by Diane Winters

Created on: January 30, 2009

She calls the paramedics on the Fire Department, "The Boys". As an RN in a major Los Angeles hospital for 36 years, I wondered if that was what all the nurses called them as they wheeled sick and bleeding patients into the Emergency Room.

But that was back in the day...back in the day when she could think fast and move quickly to insert breathing tubes, start multiple IVs and soothe scared children with her cold, soothing, efficient hands. That night I held one of her cold hands as one of "the boys" held the oxygen mask to her face. She looked so little on that gurney, so small on the treatment bed in the ER, so tiny in that awful hospital bed with the rails up.

With her education and medical knowledge, she talked her way into being released back to her apartment the day before Thanksgiving. I watched the doctor nod in agreement as she explained she now understood that she'd require assistance, and unlike before, would ask for it. I said nothing as she told the charge nurse that she required no instruction if they'd deliver the oxygen tanks tonight. I held my tongue when she icily whispered to me that if I didn't want to pick her up and take her home, she had memorized her Visa number, and could charge the 10 mile cab ride from the Skilled Nursing Facility. Not only did I hold my tongue, but I went out and spent $100. on groceries and filled her apartment with the foods she liked. I needed to support her decisions, although I was far from being in agreement with them. She was still in charge.

When she called me Thanksgiving Day to say she wasn't up to coming to my house with her friend, I quietly packed up the whole dinner as asked, and delivered it. The tears flowed freely on my drive back home. These were her decisions; to come home, to try and make it one more time, to give it her best, to attempt to make it to the bathroom with only the assistance of a walker.

The following day, she looked up and asked me again, pale and gasping, to "call the boys". This time it was different. This time it was up to me to make the decisions. There are no brothers, no sisters, no relatives. Just us. Really just me. We have always seen things from different perspectives, and the hardest thing of all is not to insert my knowledge or understanding into her life. Our family values. We may do things our own way, but each of us holds dear the concept of integrity.

I packed up her apartment. That was a bad day, but really, it could have been worse. Most people pack up their parents

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