Hairdressers Hear Everything

Long before my mother’s final illness, I had already heard of something called ileus.

Not in medical school.

Obviously.

I was a hairdresser.

But after decades behind a styling chair, you hear an astonishing number of stories.

Births.

Deaths.

Cancer.

Heart attacks.

Divorces.

Surgeries.

Hospital mistakes.

Miraculous recoveries.

Not-so-miraculous recoveries.

People tell their hairdresser things they don’t tell anybody else.

By the time my mother became ill, I’d spent decades listening to clients describe medical experiences involving themselves, spouses, parents, children and friends.

Somewhere in all of those stories, I had heard about postoperative ileus.

I knew, in a general and non-medical way, that sometimes the digestive system can slow down or temporarily stop functioning properly after surgery.

I’d even heard frightening stories about complications.

So later, when my mother’s medical crisis unfolded, another sentence began haunting me:

You knew about this.

The Dangerous Magic of Knowing the Ending

Imagine watching a mystery movie for the second time.

Suddenly every clue is obvious.

Of course that person was lying.

Of course that door mattered.

Of course that sentence was foreshadowing.

How could you have missed it?

Because the first time you watched it, you didn’t know the ending.

Caregiving can work the same way.

After something goes terribly wrong, every earlier moment seems illuminated by what happened later.

That stomach pain?

A clue.

That complaint?

A clue.

That hesitation?

A clue.

That odd symptom?

A clue.

Except at the time, those things were simply moments happening in sequence.

Nobody had placed ominous music underneath them.

Caregiving Gives You Responsibility Without Omniscience

I think that’s one of the cruel bargains of caregiving.

You are given enormous responsibility.

But you are not given enormous knowledge.

You’re expected to notice changes.

Remember medications.

Listen to doctors.

Watch symptoms.

Feed people.

Help them walk.

Make appointments.

Advocate.

Call family members.

Interpret moods.

Figure out when “I’m fine” means I’m fine and when it means something is very wrong.

And you are doing all of that while frightened.

Sometimes sleep-deprived.

Sometimes grieving before the person has even died.

Then if the outcome is terrible, you replay every decision.

As though a good caregiver should have possessed supernatural powers.

The Hairdresser in Me Made It Worse

The irony is that I had spent years hearing other people’s stories.

Thousands upon thousands of them.

That gave me a kind of strange layperson’s library of human experience.

So when something medical happened, I would occasionally think:

I’ve heard about this before.

Sometimes that kind of knowledge is useful.

But it can also make you overestimate what you should have been able to recognize.

Hearing about someone else’s condition while standing behind a styling chair does not make you qualified to diagnose your mother’s postoperative complication.

I understand that intellectually.

Emotionally took longer.

I Am Careful About the Medical Story Now

There’s another reason I want to write about this carefully.

Medical stories become simplified very easily.

Something complicated happens.

Years pass.

We tell the story again and again.

And eventually:

A caused B.

B caused C.

Somebody should have known.

Somebody should have prevented it.

Real medicine is often much messier than that.

My memoir records what I understood and believed during my mother’s postoperative crisis, including my recollection that I’d previously heard about ileus through clients and later tormented myself because I hadn’t recognized a similar possibility in my own mother’s condition.

That’s my experience.

It isn’t a medical textbook.

And I don’t want my personal guilt to masquerade as medical certainty.

Caregivers Are Not Doctors With Worse Parking

That’s a line I wish more people understood.

A caregiver may become astonishingly knowledgeable.

You learn medication names.

Lab numbers.

Symptoms.

Insurance terminology.

Hospital routines.

You may become more familiar with someone’s day-to-day condition than anyone else.

But you are still not omniscient.

You don’t suddenly acquire a medical degree because someone you love gets sick.

And even medical professionals don’t always know how a situation will unfold.

Why did I expect more from myself?

Love.

That’s probably the answer.

Love creates the illusion that we should somehow know.

What I Wish I Had Told Myself

If I could sit beside the version of myself taking care of my mother, I wouldn’t give him a diagnosis.

I wouldn’t give him medical instructions.

I wouldn’t tell him the ending.

I’d say:

Pay attention.

Ask questions.

Call when you’re worried.

Don’t be afraid to ask the same question twice.

Write things down.

Listen to your instincts, but don’t assume instinct makes you a medical professional.

And understand that doing your best does not guarantee the outcome you desperately want.

That’s the part caregivers don’t hear enough.

Sometimes you do everything you know to do.

And something terrible still happens.

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