Two days later, my mother ended up in the hospital.
This wasn’t exactly a new thing, but every time it happened I still got scared. Usually it was just something simple: she was too tired, her headaches wouldn’t go away. And despite the fact that I knew my mom was a hypochondriac, I also knew that most of the time she only went to the doctor unnecessarily, and left the hospitals alone.
So when John called me and told me to come straight away, I had a bit of trepidation.
“She’s going to be fine, but I think it would be good if you could see her,” John explained. I told him I would come straight away, and I got Michael to drive me. I texted Annie, asking her to take notes for me in Art History, as I wouldn’t be able to make the class, and she texted back that it wasn’t a problem.
The closer we got to the hospital the more the bile felt like it was going to rise up in my throat. This wasn’t like my mom. Maybe it was something else. Maybe she had a heart attack. Maybe she had cancer.
It’s funny how the brain immediately thinks of the worst possible option when you hear someone’s in the hospital. Especially when it’s someone you love.
When I got there I was immediately taken to her room by a helpful nurse. When I saw my mom on the hospital bed for the first time I stopped in my tracks. She looked so much older, somehow. She looked frail, she looked weak. She didn’t look like the mother I was so used to. I barely noticed anything else. Not the machines at her side, not the IV drip connected to her arm, not the sterile smell that every hospital worldwide seemed to share.
John was sitting at her side, and I knew this wasn’t one of my mother’s bouts of hypochondria.
“Mom? Are you ok? What happened?” I asked, going over to her side, my voice choking up.
“Julianne. I’m glad you came,” my mom mumbled before closing her eyes.
“They have her on some sedatives, she went nuts when they told her she had diabetes.”
“Diabetes?” I asked. “But she doesn’t eat badly at all.”
“It’s type 1 diabetes, it just means her immune system attacked her pancreas and now she can’t produce insulin. Nothing to do with her diet or anything like that.”
“Is that why she’s so weak?”
John nodded. “She hasn’t been feeling good for a few weeks, she’s seen the doctor a few times and he thought she was just faking it, but this morning Anita found her passed out at the dining table and called an ambulance.”
“Oh my God, mom,” I cried, worried to death about my mother.
“She’s going to be fine. She’s only being sedated for her own good; she went nuts when she found out what the problem was.”
“My poor mom. Hypochondriac her whole life, I guess when something was actually wrong with her it was just too much to handle.”
“I think so. She’ll be ok. She’s stronger than she knows.”
“That she is.”
I sat down on the chair and watched my mother as she slept. Type 1 diabetes. It was almost unthinkable. My mom had always been healthy, really. She faked a lot of problems, but there was never anything really the matter with her. Until now.
I felt tears start to well up in my eyes. I loved my mom. She might be frustrating to live with at times, but she was my mom. She birthed me, she raised me, she made sure I always had everything I needed. She didn’t deserve something like this.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“The doctors are running some more tests to confirm the diagnosis. Then they’ll wake her up, get her on a treatment plan, make sure she knows that she needs to eat on a regular schedule, that sort of thing. I don’t know the details, no one in my family has ever had diabetes.”
“But what you’re saying is she will be fine.”
“Of course. Absolutely nothing to worry about on that front. Your mom will be totally fine.” He smiled at me and I smiled back. I looked at my mom again. She looked so weak, so frail, so fragile. I could still see the very last remnants of the bruise on her face from a few weeks ago. Was that slip on the ice because of the diabetes? Maybe it was, I had no idea.
*
I sat with my mom for the rest of the day. After about an hour John told me he had to get back to the city, that he was glad I was here for her in case she woke up, and I nodded. He left, and I texted Annie everything that had happened. She said she’d be there soon, and an hour later she showed up with Tina, their classes all over.
As soon as they came into the room I got up and hugged them. I was so glad my friends had come over for a visit.
“Everything’s going to be fine, Julianne,” Annie whispered in my ear as she hugged me close.
“Thanks, Annie.”
“It will. I agree,” Tina added. “What happened?”