Did anybody get the license plate of the truck that hit me?

I’ve spent yesterday and today in high gear, trying to get the house ready for some things that are happening this weekend. You’d think this wouldn’t be hard. But I am about two steps beyond exhausted, and I’m nowhere near done.

I’m amazed at how badly I’ve let things slide. I dug through piles of clothes on the floor of the closet, trying to understand why I needed to wash clothes I can’t even remember wearing. I glanced through piles of papers, seeing bills postmarked early September that haven’t even been opened yet. Those got shoveled into bags and dumped in a closet. The events of the last month have taken a year off my life.

Several months ago, mom confessed to having difficulty paying bills. I told her I understood–I don’t think she realizes just how well I understand–and I told her how I set up the most critical bills for automatic payments every month to try to keep from missing payments again. Hopefully everything critical that I forgot to pay has had an automatic payment go out. Hopefully there was money in the bank to let that happen. I honestly have no idea.

If mom’s antidepressant doesn’t help her get out of her tailspin, I might have to start on one myself. The difference, of course, is that mom has fantastic insurance.

 

Good news.

The phone rang again this afternoon. It started out the usual way: “What’s wrong?” “Nothing. You’re going to be happy.”

“I heard that yesterday,” I said.

Mom met with her doctor today to discuss the results of the brain MRI. “The cancer is almost completely gone!” she said proudly.

It was a bit of a letdown later on when I talked to dad and found out that it’s just the brain lesions we’re talking about. But it’s good news and I’ll take it.

Dad also told me about something mom forgot to mention. On the way out the door, mom asked the doctor “So I can drive now, right?”

“No,” said the doctor, and turned and walked away. More good news.

Mom is sick over the fact that she canceled the trip yesterday. “Now do you see why I want you to call me before you make any major decisions?” I asked, then put the phone on mute so I could hit my head against the door frame. “Please CALL me from now on! I can help you make the right decisions!”

“I know, I know, but everybody said it was the right thing to do!”

“Everybody didn’t say that. I didn’t say that. You didn’t ask me.”

“I’ve gotta go,” mom said. I have no idea what to say to get her to understand I’m on her side. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure why I want her to call. She disregards everything I say, then says I’m being ridiculous when I tell her she’s doing that. Which is, of course, disregarding what I said.

The trip and the events of the past few days were discussed in detail at the doctor’s office. Mom is now on antidepressants. Still more good news.

I hope they start working quickly.

 

What happens before Vegas…

I’d like to say that when I don’t post it’s because everything is wonderful.

I’d be lying.

I spent a couple of days recovering from more than a week of pure panic. I actually got to sleep once or twice. Mom was getting ready for her trip to Vegas, talking about her plans for renting a scooter, visiting with friends, seeing a couple of shows including fantastic seats for Criss Angel, plus a letter from him inviting her to meet him. She’s been planning this for over a year and she was so excited about it.

Lost in the panic of the missing purse was a complaint from mom that one of the friends she’d planned to travel with had come up with alternate plans. I know mom was disappointed, and at the time she said something like “I don’t even want to go. If I could cancel this trip I would.”

“You could,” I told her. “Get a note from the doctor saying you’re too sick to travel, and you can cancel everything.” Suddenly she didn’t want to do that.

The phone rang this afternoon. I hate hearing the phone ring. It’s never good. Someday I’m going to tear out the phone and communicate only by email.

“Hi honey,” mom said.

I don’t even bother being polite anymore. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“NooOOOothing!” she howled. “You’re going to be so HAPPY!”

I waited.

“I canceled the trip!” she shrieked. “I had to do it, I woke up this morning and my wrist hurt so much I couldn’t get out of bed, and Joan came over and Ann came over and Mary came over and they all said I had to cancel the trip and I don’t know what’s wrong with my wrist but I couldn’t even get up because I couldn’t put any weight on the wrist and I won’t be able to get around in Vegas and they’re right I had to cancel the trip and Mary stayed here for hours making phone calls and getting my money back and everybodysaidIhadtocancelthetripandICANCELEDTHETRIP I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M NOT GOING I’VE BEEN PLANNING THIS FOR A YEAR AND I DON’T BELIEVE THIS I CANCELED THE TRIP! So now aren’t you happy?”

Yes, just delighted. If I were any happier I’d go sit in my car in the garage for a while.

I have no idea what the hell just happened. I don’t know what is going on. Mom never tells me the truth about anything, and even if she wanted to she was so worked up that she wasn’t making any sense anyway. Everybody told her to cancel a trip because her wrist hurt?

In the past couple of months we’ve gone from plans for her to come here for most of the winter, to plans for her to come here for maybe a month because she doesn’t want to ruin our relationship, to today: if she’s able to come here at all.

She won’t turn on the webcam. I have no idea what she looks like or what kind of shape she’s in, so I really don’t know if she would have been able to do this trip or not. “You should have asked the doctor before you canceled everything,” I told her in frustration.

“I’ll see him tomorrow and I’ll tell him then.”

Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I’m fairly sure that’s not what I meant.

Mom has been letting her emotions run wild since the day she started chemotherapy. Every frustrating newspaper article or story on TV, every baby on TV, every dog she sees, everything makes her cry uncontrollably. Maybe she’d be in the same condition she’s in now without the hysterics, but I’m fairly certain she’s sapping her own strength in addition to mine. And if she cries herself out of her motivation to fight this battle, she’ll lose it, and she’ll lose it quickly.

