Breathe
By Rocío Correa
A few weeks ago I shared these lines with you:
When life departs, when does life depart? It is not true that life is gone just at the moment of the last expiration. Life is gone when you reach the point of being 94 years old and in full consciousness you realize that you are dying and in fact all you want is to tear yourself away from life.
You were happy, even without having children, you were happy, even without having lived with a partner, you were happy with yourself, full of friends and relatives present while you drank, ate, danced and traveled; sincere affections that accompanied you also in those days since you arrived at the nursing home, no one abandoned you, you never knew the bitterness of loneliness.
But today you know you are dying, even though no one has told you, your leg is practically gangrenous, you fell a month ago and the wound was never able to heal despite all the cures and antibiotic cycles; the thought of surgery was not feasible, not with a circulatory system as compromised as yours has been for several years.
No one has told you this, but the lacerating pain that keeps you awake at night and makes you tremble during the day is the announcement that the end is near, and you know it. As you say, Aunt Delfina, "facciamola finita" (let's get it over with).
Yes, let's get it over with, but how? when? Yesterday your sister, the only one you have left alive, and the nephew who have taken care of you in this phase of your life gave authorization to the doctor who follows you inside the nursing home to pass to the heaviest thing, to pure morphine. It is true that it is still surprising how much lucidity there is in your head, you are so present that you are able to make the complete list with day, month and year of the birthdays of your parents, your brother, your 3 sisters, your 7 nephews and who knows? how many more acquaintances, you still have 3 cigarettes to smoke and to think that there were even voices within your family to get rid of cigarettes! That was about 4 years ago, the first time you fell and in full consciousness you decided that the time of living alone was over.
We know, going to pure morphine would rob us of your presence, losing the notion of time and space, maybe you will not recognize us anymore, but it will take you away from the pain to abandon you sweetly.
Voices, always voices, from one side, or the other, from near or far, who believe they have a better alternative. Today I was approached by a nurse who questioned me for having cancelled tomorrow's appointment at the hospital; "they are not doing what needs to be done". She does not know that yesterday the doctor was asked: "What would you do if it were your mother or sister? To which she replied: "I would leave her alone" and then what do you decide? Who do you listen to? In the end, who cares what the others say? In the same way, they will always judge us, there will always be someone who will say theirs.
And now here we are:
Two weeks have passed since the morphine began to mix with red and white blood cells in your bloodstream and the initial medical prognoses told us of 5 days, a week for an outcome in the form of respiratory arrest and an absent person. Doubts have invaded our days since then, but the alternative was no alternative; no! Not to amputate the leg of a 94 year old woman because the circulatory blockage reached the head of the femur, even in the midst of the doubts the option was to let the infection take its course, eliminating the pain.
Aunt Delfina today my tears for you have accompanied me all day; after leaving you without eating, because today there was no human power to make you eat, I walked home accompanied by that lump in my throat that becomes fat and almost no one can swallow saliva. "It is clear that death is part of life" I could not stop thinking, but fuck! there are ways to go and ways, not this one, not like this! Not when the agony consumes only your body and not your mind, it is a bastard, you're there, it's terrible.
Neither doctors nor nurses can explain how it is possible for you to remain conscious in the here and now? They started with a morphine patch that did almost nothing, the pain did not disappear, it diminished little, for that reason they switched to a "balloon" that by venoclysis slowly releases a more powerful dose, they change it every four days, but the greatest torture comes every third day when they do the healing of the injured leg, you suffer so much, you cry desperately, something never seen in you and how not? the sore is long and deep with the tendon already in sight; under your condition I can only imagine war wounded.
To this day, two weeks after going on pure morphine, you are still lucid, with many kilos less and a great desire to smoke, now even that is no longer possible, the doctors have forbidden it. I wish your head had gone as the doctors anticipated and you were only passing to the afterlife by deep sleep.
After all, it's the moment when I don't know if morphine really doesn't have all those great knockout powers attributed to it or if the paste you're made of is so rough that even morphine doesn't make you.
"A prayer addressed to heaven to help you fly soon, freeing you lightly from all pain and weariness."
Rocío Correa
rocio.correa@icloud.com
Graduate in journalism from the "Carlos Septién García" School of Journalism. Constant re-inventor of herself. She focuses her interest on social, cultural, political and lifestyle trends with particular interest in her characters.
"The unspeakable must not remain silent."
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