasn’t listening to a word I said. She was desperately looking into every room we passed, trying to see her mom. She’s been away for several years and hasn’t seen her mother in all that time. But when she actually reached her mother, she was calm. She took her mom’s hand and just started to talk to her brother. There were no hysterics or theatrics.

It was a very emotionally exhausting night.