The Simple Math of Toxicity

Tomorrow morning, I have to take my mother to the hospital to begin the initial stages of a kidney transplant. The purpose of this visit, as I understand it, is informational and educational. She and I will learn more about this foreign thing called a ‘kidney transplant.’ We (or maybe more so me, as she has been thinking about this for some time) will learn the language, the relationships, and the people involved in this whole process, and then we will be taught how to navigate it.

It is about a two-hour drive each way to the medical center. You have to love the investments in healthcare in South Carolina by its leadership, don’t you? Smack dab in the heart of the diabetes belt, a person living in the state capital must drive two hours for this type of kidney care. This, to me, is the equivalent of having to drive two hours for a plate of pulled pork BBQ in these parts — a state of affairs that would cause the governor to declare a state of emergency.

The big thing for me is the drive.

You see, my mother is not the easiest person to manage. In my mind, I see our mother-son dyad as one in which my mother is the ‘problem maker,’ and I am the ‘problem solver.’

This is never good for a caregiver and child relationship at any time in the life of that relationship. Children are programmed to seek out their caregivers to ‘fix’ them — ease their pain when they get a boo-boo on the playground, assuage their anxieties about joining the soccer team, slip them a few bucks so they can buy those new…