Monday, May 2, 2011

What do you do when there are no good options?

To Do List
1. Buy Groceries
2. Pick Up Cat Food
3. Strip Mom of Her Rights

It seems really weird to be at this time in my life where I need to switch roles with my mother and become her parent.  I really never thought I would be in this place, especially since she is so young.  I guess that's something very few people think about.  I see some heavy estate planning in my future.

Mom has been going downhill for a while.  Hard to believe a year ago she was fairly fit and actually looked young for her age.  She looks like she's aged 20 years or more since last June.  She appears shorter and weaker.  She can no longer wash her own hair or prepare herself a meal.  These are all things she could do a year ago. 

Recently her mental state has been declining.  Her psychiatrist could tell she needed a change in medication, but mom refused a lot of the drugs.  She's had a string of urinary tract infections over the past 6 months.  Since that causes her to get very confused he did not want to change her medications until she was stable.  It was becoming very obvious to us that that was never going to happen.  So we called a few weeks ago to Emergency Services and my sister had to do a lot of convincing for them to take her for evaluation.  One worker seemed to feel we weren't doing enough for her and that was why she was decompensating.  Maybe it wasn't enough, but it is the best we could do. 

So she's been in the hospital for 2 weeks, which is the longest they've kept her out of all of her hospital stays.  She was initially starting to stablize, but began to decompensate last Thursday.  Normally, after seeing a small amount of improvement the hospital would discharge her and she decompensates at home out of their view.  I'm not sure why they didn't this time, but they wanted to keep her a few more days.  The acute care case manager with the CSB had to beg for more time and was given a few more days.  She started to decline the next day and has continued to get worse.  We were concerned all weekend that the funding would run out and she would be discharged even though she isn't stable simply because of a lack of funding. The stress has been killing me. I've emailed my Delegate, State Senator, Federal Senator, the President and the Mayor all in hopes someone will help.  My Delegate and State Senator have been the most helpful, but have stated there is little they can do for her.  I've promised to help them change the laws even if my mom's situation resolves.

So today I started to gather information to file a petition for adult guardianship.  I went up to the courthouse today to see if I could file.  It isn't just a form to fill out (nothing is ever that easy I guess).  I have to write a petition so, they sent me to the library to find an example.  As luck would have it I stumbled into "Law Day" where you can talk to a lawyer for free.  I found a lawyer familiar with the process and he helped me a great deal.  I took his card so if I have more questions I know who to hire. 

So I'm preparing that process.  Over the weekend my mother failed her Capacity test that would show if she could make her own decisions.  That will help if I can get a record of that.  The doctor may file the petition, but I don't want to lose time waiting for him.

My mother called me today (first time since Thursday) and was upset the doctor was trying to send her to Eastern State Hospital for long term care.  She wanted me to do something, but I told her I couldn't. She started to tell me about the people she is talking to.   She says there is a man there that looks like my brother and he informed her she had triplets.  My brother was left and two were taken away.   He was one of them.  Then she said I was a triplet and she was one of octuplets.  I guess I have a lot of relatives to find. 

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