Creative Writing: Kidney Failure

I asked my mom “what’s wrong,” she replied with a sorrowful “your Aunt Lisa is in trouble, we must leave now.” The worst part of all of this was my Aunt Lisa’s son was with us, Matthew. He did not know what to think or believe. No one knew the world would slowly start shattering beneath all of us that morning. We drove to her house, we saw ambulances and police cars driving by, that did not help our nerves at all. We finally arrived at her apartment, we never thought all of those emergency vehicles would be going there. My brother and I stay in the car since I was only eight and he was only eleven. My mom and cousin run into the apartment hoping to only find my Aunt had fallen and is unconscious, or she is passed out drunk, just let it be something that is not permanent. What they come to find is that my Aunt is laying on the floor, unconscious, but cold as ice. It was not from someone killing her, or us getting there too late. She had died twenty-four minutes before that phone

The stench of death hit my nostrils as I opened the door to go inside, which is why I always hated going to the hospital. We waited the fifteen minute queue, until I heard my name from a nurse. I followed the nurse into a small, beige room. I sat down on the examining table, as my doctor walked in. I told him my symptoms, and he did a quick check up. His cold fingers pressed against my lower back. “Breathe in and out.” He said. I did as told. “Slower.” he exclaimed. At that moment, while I was slowly breathing in and out, I could hear a small click every time I inhaled. The doctor looked up and said, “Ahhh, you seem to have pneumonia.” He explained to my mom and I what that meant because we were clueless. After he finished, he told us that if I waited any longer to go to the hospital, he wouldn’t be speaking to me, which opened my mom’s eyes finally. He told me that I couldn’t go to school for at least another two weeks, gave me a school note and my prescription. We left the hospital. My mom dropped me off, and went to pick up the medication. As I lay in bed, I remember thinking about everything that has happened to me in the past two days, and what the doctor told me. Those thoughts were interrupted by the opening of my bedroom door as my mom walked in. She handed me the medication. I swallowed the pills, and fell asleep. The next morning my mom walks in with a stack of papers. She said, “It’s alright if you’re not able to attend class,

Have you seen my husband? Is all my mom was shouting as she held my hand tightly, running back and forth through the hospital? A receptionist sent us to a room, which felt like coming into an isolated mausoleum. The cold air enveloped my entire body, ice has replaced my spine and numbness is all my fingers felt. The room was somber dark, dead silence; the only sound heard was the heart machine ... Beep … Beep. There wasn’t anything more traumatizing then seeing my father lain on the bed, unresponsive, tubes coming from out mouth and nose. The sadness and desperation in his eyes broke my heart. All of sudden the heart monitor went off with a loud buzzing sound. A nurse jumped out of nowhere “Code Blue”, in matter of seconds 4 nurses and a doctor surrounded my father, my mom and I mindset was at a shock, like were able to see what was happening but couldn’t do anything our body was some glued to the floor. The doctors and nurses tired to help my father but it was too late,

I vividly remember that chilly night in March as I walked out of Fifer, the building my father now calls home, for the first time. I had goosebumps, but they were not from the cold I felt hit my skin. Instead, they were from the sickness in my stomach. As I got in the car, I began to cry and had to stop myself from running back inside. My entire world had turned upside-down. How could I go home without my father? How could I leave him in a nursing home, a place where he was too young and mentally fit to be confined? I had to fight the feeling that he didn’t belong. I had to remind myself of why he chose to be there, and I hated it.

“Right this way,” the nurse ahead of me was prompting me to a brightly lit hall that was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t help but be terrified by the sights and sounds around me: people chattering, machines methodically beeping, gurneys rushing past. It was my first time in a hospital and my eyes frantically searched each room looking for any trace of my father. She stopped suddenly and I turned to the bed in front of me but I could not comprehend what I saw. At such a young age, I idolized my father; I had never seen him so vulnerable. Seeing him laying in a hospital bed unconscious, surrounded by wires and tubes was like witnessing Superman encounter kryptonite. My dad’s car accident not only made him a quadriplegic, but also crippled

It was the year 1996 in the month of June, I will never forget that month and year because it

On Wednesday, November 26, 2014, I was coming out of a very hectic day at work, when I received the news that had me breaking down in tears. “Odette your mother is in the emergency room.” I could not believe the words that were coming out of my father's mouth in that instinct. So many thoughts came rushing through my mind. “Why, my mom?” I kept on asking myself, but I knew that I could not show my depression to my two younger siblings. The reason for that was that I did not want to scare them nor make them feel the horrible feeling that I was feeling inside. Even though I appeared to look fine in the outside, my precious soul was dying in sorrows in the inside. The scariest thought of knowing your mother is in danger and that you cannot do anything to save her is very traumatizing. I honestly felt like my hands were tied behind my back while I saw her drowning in pain.

