Nice to Meet You, Will

I'd like to introduce my mother's new imaginary friend, Will.  Will is my mother's trusted adviser on clothing choices, food intake and gestures.  Now if I can convince him to share Guardian duties I can get a day off.  

So it's been a rough day.  It started with picking my mom up to take her to her psychiatrist.  She spent the car ride there whispering to herself, so already not good.  Upon getting there the doctor said he had looked over the records from VB Psyche, but they couldn't find her chart for his office.  They found a few minutes later, but that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.  I informed the doctor of her whispering and she proceeded to tell him that she had a "Echanon" (no definition found on dictionary.com so I'll have to take her word for it) in her mouth that allowed her to speak to her friend and a something in her ear that allowed him to hear him.  Then she spoke of yarn like things coming from the floor and trying to bury her.  The yarn-like substance goes away when the lights are turned on.  

So the doctor ordered a pysche nurse to keep tabs on her and left her medication levels the same (they were changed 3 weeks ago so I'm thinking it's a prudent call).  However, he informed me he was dropped by the company that services my mother's Medicare supplemental insurance plan.  I think it probably had to do with a censure he received about keeping poor records for pain patients (where have I heard poor record keeping before?). I wasn't really fond of him, but that leaves us with the only other Gero Psyche doctor I could find in the area.  He treated mom at Chesapeake General when she in the Gero Psyche ward 18 months ago.  It wasn't a good experience.  

Hello Governor!  Whenever you want to make things easier for us peons let us know!

Count down to hospitalization continues...

Oh, Thank You But I Don't Need a Donut, Medicare.

So, my mom hit the infamous Medicare donut hole this month.  Whose idea is this anyway?  If I find out I'll send her to live with him/her when her meds run out.  Although her meds won't run out.  I'll just have to do some creative negotiating of payments with the pharmacy.

I'm getting pretty good at payment plans.  I avoid them as much as I can, but now I have to use them.  Mom has payment plans with two hospitals, a dentist, a contractor and a credit card company.  That's a lot to keep track of (plus my own bills to figure out how to pay.  I often forget to pay mine entirely).  But a relative was nice enough to loan her enough to pay off two of the balances so that eases up a bit of brain space for me.

Next month is go time for mom's house.  The house will be on the market by the end of April ready or not.  I have given the final notice to family, who are using the house as their personal storage facility, that their things will be thrown away if not removed in the next week.  I'm done with the stress of it.  I plan on scrubbing the house down myself next week and start painting.  Now the kid with the severe asthma really shouldn't be the one painting, but c'est la vie.  So I'll schedule my week in bed for May and push through as best I can.

The med tech at my mother's ALS mentioned to me the other day that she heard my mom talking to herself.  An immediately count-down calendar started ticking in my head.  That day I walked up to mom's room and heard her mumbling to herself.  Today at her primary care doctor visit she told him she was seeing people.  She said she knew they weren't real so she refused to speak to them.  Then the whole drive back to her ALS she mumbled quietly to herself (she called it "speaking in tongues" when I was a kid.  I would call it "speaking without a tongue" for a more poetic and accurate description).  She was enrolled in an Observation and Assessment program through Medicare to hopefully keep her out of the hospital this time, but I'm not optimistic.

She's had severe shaking the past two months (she's having trouble eating and is rapidly losing weight because of it) and her primary care physician isn't sure if she has developed Parkinson's Disease (just what she needs) or if it's the medication she was on until November last year.  He said if it's the meds it may go away or be permanent.  There has got to be a way to catch a break here at some point.  My mother will be seeing a neurologist to figure out what's going on there.  Her new psychiatrist (who I'm really not fond of already) was adjusting her Zyprexa lower to see if it was causing the shaking.  Lowering the dose only seemed to make it worse.  And now she's complaining of panic attacks and trouble breathing.  She sees the psychiatrist next week so we'll see what he says (and if he remembers she's his patient this time).

So that little calendar in my head is ticking away.  I'm sure if a miracle doesn't happen she'll be back in the hospital in the next two months.  Maybe Mother's Day?  Maybe that can be my vacation? (See horrible daughter explanation in previous post).

A Good Daughter?

I do a lot for my mom.  Probably more than I should.  I seem to be lacking the all important "self preservation" gene.  But I guess that's me.

I often hear about what a good daughter I am.  I know that's high praise.  I may seem "good" on the outside, but there's a raging fight inside me.  The part that wants to do everything I can to make things better is often battling the part that wants it to be over.

A few days ago I went to visit my mother.  I was nearby and she'd been complaining of trouble breathing over the weekend.  The facility and my sister were sure it was anxiety, but I figured I might as well make sure.  She was a shaking mess when I arrived.  When the Med Tech took her blood pressure the diastolic number was normal, but the systolic was almost 130!  And her heart rate was 125!  I argued with my mom about taking her to a doctor to get checked out and she was refusing. Thankfully the cuff was one of those automatic kinds and was reading incorrectly.  So after a manual cuff was brought in her blood pressure was measuring normal and her heart rate seemed normal (she was flinching too much to get an accurate count).  The psychiatrist on call decided her Zyprexa was lowered a bit too much on her last visit and he increased the dose to what it was a month ago.  She seemed better when I saw her the next day and the shaking was greatly reduced.

But through all that I felt incredible guilt because of the thoughts running through my head.  A huge section of my brain was hopeful that maybe this would be the end.  Maybe her suffering would be over and I'd finally have time for my kids.  I wouldn't have to deal with anymore ALS procedures or arguing with doctors over the right care or the right paperwork.  No more reports to APS or dealing with audits from the lawyer.  No more begging family to remove their things from her home and getting very little help in preparing it for sale.  If that house is just my inheritance I'd give it away.

Below is the picture of the "Tree of Life" my mother painted on the wall in the formal livingroom in her house.  She initially drew it with pastels.  When it faded she repainted it in ink.  Part of me hates to paint this over because it's part of my childhood and one of the few times I remember her being truly creative.



Most of my childhood memories of her are quite painful.  Painting this over feels a bit like erasing all the good that existed.