"The Kayla" - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - "The Soul Is In the Body"

Kayla Quote:  "The world would never be the same without her smile...she is one of the most kind and genuine people I have ever met...and it saddens me to the fullest that she has to go through this again.  I pray for strength..."  Margarita and Aidan, her son Aiden  in an email 4/19/11 (Aiden is turning 2 on April 20)

Short Synopsis:   The central line came out this morning.  Last night the nurse got a new board with new valves and transferred over all the medicine lines from the central neck line to the PICC in her right arm.  More progress.  Everything is in slow motion in this intensive care unit.  One has to be patient.  They are feeding her through a tube that goes from her nose directly into her stomach.  She is being nourished.  Her muscles in her legs are definitely atrophying.  This is the future plan - to get her moving again.

Kayla has a lot of physical pain in her stomach area.  The one inch tubes go directly into her body, four of them.  They are sutured in and the sites are painful.  She is moved up in the bed by two nurses and even sliding her with the blanket that is underneath her  causes her tremendous pain.  I wonder if time will lessen this particular pain site.  They put little towels between her stomach skin and the canisters to help.

The Long Story:  Mordechai and I have formed a weird sort of family here in our intense state of watching our loved ones going through hell.  He's a third grade Hebrew teacher in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has five children and a wife.  His two oldest sons are 18 and 16, then a daughter, who is 12 and then two more sons, who are 10 and 6.

"The Jews and the Catholics, Mordechai - they have the biggest families.  I am the eldest of seven.  My family is Catholic but I left it.  I am now Protestant."

"My wife and I are liberal.  We did not have children every year.  We wanted to give more to our children and with too many, you can't do that.  She is the oldest of 11.  Her mother had one last child and that one has Down's Syndrome.  They now all live in Israel," he tells me.

We are finding out about how the other one lives.  I watch how he conducts his daily life but it is very special these days because it is Passover.  He cannot use anything that is electric or comes from fire.  He cannot push the elevator button.  He cannot turn on a light.  He cannot even use the microwave here in the waiting room.  His special candle lights are plug in but he was able to plug it in during a particular time and just leave it plugged in day and night.  

Upstairs on the sixth floor is a special Hebrew room where volunteers bring kosher food that is prepared properly for him to eat.  There is a key pad and he knows the code.  He brought me up when he found out that I am allergic to wheat.  All the special passover foods are prepared without wheat.

We go up and he tells me to tell  no one that "I am not Jewish."  He does not want to get into trouble.  There are loads of wonderful cookies and cakes in little packages and I pick up one for a late afternoon snack.  There are large plastic bags with meals for families whose loved one are here in the hospital.  Many are not picked up or forgotten.

A woman comes in and sees me.  I just pretend that I belong there.  Maybe I look like a reformed Jew.  I tell her that perhaps it would be better to bring these big bags directly to the families, that maybe they are just too stressed to come and pick them up.  I have seen some of the volunteers bring these around - it seems to work well that way.  She agrees and then says that these bags have been there too long now.  They need to be thrown away.

Mordechai is silent.  I can see that he feels guilty.  Not me....I can pull this off.  We leave and I have my special cookies for later.
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Kayla is very anxious a lot of the  time and is wearing out her nurses with demands.  Her newest thing that she wants is two bags of ice, which she puts under her hands.  She also has a bag of ice that she puts under her feet which are all the way up to the end of the bed. This comforts her greatly as she gets overheated.  The fan is on her all the time but she is still hot.  She likes to have her back rubbed.  She enjoys having her forehead petted gently, something that Michael started and it calms her down.  She gives requests constantly.  I tell her to stop.  I am finished with this.  She has to let me sit down and rest now.

She has been through more than anyone can even imagine and her spirit is still strong.  She is still interested in all that is going on around her.  It is too bad that she cannot see the Hudson River outside of her window but her bed is facing the unit, not the river.  It is no wonder she wanted to go back to the other unit.  There her bed was sideways and she could watch the lazy barges roll by.  This is what she enjoyed the most.


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I ask Mordechai about his mother.  How is she doing?  They have let her up out of her sedation but she is not responding.  She is in renal failure.  She is on a respirator.  They are putting medicines into her body.  The doctors are asking if the family wants to stop treatment.


"Her soul is in her body," he tells me.  "We do not believe in stopping treatment.  She is not ready to go to God."  I am respectful of his beliefs.  He is strong in his convictions.  Maybe there is something left of his mother, his strong mother, who raised him and his brothers well....