We drove for what seemed hours to my six year old self. When we arrived in the parking lot of the hospital, which I can never remember the name of, he told us why we were there. Lauren threw a fit, screaming and crying like someone was hurting her. She shouted “I never wanted him”. I believe that is still to this day the biggest lie she has ever told. We walked up to the big glass hospital doors, and straight through them to the elevator. I waited and waited for what seemed forever until the big silver doors opened, and my dad showed us which way to go. We walked past room after room listening to the crying and sometimes laughter. Finally, we got to the right room and we walked in. There sat my mother on a hospital bed. She didn’t seem hurt or in pain, but they said it was happening fast. At one point my mother’s father (Poppy) took us down to the cafe, and all I remember is that hospitals have very good spaghetti. My Poppy got a phone call and all of the sudden we were on the move, going through the halls like there was a fire we were trying to escape from. When we got back to my mother’s hospital room, everyone looked so upset; their faces, eyes and cheeks were red and

That first day, we drove him to the community medical centre despite it being less than a five minute walk away. At just 52 years old he could barely walk. His shuffled slowly from the car on shaking legs. A dull silence fell as we sat in the waiting room, I placed a reassuring hand on my fathers withered knee while he stared into the near distance, barely acknowledging my touch, mute and withdrawn. He smelled of urine and booze, of unclean clothes, the toll that comes from

I watched as my family said goodbye as a I lay in my hospital bed, breathing raspily. I told them that I loved them. I tried to reach out for my mother’s hand, but was stopped by the short slack of all the tubes and wires connected to me. She comes closer so she can hold my hand, so she can comfort me in my last moments.

At the end of a busy day, my father calls and says that my mother is very sick. She had been in the hospital for intravenous fluids. I could tell by his tone of voice that something was gravely wrong. I rushed to the hospital to find my mother barely able to breathe. Her nurse was racing to control her breathing while giving her a diuretic. My mother is a very small person and the nurse had ascertained the fact that she was given too much fluid. She was in fluid overload. Her nurse had just saved my mother’s life. All the while, he was able to comfort my father and reassure me. He

I remember the moment my uncle came to pick me up in class. My family wanted me to visit my father. I knew he was in the hospital for an allergic reaction. Many days had passed since I saw him last. Seeing him in the intensive care unit was terrifying. Large blisters covered his body from head to toe. Several had broken down to purple-black sores that looked like his body had burned. Skin swelled up and was oozing all over. Doctors had connected him with machines with tubes all over on his body. I felt he wasn’t coming back home. However, as the days elapsed, he improved, doctors removed the tubes and in fifteen days he returned to baseline. The fact he survived from such a severe reaction astonished me. This incident had a

Collapsed. 3rd January 2015, I was awoken by the hysteric screams of my mother coming from her bedroom. I rushed in just to see the sight in front which overwhelmed me with waves of anguish. My father collapsed on the floor. foaming. My tearing mother by his side screaming out "995!". The following crucial hours felt like days as I followed my dad who was rushed to the A&E department - my world just took a 360 Degrees change. The A&E department diagnosed that my father was struck down by an Acute Ischemic Stroke, killing off his entire Cerebellum, severely reducing his cognitive abilities. My father was bed-ridden, unable to speak and control his movements properly. Reality struck me, my beloved father will never to be like normal as he was

My head full of questions, my thoughts raced, time slowed to that of the last day of school before Christmas break. At last, my mother came through those awful doors and I burst into tears. She grabbed me into her soft beautiful arms and held me until I could finally manage to ask if my brother was alive. She stroked my hair and replied “yes honey, he is going to be ok”. My next question and completely logical for an 8-year-old was, “Did they cut off his leg?”. Mom softly responded, “No, honey, his leg is still attached and he will be coming home tonight”. I cried again at the thought of him being alive and coming

They said my grandpa and Aunt Nikki are at the hospital with grandma and then, when I heard that some of my family from Tennessee was on their way down right now to the hospital, I knew it was serious. It was exactly 6:23 PM when I called grandpa’s phone. He answered and I could tell he had been crying. I was demanding to know what was wrong with grandma, but he started crying again and passed the phone to my Aunt Nikki. She was crying as I repeated my demand to know what was going on. Sobbing through the phone, Nikki told me how my grandparents were out to eat at the Oyster Reef Club celebrating New Year’s Eve, when my grandma suddenly choked on her food. Apparently, there were three doctors at the restaurant that night, but no one could get the food out of her throat. “She went nearly forty-five minutes without oxygen and was already gone before she got to the hospital,” said Nikki. She was in the ICU on life support at the Memorial Hospital on the fourth floor. I was numb as I listened to the truth. I rode the rest of the way to the hospital with my parents in silence.