An iPod a day keeps the doctor away

- by Joel Rodriguez Dizon

    

     In October last year, my mother underwent surgery to remove her appendix. she had been complaining of stomach pains for months but always dismissed it as "just gas". But finally, one evening, the pain became unbearable and would not stop She was barely conscious by the time I got her to the Saint Louis University hospital. Her admiitting  doctor scheduled her for surgey within two hours.

    The surgery went fine, even if the potential danger was dumbfounding. Her appendix had grown gangrenous and if the surgeon had not cut it out that evening, she would have burst it and risked succumbing to sepsis.

     There were weeks of post-operative visits to the doctor that followed. Although she was quite strong enough to walk on her own, hospital staff always insisted she rode a wheelchair when scooting around the hospital hallways.

    The long line of waiting patients annoyed her no end. We would get into the hospital an hour before the clinics actually opened, and we'd still be in line about lunchtime. There's only so much you could do to keep a 76-year old unbored. 

Enter 21st century technology---to the rescue! I gave her my iPod Classic and let her watch Evan Almighty with a pair of earphones. It was hilarious. Not the movie (not just the movie) but the way my mother became totally absorbed in the movie and let out loud guffaws, unawre that everyone else around her couldn't hear or see what she was watching.  I didn't have the heart to explain it to her--she was having too good a time. 

    Just then the doctor emerged from his clinic and called my Mom's name. It was her turn, but she couldn't hear the page over the PA system.  I could and so I had to walk up and apologize to the busy doctor.

     "Where's the patient--uh--where's your mom?" the doctor asked.

     I said, "Probably somewhere between the Congressional hearing and the dam breaking."   When the doctor looked at me totally bewildered, I pointed to my Mom on the wheelchair with the iPod. "She's winding up Evan Almighty," I explained.

     "Has she been laughing like that all this time?" the doctor asked.  I said yes.

     "You and your mom can go home. If she hasn't  ripped her stiches by now, I assure you she's fine!"

   

(My family's special appreciation goes to my Mom's nurse while she was confined  at the SLU Hospital--Jean Camille Navarro. This charming 20-year old  fourth year BSN student  of Saint Louis University in Baguio City has nursing in her pedigree--literally flowing in her veins. She comes from a brood of five children,  her eldest brother and sister (who are fraternal twins) are both registered nurses, and her younger brother after her is also a nursing student--or was until the poor fellow realized he'd rather be an engineering student buying new books every semester than inheriting nursing books handed down three times already.)

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Hairy stories from my 76-year old Mom

- by Joel Rodriguez Dizon

     My mother worked as a part-time hairdresser when I was a little boy. She didn't own her own salon or worked for one. Mostly she went around the neighborhood and cut women's hair in the comfort of their own homes. She earned just enough to buy groceries and fresh food from the market. She was no New York or French hairstyling virtuoso either. She just did basic trims, perms and an occasional makeover.

     One of the fringe benefits of her being a part-time hairdresser was I never had to go the barbershop. She cut my own hair. But she took forever doing it. Whoever heard of a two-hour home barber's cut? It's as if she lingered at the job not so much because there was so much hair to cut as there were endless stories to tell me. She told me stories about my growing-up years, neighborhoods we had lived in, jobs she had held--even an occasional anecdote about how I got beaten up by some playground bully in the third grade. And she told these stories while cutting my hair. It used to annoy me that I could hear other children in the neighborhood playing, and I was stuck on that stool while mother had to trim that last ever lock of hair. The hair must have grown as fast as she could cut them because the job never seemed to end. I would finally jump off the stool, cry "Enough!" and run away.  It was part necessity, part ordeal and as regular as clockwork. When you're a teenager, I think 50% of what you eat turns into hair because every six weeks or so, mother would be hunting me down around the house to sit me on that stool for my regular haircut.

     My mother is now 76 years old. Arthritis has ravaged her hands and she could no longer wield a pair of scissors like when she was younger.

      I'm now in my late 40s and if there was a place I could go where they could make hair GROW, I would happily spend all day at that place. One day my mother hunkered over behind me as I watched TV in the living room. She had read an article on herbal remedies and had plucked some juicy aloe vera leaves from the garden outside. Splitting them open to reveal the rich gooey paste inside the leaves, she began to rub it onto my scalp. She told me  she saw someone on the nature channel talk about a friend of a brother's cousin's sister-in-law--or some other drawn out relationship like that--who had used this medicinal plant on his scalp every night and saw miraculous hair regrowth. But it took forever to work the goo into the scalp, so she took advantage of the time to tell me stories about my growing up years, neighborhoods we have lived in, job she has held---and how I got beaten up by a playground bully in third grade.

     I've heard all the stories before. But hearing mother tell them all over again brought back happy memories of the stories, and of the storytelling. My hair must be growing slower than a redwood tree because mother thought it necessary to keep up the rubbing forever. I think when you're 40-something, 50% of what you eat turns into dead hair follicles.

     My mother, the part-time hairdresser, has taken a new fancy. Instead of cutting my hair, she's working hard to bring some of that hair she cut BACK.