Helicopter Moms: When roles reverse

(Editor's note: Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're tackling parenthood in the 21st century -- or being tackled by it. This is the latest in a series of reflections by UPI writers.)

SKOKIE, Ill., Dec. 1 (UPI) --It's true. We turn into our mothers.

This year has been a bit of a revelation to me. My 82-year-old mother, a survivor by any measure, has developed some serious health problems and I've gone from being a helicopter mother in my own right to a helicopter daughter.

Talk about the sandwich generation.

It started in January when my mother's back pain from undiagnosed spinal stenosis became so severe, her heart rate dropped to 30 and she collapsed. When the ambulance arrived, I begged them to take us to a hospital farther away because the nearer one was where my father had died and I knew my mother would freak if she wound up there.

After nearly a week in the hospital and several changes in her medication, they sent her home. She was very upset though. Her internist hadn't stopped by or called. He was on vacation.

When she left messages with his office the following week, she never got a call back. Apparently her answering machine was on the fritz. But she blamed them anyway.

It was mid-February before she could arrange an appointment and appointments with her cardiologist and endocrinologist -- she's diabetic as well -- kept getting rescheduled.

I was the designated driver.

The internist finally ordered a magnetic resonance imaging test to see what was going on with her spine since she still was complaining of severe back pain. At first, she didn't want to take the scan. She was afraid she'd react to the contrast agent as my father had when he underwent an arteriogram for a brain tumor. The reaction killed him.

After convincing her the contrast agent was different, she finally took the scan. That's when the spinal stenosis finally got diagnosed. She went the cortisone route after rejecting a chiropractor.

The MRI had picked up another problem, a tumor on her adrenal gland. No big deal, she was told. Most are benign and nothing needs to be done about them. She was told to take another scan in July.

In the meantime, she started complaining of heart palpitations but her appointments with the specialists kept getting rescheduled. And although she wasn't on that many medications, her Medicare Part D coverage ran into the doughnut hole.

After the second scan, the internist and cardiologist didn't get too excited, but the endocrinologist did. He ordered a number of tests. Her potassium levels were way high and her cortisol production was off the charts. He sent her to a surgeon for a consultation in September. He recommended surgery but had to put it off for about a month because he was switching hospitals.

This is not a woman who goes under the knife willingly. The only elective surgeries she ever had were for removal of her Nazi concentration camp number, a burst appendix and a foot problem.

By this time the cortisone wasn't doing much for her anymore, so she was downing aspirin for pain. One Friday night, her right eye filled with blood.

Off to the opthamologist Saturday morning. She had had other eye problems in the past, including a cataract surgery that took four years to heal. During the examination, she could not read the eye chart at all. They sent us to the emergency room to make sure she hadn't had a stroke.

She hadn't.

On a Tuesday toward the end of October, the surgery finally occurred. The doctor told my brother and me he had to remove the whole adrenal gland in addition to the tumor -- a pheochromocytoma, which is fairly rare. She awoke from the anesthesia pretty alert and two days later was begging to get out of the hospital. She was back in her apartment by Friday.

Then I made my mistake. I told her the whole gland, was removed, not just the tumor. I explained she had a second adrenal gland and the doctors had told us it would take over and she'd be just fine. The next day she called me very depressed. She missed her adrenal gland. She's still grieving for it.

The follow-up appointment with the surgeon indicated her post-op progress is on track.

The bonus in all this is that removing the tumor seems to have relieved her back pain. I've got my fingers crossed.