When I came home for the New Year, the oxygen concentrator I bought for my parents more than a month ago was still sitting in the yard. (Southern Weekend reporter Pang Ming/Photo)
Getting off the train and exiting the station, I saw my mother, with curly hair peeking out of the hood of her orange down jacket, striding enthusiastically towards the exit. In fact, when she passed me, she didn't recognize which one was her daughter.
I stopped her yelling, and she coughed dryly, and we had to engage in this conversation that had been repeated several times in the video chat.
"Is it the after-effects of the new crown? You go to the doctor to buy some cough medicine, there is a nebulizer at home, just to use. ”
"What are the after-effects, every winter."
"Don't you have to go to the hospital for several years?"
"It's always been like this, look at what."
Every time I make a suggestion about health, I am brought by my parents like this. The difficulty of intergenerational communication is often "listen to you or listen to me". People who try to talk about things meet people who want to talk about hierarchy and old rules, it is simply a show talent meets a soldier.
Only one Tylenol was beaten
I arrived home on the evening of the twenty-eighth of the month, and when I looked out the window the next morning, I bought an oxygen generator, atomizer and electric sputum suction machine that I had sent home more than a month ago, all in the corner of the yard. When the cat comes home, it has to jump down from the fence, and these cardboard boxes are good enough to give it a foot.
I glanced at it one by one, the box of the oxygen generator was opened, and the tape was attached and put back, and the sputum suction and nebulizer were simply not disassembled. "Why are you hanging in the courtyard?" My mother didn't answer: "You see this flower blooms very well." ”
After a while, I saw that she applied a white layer of toothpaste on her lower lip, and I learned that she had cold lip sores, and toothpaste can bring coolness. I said I bought an acyclovir ointment from the takeaway software. "You spend money blindly, what ointment do you have at home?" Toothpaste, red dog nutritional paste are available, but acyclovir is not.
Before the new crown, I always thought that in the field of health, my family was experiencing a drug war. From time to time, some brown-black pills of unknown origin appeared in the house, and my mother would go to the community clinic in the summer to put up "three-volt stickers", and also cupping and scraping his father when he was "on fire". She used a coin to scrape sha, the silver edge streaked across her back, and a faint red appeared on her back, which turned purple-black after a while, and the more they looked at it, the more they felt that the curative effect was passable, and they could be on fire.
After countless accusations and forgiveness, the pandemic came. The previous big war has become a dispute between me and my parents: in the first round, at the end of November 2022, I asked them to buy fever-reducing medicine, and my father agreed, but when I went to the pharmacy, even Hua Qingwen was sold out before confessing that I didn't buy medicine, and I immediately sent back a box of Tylenol; The second round was in early December 2022, the oximeter I bought was delivered, and it was left in a carton for three or four days before it was removed from my crying emotional science and clamped to my father's finger; After the third round, a few days later, oxygen concentrators, sputum suctioners and nebulizers arrived and began a cold palace life.
It's not my problem alone. The roommate's eighty-year-old grandmother had a fever, but she refused to take antihypertensive drugs and hypoglycemic drugs, and the daughters in charge of care were helpless, and they had to shed tears almost every day for their mother's medication; A good friend was overseas, her mother felt chest tightness, and her blood oxygen level was only 93%, she asked her mother to go for a CT, but she couldn't persuade her; Several elders of a friend had a fever, but they were unwilling to do an antibody test, and they drank the small chai hu pellets she bought to reduce the fever, and survived this wave of "severe cold" in the continuous argument.
In this struggle that lasted half a month, my only victory was a Tylenol. During a video call in early December 2022, my mom said she had taken a Tylenol pill — after a high fever that lasted more than 39 degrees all night.
But she immediately rejected the suggestion to quarantine, and my dad stood by the bed with his mobile phone and photographed the only beneficiary of the pandemic, the cat. It rubbed happily around my mom's neck and chest, grunting happily for the first time it slept.
The cat watched me write outside the window. (Southern Weekend reporter Pang Ming/Photo)
"I'm still young"
It is not easy to persuade my parents, I have been on this battlefield for the past few years, and finally reached a consensus with my parents on topics such as career planning and marriage with the attitude of "everyone is the first responsible person in their own life": I don't advise you to divorce, and you don't come to persuade me to get married. But in this epidemic at the turn of the new year, it is us, the post-90s generation, who are anxious - we are trying to "point fingers" on the health of our parents and other elders.
My friend and I tried "easy mother and persuasion" - the aunt with a blood oxygen content below 93%, I called her, not as a friend of her daughter, but as a reporter, talking about "silent hypoxia", about the increasingly serious admission in the hospital, and asking her to get a CT as soon as possible just in case.
My aunt graciously listened to my advice, but she still did not go to the hospital the next and third days. So the friend on the other side of the Eurasian continent reluctantly admitted that health was still part of personal freedom, and temporarily accepted his mother's judgment: "It's not that serious." ”
But such lobbying will only be repeated again and again. On the first day I went home for the Chinese New Year, I tried to move the oxygen concentrator from the yard back to the house, but before I left the house, my father stopped me: "I don't need to take it back." ”
So what if it works later? "Just in case." He closed the topic.
As a father, he was not used to explaining the motives of his actions, but he couldn't help but ask me again and again, so he said: "That oxygen concentrator, you can't take it off if you put it on." "The implication is that only vulnerable older people need to use such assistive devices.
It reminded me of the argument I had a month ago when I persuaded him to use an oximeter: "Friend, please use the oxygen clip." ”
"I'm still young." He replied.
Suction suctioners have also received similar comments: "Suction suctioners are used only when they are paralyzed."
In fact, they are not completely resistant to health knowledge, and I may even feel that they are only resisting the articles I forward, the opinions I make, and the health supplements I buy home. My mom was eating chondroitin, saying it relieved her knee pain, but at the same time she refused to eat the fish oil and calcium tablets I bought, and refused to do osteoporosis tests. "It's not that serious." She ended the conversation.
I realized that in this kind of "show talent meets soldier" situation, another factor is superimposed: the fear of "soldier" to "show talent". The concern from my daughter has become the urging of the years, and these days at home, I can always feel the subtle fear of my parents - one of them hides his cough, and the other grabs heavy objects with me; Sometimes he laments that he is "old", and sometimes he feels that he is capable; Show off to me what I see on the short video platform, but reject the health advice I give.
I can only admit that I have no way of knowing my parents' true attitude towards COVID and all health issues – it seems to be a sort of "observer effect", and my concern itself reminds them of the passage of time and health.
This argument cannot be ended until my parents can see the challenge to their health and accept my help. So now, the oxygen generator can only freeze in the yard at minus 20 ° C, and the discussion about it will be repeated on the day I go home for the New Year:
"You bring it in and learn how to use it."
"If you use it, you can't pull it off, and the person is finished."
Southern Weekend reporter Pang Ming