Taking My Mother to the Hospital

Today, I took my mother to the hospital.

It has been almost a year since she was rushed to the emergency room last July with fluid in her lungs.

Since then, I have accompanied her to the university hospital almost every month.

I still remember that night vividly.

It was just three days before my wife and I were scheduled to leave for Canada.

A little after 11 p.m., I noticed a voicemail from my mother.She was not the type of person to call that late.I immediately sensed something was wrong and called her back.

When she answered, I could barely make out her words.

“I’m dying… I can’t breathe… I can’t…”

Her voice came in broken fragments.

I kept telling her to focus on taking slow breaths while contacting other family members and asking them to call an ambulance.

Somehow, she survived.

To this day, I believe she could easily have died that night.

If it had happened after we had already left for Canada, we might not have made it back in time.

Life can change on the thinnest of margins.

And yet, somehow, she pulled through.

Now, a year later, we are still able to go to the hospital together.

For that alone, I am grateful.

Her heart failure numbers have remained stable for the past three months.

At one point she was taking six different medications.

Now she is down to four.

Today, one of those medications was reduced even further.

The physician has been kind enough to listen carefully to my observations whenever I accompany her.He considers what I am seeing in her condition and works with us to gradually reduce the medications when appropriate.

I appreciate that greatly.

Her complexion is good.

She has no swelling.

No shortness of breath.

If you look only at the numbers, everything appears to be moving in the right direction.

And yet there is one major problem.

She cannot stand for very long.

The medications have improved her heart function.

At the same time, walking has become increasingly difficult.

Even her doctors cannot find a clear explanation.

By all conventional measures, she should be doing well.

Yet standing remains a challenge.

It is a mystery.

Whenever I see her, I work on her.

I also continue the daily remote sessions.

I am doing everything I know how to do.

Still, dramatic improvement has not come.

The effects of taking medication every day may simply be too significant.

What makes this even stranger is that something very similar happened seven or eight years ago.

Back then, walking also became difficult.

We continued working on it, and eventually, without any dramatic intervention, it gradually resolved.

Perhaps the same thing will happen this time.

Perhaps it won’t.

I honestly don’t know.

Sometimes I wonder whether I have the right to call what I do KaradaNaoru—“The Body Heals.”

After all, if I cannot fully restore my own mother, what does that say?

Over the years, I have witnessed remarkable changes in many people.

The potential of the human body continues to amaze me.

But I have also learned that everything has limits.

No one is all-powerful.

I am certainly not.

So all I can do is continue showing up, doing what I can, one day at a time.

When I think back to last July, simply being able to drive my mother to the hospital, talk with her afterward, and spend a little time together feels like a gift.

Ever since that night, I have considered this borrowed time.

Everything after that emergency has felt like extra time we were fortunate enough to receive.

So if she is alive, that is enough.

No one knows what the future holds.

Perhaps she will walk comfortably again.

Perhaps she won’t.

But she is still here.

And as long as we are alive, good things can still happen.

That is what I remind myself of today as the day comes to an end.