My greatest fear as a mother

My greatest fear as a mother is to be unable to look after my children while they still need me, whether due to illness or death. I'd like to at least be around till they are grown and independant.

My own mother died at age 46 leaving my dad age 44 then and 5 kids behind. As a mum now, I realise how hard it must have been for my own mother to be diagnosed of a terminal illness and later on to leave us, her family behind, to leave her husband behind to look after 5 kids aged 10, 14, 15, 17 & 18.

When I had a seizure and had to go for several diagnosis tests. I was terrified. I didn't want to be like my mum. I went for an ECG, an EEG, a CT Scan and a MRI. (I'll write about each of them in detail later on). I was so worried that they would find a brain tumour. I had an unexplained seizure, so I thought of the worse case scenarios to mentally prepare myself for what the doctor might say.

What was most frightening about it to me was the fact that everything seemed so ordinary, nothing unusual at all. All I remember about it was, it was an evening like any other evening. I was breastfeeding my baby to sleep and chit chatting with my daughter. We sang nursery rhymes and had a storytelling session, then everybody went to sleep.

And the next thing I knew, I was sitting in the living room with my husband looking at me with concern and asking me whether I was alright. There was blood on the side of my mouth where I had bitten my tongue apparently during the seizure. I went to look in the mirror and saw a small wound at the side of my tongue and I felt a slight pain and numbness there.

My husband had fallen asleep in the living room in front of the tv (again) when he heard the baby crying unattended. He went to the bedroom to check, only to find his wife staring at him through blank unseeing eyes, blood dribbling down the side of her mouth and both the kids crying loudly. I did not respond to him when he spoke to me. Urgh! It must have been not a very pleasant sight and I probably gave him a big scare.

I have no recollection of what happened. Nor do I recall walking from the bedroom to the living room, aided by my husband. My husband told me later on that I stopped to put a blanket over the baby in the cot before I walked to the living room. Hmmm.. mother instinct is always around isn't it, even when not fully concious.

I was asleep at the time so I did not hurt myself from a fall and so it was painless in that sense but it felt very scary to lose myself, even for a few moments like this ie to be there and not really there at all, to lose conciousness for those few moments.

And I must have given my poor little girl such a big scare too because for many, many, many months after that she still kept on asking me "Mummy, why you not feeling well? Why got blood there?" as she pointed to my lips. I felt so bad, so very bad. I was extremely worried that it had been traumatic for her to witness her mum trashing about, biting her tongue and not responding to her. Aaargh! I am supposed to protect my little ones, not scare them!

Since the seizure happened in my sleep, I was afraid to go to sleep for a time. At the same time, I also felt afraid when I did not have enough sleep because I was worried that it may trigger another seizure. So there I was afraid to sleep and afraid not to sleep. Fear is not a very nice emotion to feel.

Well, those were some of my feelings I recall having at the time. I'll write next about my visit to the doctors.

Pin It