What a difference a second makes

Someone once stressed to me that the only thing you’re completely sure of in life is this very second. The second just past will be just a memory and the next second, a promise. Tomorrow, really and truly, belongs to God.

Last Tuesday, my mother Sonia Mayor, who is visiting from the US and lives in a split-level home with three concrete steps separating the bedrooms from the living area, was looking forward to savoring her cranberry juice and cinnamon roll in her bedroom. It was 3 p.m., a perfect time for a snack. She didn’t disturb her yaya, Beth, who was in the kitchen.

So like a juggler, a glass of juice in one hand and a plate of cinnamon roll in the other, she went up to her bedroom. Then her whole life changed in a second. And ours, too.

* * *

Mom missed a step. The glass flew across the hallway, the cinnamon roll bounced. Still high on adrenaline, Mom did an about face after her fall and sat down on one of the steps. Alerted by the thud, Beth came running to her. Good thing my mother doesn’t live alone, because her cell phone was in the bedroom and the landline was not within her reach after her fall.

When she couldn’t get up anymore from the steps, Mom, her voice clear and steady, called up my sister Valerie who sent her driver David and yaya Jenny over. When David tried to carry her to the car, she refused because of the searing pain on her left thigh. Valerie had no recourse but to call a Lifeline ambulance, which arrived in 10 minutes. (Val suggests we all get a Lifeline membership because its services helped saved the day.)

The paramedics tried to transport her, but again, the escalating pain on Mom’s thigh made it impossible. A doctor ordered a powerful painkiller, and only when it took effect did Mom agree to be taken by ambulance to the Asian Hospital and Medical Center, about 15 minutes away.

One look at her leg and the ER doctor told my sister she was certain my mom broke a bone. Her left leg had become shorter. Still on painkillers, my mom seemed calm. Before the storm.

* * *

That day, I was having some problems of my own and in the midst of the stress, I told myself that I could take anything as long as no one in the family had a life-threatening health issue. This I learned from the book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. If it won’t matter a year from now, if it won’t matter at your deathbed, so to speak, don’t sweat it out.

And having processed that as a way of meeting the day’s stress, I read my sister’s anxious text (I was in a meeting and put my phone on silent mode). Mom. Ambulance. Hospital. The perfect storm had descended on my day.

I flew out of the office. Mom’s condition was no small stuff.

When I reached the ER, Mom, due to the miracle of painkillers, seemed OK. When they took her to the X-ray room and was no longer within earshot, Valerie broke down. “Jo, it looks really bad,” she sobbed.

We both walked as far away from the X-ray room as we could because we couldn’t bear to hear Mom’s first cries of pain as she was being prepped for the X-ray.

* * *

God is merciful, indeed. The ER consultant at the time my mom was wheeled in, Dr. Gracita Ybiernas, is the daughter-in-law of a good friend of my parents, Douglas Ybiernas of Iloilo City. She was a great source not only of medical attention but also of comfort. She stayed past her 10 p.m. duty to hold my mother’s hand.

Another great source of solace and strength was that noted orthopedic surgeon Nick Nicomedez, son-in-law of one of my mom’s most cherished and beloved friends, the late Angge Alday Soriano, was holding clinic at Asian at the exact same time my mom was in the ER. Nick was also a classmate of my sister Geraldine at the UP Medical School. He once attended to an ankle fracture I sustained many years ago. After mom was examined, the ER had called his clinic, and just to make sure, I called him, too (thanks to FB, I got his number from his brother-in-law JJ Soriano).

All throughout her episodes of pain, Mom had Dr. Denise Castro by her side. Denise is like a sister to us. When she was a baby and her mom Didit Castro had to be hospitalized for a few days, my mom took care of Denise like her own child. So much so that up to now, Denise calls her “Mommy.” Denise would talk Mommy through her pain, especially when her leg was being put on traction — as Valerie and I were in one corner, cowering in pain ourselves.

Thanks to Denise’s soothing care, Mom made it through.

