No More Pain

Once we understood the drugs we chose to research, we interviewed people who had had experience with drugs, to hear their stories and find out why they did drugs, or why people they knew did drugs. With that information, we then wrote short stories using our interviews as the basis.

Story:
“Mom? Are you awake?”

I reached out for my mother’s hand. I had just seen her mouth tighten, and my heart leapt. She had been asleep since the surgery the night before. That had been a horrible night, knowing that my mom was being cut up so the doctors could perform the surgery that would only probably remove the cancer in her kidneys. It was just my mom and eleven-year-old me, so a nurse had stayed up with me and showed me to the ward where I could sleep.

My mom opened her eyes slightly. Under normal circumstances, I thought she was gorgeous with her long, wavy red hair, gray-blue eyes and slender body (for a mother). At that moment, she was bald and had tubes sticking out of every part of her body, but I still thought she was pretty. She looked over at me, but I could tell that she wasn’t really seeing me. I could tell that whatever was in the IVs was drugging her so much that she could not really recognize her surroundings.

“Ah, she’s awake!” Doctor Storum walked in, followed by one of his nurses. He sat down on the other side of the bed, while the nurse checked all of the monitor machines and IVs. “We have the results of your surgery, Ms. Croll,” he said, grasping my mom’s free hand.

***
It turned out that they had managed to remove all of the kidney cancer, but that they had discovered cancerous cells in her pelvis called Chondrosarcoma. That at least explained why she had been feeling pain in her hip bones, as well as her kidney, but it also meant that she would have to go through chemotherapy. We were finally able to go home after a week in the hospital, but the doctors sent four bottles of pills with us that my mom was to take at various times of the day. It was hard to see my mom in so much pain, and I tried my best to make her as comfortable as possible. I had thought that I was the child, but in that time, my mother became as helpless as a six year old.

***
“Amber, could you bring me the morphine and a glass of water? Oh, and no food this time, I’m not hungry.”

I stood up from the couch where I had been reading my summer reading book for 6th grade, and keeping an eye on my mom. “Sure, mom.” I handed the requested items to her, and she shook two pills into her hand.

“Didn’t the doctor say to only take one of those at a time?” I asked my mom hesitantly. There had been a whole packet of papers with warnings and restrictions regarding my mom’s medications.

“I know, but my hips hurt so much! And Dr. Storum said I should make myself comfortable.”
“Oh… ok… Is there anything else you want me to do?”

***
The school year was fast approaching, and apart from her pain, my mom seemed to be doing better. She was now able to get around the house, which allowed me to prepare for school. When it came, I spent the first few days worrying about whether she could really take care of herself. However, I needn’t have worried much, for she was able to keep the pain down. In fact, she seemed to become herself again over the next few weeks. She cooked our dinners, made phone calls and asked me how school was going.

One evening, as I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I paused to examine my mom’s pill bottles on the counter. One of the bottles was empty (it had previously contained morphine), but there was a full one next to it. Apparently, my mom had needed a refill. I turned away, drinking my water, but then stopped. Didn’t she just get a refill a few days ago? I thought. Maybe that was something else, though... I had recently sat down and read all the way through the papers the doctors had given my mom about her medications. Since then, I had begun to see some of the medications’ side effects in my mother. She was always complaining about her digestion, and she would spend whole days in a short of drowsy state. I hadn’t noticed those things before because the fear of the surgery and bone cancer had been so much greater, but now I was just as paranoid about something going wrong with the drugs.

***
School started, and with it came the usual homework. One Friday night, I took a break from my math homework to watch a show on the Discovery channel. When the commercials came on, I got up to get some ice cream, and I found my mom in the kitchen to taking her nighttime medications. That’s three morphine pills. That definitely more than she is supposed to have!

“Mom?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to take that many morphine pills…”

“I’m just trying to function, Amber.”

After that, I kept my concerns to myself. Who was I kidding? I was only eleven, and certainly did not want to cause my mother any more pain. I began to try to distance myself from my mom’s health problems, even though I could not escape them. They weighed heavily on me as I went through my first semester of sixth grade. I began to feel like I spent more time at the hospital than at home. The hardest part of this change, however, was the strain it put on my relationship with my mom. We talked less, partly because I spent my time at home in my room, and partly because my mom seemed to have forgotten how to be a mother. She never asked how school was going, or made sure I did my homework, or really disciplined me at all. She spent most of her time in front of the TV, or in the bathroom, and she had lost a lot of weight.

***
One night, my mom came into my room to tell me that she needed to go to the hospital, and that she didn’t want to leave me home alone, so I needed to come. I grabbed a Harry Potter book before I got up so I would have something to do. When we arrived, I followed my mom into the pharmacy and sat down in one of the chairs. Behind me, my mom began talking to the nurse.

“A refill? Did you bring your bottle with you, Ms. Croll? Ok, hold on, I will be right back.”

Harry didn’t have to do his homework by flashlight anymore; now he could sit in the bright sunshine outside Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor, finishing his essays with the occasional help for Florean Fortescue himself…

“Ms. Croll? Our records show that you have already had a refill within the last two weeks.”

“I have Chondrosarcoma cancer, and I have been trying to cope, but the pain has been too much for me to function.”

“I could schedule another appointment…”

“No, that’s not necessary… I just need some more medications—”

***
I was silent as we walked back to the car with only the empty morphine bottle in hand. Some of the things my mom had said scared me. It had finally dawned on me that my mom was too dependent (maybe addicted?) to her morphine medication. This was something I could not comprehend; I could not understand why it had happened. And there, in the middle of the parking lot, I fought back the tears that I had refused to let out for months, since we had come home from the surgery. We got into the car in an awkward silence, and I realized that my mom knew I had been listening to the conversation in the pharmacy.

“Look, don’t judge me Amber!”

“I… What?”

“I know I haven’t been a good mother. I know I haven’t been a good role model.”

“No mom—”

“I thought I’d deal with the pain. I knew I would start losing control of my actions, and even my needs because of the cancer, but I didn’t know that it would happen before that!” She gripped the steering wheel, and I was afraid of what she might say or do next, but then I noticed that she was crying, and I began to cry too.

“Why? I mean, why did you have to keep taking morphine, more than the doctor’s said you were supposed to?”

“I just wanted to feel better. I just wanted to be happy. You are all I have left, and I didn’t want them to take you away because I couldn’t take care of you. And I knew that you needed me to be able to function. You need me to be your mother, even though I’m no longer capable.” She gasp trying to calm her sobs. “You’re only eleven, and these aren’t your problems—”

“But they are my problems!” I said, wiping my face with my palms. “You’re my mom.”

***
Five years later, my mother died of a cancer related disease. At 34, I still miss her, and I think about her all the time, but for the most part they are happy memories. After that night in the hospital parking lot, she consented to talk to her doctor about her dependency. To help with the pain, my mom began doing some therapy sessions. However, what helped the most, I think was the new tradition we started of reading books to each other and taking turns braiding each other’s hair before we went to bed. In those five years, my mother made up for all of the bad choices she had made after the surgery, and I think she found the happiness she had been seeking from her morphine addiction.