A Letter From the Patient's Bedside

The Situation Remains Critical

Hello friends,

We’ve been silent for weeks. Many reasons, though sloth as always played a part. In the time since we last published, however, there’s been no shortage of solid coverage in the area, and a feeling on our part that we had little to add to the discussion, other than commentary that amounted to “Yeah! What that guy said!” “Yaaay Red Team!”

Or worse, something we’ve become a little more sensitive to— writing that can be described as navel-gazing in a “dear diary style.”

Since our last newsletter, we’ve had presidents and ex-presidents visit the border and do their thing—one flirting with the Governor— godspeed, you lovebirds, if it’s real. Another flirting with… the notion of seeming like he actually cares, when his actions until recently more than indicate where his cares truly lie— somewhere foreign to the rest of us, it surely seems, if one ignores the near universal appeal of filthy lucre to our baser selves.

It’s all become so tiresome. Even as relatively harmless-seeming asylum seekers have dwindled to much-reduced numbers in Eagle Pass, human smugglers and the illegal aliens they traffic continue to strain public safety and emergency medical services in Kinney County and the surrounding region.

We write this on Saturday morning, after a Thursday and Friday we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemies.

We assume most of our readers have already seen coverage online of the bloody and chaotic toll tallied in a series of Law Enforcement pursuits and incidents in Kinney County at the end of the week.

The readers we speak of are probably even better informed on just what happened than we are.

We have been busy. And unaware of many of the details.

You see, while helicopters and ambulances were racing to the scene of one chase’s aftermath, we ourselves were discovering our elderly mother collapsed on the floor of the family home. Unconscious. In a small puddle of what seemed to be bloody vomit.

We have buried the lead once more.

It is hard to describe the feeling, calling for an ambulance, hearing emergency sirens right outside the door and knowing, they are not coming for you, or your mother. Not yet.

Standing there impotently, we haven’t realized yet that our mother has suffered a massive stroke.

It is impossible to know exactly how things might have gone in the absence of a multiple-casualty pursuit of human smugglers at the same time as our mother’s medical emergency. We live out in the sticks. Paramedics and helicopters might not’ve been able to have gotten her to St. Luke’s hospital in San Antonio all that much more quickly.

One must believe this. The alternative is a terrible and ultimately self-destructive rage.

One must believe that there is…

Nevermind.

Mom is in ICU. She’s strong and a relatively healthy girl for her 79 years. But the stroke is massive. And, after the successful removal of the clot, she’s suffered a severe brain bleed and swelling. Further damage to her brain. Damage. To her brain.

Prior to the bleed, we seemed to be communicating. One squeeze from her left hand for yes. Two for no. That seemed to stop with the bleed. Opening her eyes is progress.

We are reading to her. Sometimes we try to sing old songs she knows. It’s hard to sing while under this weight. The gravity of the future squats upon our chests like a demon.

She doesn’t know it, but we’ve stolen and modified a line from a better writer, telling her that she has the simplest, but most important job right now. She just has to lie there, keep breathing, and try to imagine herself healing with every good deep breath. She squeezed our hand, once, upon hearing that.

Encouraging. But there’s still a long road to go.

Someone suggested reading her some scripture. It must be said, she is as we have been most of our adult lives— not all that religious.

But there are no atheists in foxholes, they say. And last night, there was no atheist in her room. We told the suggester that we’d do it. They asked what we planned to read.

Suddenly, we are in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Trying not to embarrass ourselves as our thoughts race— what the heck ARE we going to read? The theme song is playing in our thoughts— any minute now, actor and comedian Larry David is going to step out from behind a curtain, trip on a cord, and unplug Mom’s monitoring devices.

A small voice in our head leaps to the rescue, remembering a lyric from an old Dwight Yoakum song. “The Book of Luke!” Thanks brain.

“just say the word, and my servant will be healed” (7:7).

The caller, the suggester, says, “Oh? Why the Book of Luke?”

Oh jeeze. Can’t say it out loud. How do you explain to this person what’s just happened here?

“Just something I remembered,” one says, trying to be casual and cool, and not some filthy heathen.

“Oh. Well, Luke is the Patron Saint of Doctors and Healers.”

Life has many coincidences. One hopes doubters will forgive us for hoping that little voice in our head just then actually was a message from the Lord. Mom needs all the help she can get.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for putting up with our absences and any writing that has a whiff of “dear diary” to it.

Ordinarily, Mom and Dad are so private, we would not have breathed a word of such events. But her tale— our tale— of the potential uncertainty of medical services in the face of this crisis is one that is happening regularly to many people. Uncertainty is an awful torture.

God bless the healers. Everyone involved along the way so far has been great— even in the face of giant Italians who are terrified that the next alarm might be ringing in their mother’s ICU.

We’ll be back when we’re back. We hope this personal story will have a relatively happy ending.

Dear Diary….