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He looks to Susie and me, and I officially feel like the worst daughter alive, not knowing anything about how my mom lives or her day-to-day activities.
Susie places her hand over mine in a comforting way as she speaks for us. “We had actually just eaten an hour earlier before things got really bad.”
My mom eyes her, obviously disagreeing with her by the way her face scrunches up, but she doesn’t actually say anything, so Susie continues.
“We went up for a concert and stayed the night. She was saying we’d been up there for two nights when it was our first and only night, and around three in the morning, she started walking around, not really understanding where she was or what was going on.”
I sit up straight in my chair and look at Susie, this being the first time I’m hearing this part.
“That didn’t happen,” Mom says angrily, making me even more worried about what I’m hearing.
My mom is not an angry person, and I’ve never seen the expression she’s making right now toward anyone, especially her best friend.
Susie grips my hand in hers and continues, “I didn’t want to tell Hannah over the phone just how bad it had gotten. No point in worrying her as she traveled here.”
I take a deep breath, trying to calm the emotions running through me.How did I not know what was going on with my mom?
Dr. Carlson nods. “Okay, let’s do some cognitive tests.”
He runs her through a bunch of questions as mundane as when her birthday is to harder questions, like counting backward, starting at one hundred, or spelling the wordworldbackward without writing it down.
It’s hard to watch as she gets tripped up with simple questions. The more I hear, the more what’s going on sinks in, especially with how frustrated she gets with the process.
When he gives her a piece of paper to draw a clock, she immediately writes the wordworld, then spells it backward like he asked, just to prove she can even though the instruction was not to write it down.
He just nods and moves on with the task of having her draw the clock.
Watching her struggle to draw a clock tears me apart inside. She draws a circle with an asterisk at the twelve, three, six, and nine spots, then looks at him, asking, “Is this okay?”
He shakes his head, and she goes back to thinking really hard about what to do. She sees where she wroteworlddown on the paper, so she writes aWat the twelve spot, anOat the three spot, aRat the six spot, and aDat the nine spot, then hands it to him, saying, “Here. This is right, right?”
To my surprise, he grabs it from her and says, “Good job.”
She smiles as if she’s proud she got the answer right, and he goes on to the next question.
At the end of our appointment, he says, “I’m so sorry to say this, but I think we’re dealing with dementia, and by the looks of things”—he motions to the clock on the paper—“it might be pretty advanced. I’m going to schedule her for a PET scan. Would you guys be able to get her to Billings to have one? It’s the closest we have here.”
“I can!” I blurt out, feeling absolutely helpless in the situation and glad there’s finally something I can do.
Susie grips my hand tighter, and I nod her direction in thanks.
“Okay, we’ll get the test done and meet again as soon as I have the results,” Dr. Carlson says.
We say our good-byes and head out of his office.
Once we’re in the car, my mom looks at us. “Did I do that bad?”
All I do is wrap my arms around her, not having a clue as to what to say, but wanting her to know that I’m here for her, no matter what.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Matthew
As I get to the hitting facility, I take a moment to compose myself before heading inside. I ate my bagel on the way here and drank half of my coffee, but none of it helped. I still feel like I didn’t sleep a wink, and my nerves are completely shot from seeing Hannah.
My friends used to make so much fun of me when we were in high school, saying I was beyond pussy-whipped, and now, I’m seeing why they said that.
It was easy to forget about how I felt when she lived so far away and I was busy with school and baseball. When I moved back, a lot of things reminded me of her, but I was able to compartmentalize each memory as just that—a memory.