* * *

The next 48 hours were the most difficult in our lives. Mom, because of her pain (which was eventually managed by the hospital’s Pain Management team), and for my sister and I, for being witnesses to Mom’s Calvary. You always think of your parent as the one who soothes you and comforts you after every cut and bruise; but how do you comfort your source of comfort? What if your source of strength is the one faltering? How do you tell the one who once encouraged you to be brave to be the brave one now? How do you cope when the cycle of life changes, and you become the parent to the parent who makes your burdens light as cotton candy?

“I don’t like pain,” was her mantra to her doctors. She’s known pain — she’s had four Caesarian operations to deliver me and my sisters, but that is a different story altogether.

Where do I find the cotton candy in this situation?

Mom refused to wave as she was being wheeled into the OR last Thursday, 48 hours after her fall. “I don’t want to say goodbye,” she quipped. She preferred the thumbs-up sign.

Twenty minutes before surgery, Dr. Nicomedez and another noted bone surgeon Dr. Jose Martin Paiso called Valerie and me to a conference. They told us the surgery to install a titanium rod inside Mom’s thigh bone and nail it in certain places was not without risks. But the benefits definitely outweighed the risks. In consultation with Geraldine and our other sister Mae, we decided to proceed with the operation. For about an hour, I was acutely aware that I didn’t know how the day would end. Truly, tomorrow — for all of us — is a gift from God.

Would my sisters and I become orphans? We had lost our father Frank five years ago.

We knew Mom was in good hands — God’s and her doctors’.

* * *

I watched a lot of medical dramas, have seen a lot of OR doors swing open in them. When the surgeon is smiling, you know the patient is out of the woods. When he’s not, the family crumples and wails.

Dr. Paiso was the first out of the OR. And he was smiling.

* * *

Dr. Paiso said my mom was not put under general anesthesia (she was given regional anesthesia, which worked very well), and there were times when she’d ask, “What’s that noise?” Ay, makulit pa rin. We were happy.

When Dr. Nicomedez emerged from the OR, still in his scrubs, we heard bells and whistles and asked to pose with him like, as my sister Geraldine noted, “He was a rock star.” He was with Dr. Peimon Badiee. All of them were rock stars to us. (Mom’s team included Dr. Ernesto Chua and Dr. Rowena de Jesus, Dr. Dolma Santos and Dr. Melissa Gozum.)

Mom was wheeled back into her room after only 90 minutes in the Recovery Room. She flashed the thumbs-up sign.

When the doctors asked her how she was feeling, she said, “I am hungry.”

* * *

That Thursday, we all received the gift of tomorrow. Mom is an answered prayer. She sat up on an armchair away from her bed the morning after her surgery. She worries now that she won’t be able to wear shorts because of the scar on her thigh.

She’s receiving great care from her doctors and nurses. She finds her nurse Erika Valdez really sweet and nurses Rachel, Jay-r, E-jay, Sai and Irving really attentive.

The past few days underscored what we know but take for granted — time with our loved ones is precious. Love is a precious gift but the gift of time is more precious — because while love is instinctive, giving the gift of time isn’t. It takes effort.

“Your mom’s recovery is above par,” says Dr. Paiso. My sister Valerie says every day is a better day for mom because many have cheered her on in her journey to  recovery — her brother Pete traveled all the way from Mindoro to visit her. Friends like Didit and Dong Castro and Desi and Candy Tomacruz visited not just once. Her sister-in-law Lilly Reyes and nieces and nephews Karen and Manny Parungo, Aimee and Joel Ferrer, Chuckie and Roan Castro, Dodjie and Sheila Rosario, Ken and Karl Reyes also came to give her moral support. My sisters-in-law Edith Ramirez and Beth Rodriguez brought her lechon, which her doctor prescribed for her. Johnny Litton sent a beautiful flower arrangement and Julie Boschi of Shangri-La sent sweets, even if she hadn’t met mom. Many friends joined us in prayer. And Valerie and I are grateful we had our husbands and children to lean on.

Geraldine flew home last night. And we continue to be here for Mom. The next few months will be challenging as she undergoes rehabilitation for her injured leg. She will have to learn, at age 76, how to walk again.

A split second changed my mother’s life — and we thank God we have today to enjoy that beautiful word: LIFE.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)