 

It’s almost five in the morning.

I’m so exhausted I’m nauseous, but I can’t sleep again.

I can’t even write the thoughts that pass through my head at this hour of the morning.

 

“I didn’t drive and I won’t do it again!”

“…so I came home and the purse was hanging from the back of the chair! I know you’re not going to believe me!”

Mom is emotionally off the scale, again. She’s reached new heights, even for her. I’ve never heard anything like this. I think she genuinely believes that the purse was stolen and magically appeared on the back of the kitchen chair, contents intact, in a locked house with an alarm system, while she was out driving.

While she was out driving. This is the thing that’s scaring me to death. Her doctor has instructed her to not drive. Her reaction time is way down, at the very least. She’s already having serious trouble driving, and this round of chemo has slowed her reflexes and dulled her decision-making abilities even more. Quite simply, she should not be behind the wheel of a car.

As if that wasn’t clear enough to me already, the conversation we had about it brought it home even harder.

“I didn’t drive!”

“You went to the mall. You drove.”

“It’s only a mile and a quarter. It’s not like it’s really driving!”

We spent 20 minutes arguing about when driving actually becomes driving. She honestly believes that only going a short way isn’t REALLY driving.

“I promise I won’t drive,” she told me, as though I’m too stupid to understand that the mall and the supermarket and the bank and restaurants and several friends’ homes are all within the “not REALLY driving” range.

“You don’t understand what you’re taking away from me!” she yelled. “You don’t know how hard it is!”

I do know. “I’m not taking anything away, mom. The doctor already did. And it’s temporary. And if you think it’s hard now, wait until you get into an accident and you get the blame because you’re under driving restrictions.”

“I’M NOT GOING TO GET INTO AN ACCIDENT!”

How nice it would be if that were true simply because we say it is.

As for the purse, I always said it was in the house. And I don’t believe for a second that ghosts put it there, or that someone got into the house after they changed the locks.

The explanation I’ve come up with, and the one I choose to believe, is that she’s sleepwalking. She stashed it somewhere Saturday night while sleepwalking, and found it and put it on the chair last night while sleepwalking, and that’s why she has no memory of how it got there. It’s a long shot. It’s almost certainly not true.

But the alternatives are even more difficult to consider.

 

Perspective.

Mom heard from a friend today. She heard something about a stepson, a drunk driver, an accident, a desperately poor medical condition. Suddenly her lost purse isn’t so terrible.

I’m happy she’s found perspective. I wish she had found it some other way.

There were more trips to resolve lost ID cards, to Social Security and back to DMV. Dad is about at the end of his patience.

This is day two after chemo. Mom’s appetite is beginning to come back. I think she actually ate something this evening. I’m trying to get her excited about the possibility of eating by telling her she needs to build up strength for the coming trip next month. She doesn’t seem to care.

 

Ok, I admit it.

The end of my last post wasn’t entirely correct. A nurse at mom’s oncology office did warn her about her emotions, but what she said was pretty much “Chemotherapy will amplify the emotions you’re feeling.” Mom was warned that if she felt a little depressed, the chemo would make her feel worse. If that should happen, she should talk to the doctor and he can do something to help. (I’m assuming that means “prescribe something.”)

What mom heard, however, was “From this day forward, your emotions will be off the scale, and you will be utterly helpless to control them.” Mom was always emotional. Now, every trivial event is a catastrophe. And every serious problem is the end of the world.

Mom’s purse has been missing since Saturday night or Sunday morning. No other event has happened anywhere else in the world for her since then. There have been only three topics of conversation since then: 1) “My purse is gone,” 2) “I’ve had to close accounts/get new cards and checks/wait on line at DMV,” and so on, and 3) “I can’t believe I’m so stupid! There’s no hope for me!”

Topic 3) rules the conversation, by far.

When she remembered that it was a purse I’d given her, she started to cry. (I give her at least one purse a year, since I know she loves to receive them, and she saves them forever.) When she realized that inside her checkbook was a pen I’d given her, she began sobbing and hyperventilating. And when I told her “Calm down, it’s just a pen, I’ll get you another one,” she gasped her usual answer: “I can’t! I can’t control my emotions! They told me it would be like this!”

I have no idea how to get her off this out of control spiral. She doesn’t hear what the doctor says, she hears what she wants to hear, and that time she heard a whopper.

Yet she can control her emotions. She’s perfectly calm in the doctor’s office, and when she’s there she insists everything is fine.

My father has more than he can handle. He’s caregiver for two people, and one of them is constantly hysterical. Add to that the need to wait on line or on hold for hours to get this mess sorted out, and the pressure to be home and be a caregiver, and he’s about to snap.

Mom continued sobbing over the lost pen (a handmade wooden pen that probably cost less than $50,) for several minutes. I finally told her “There are more pens. There will always be more pens. But once this moment is gone, it’s gone forever. You can never have it back again. If you spend this moment crying over a lost thing, that is all this moment will ever be.”

“Yeah, I know,” she sniffled. “I gotta go.”

 

Slow down, start from the beginning.

I was headed for the registers at Target when my phone rang. I almost dropped the phone when I saw it was my father calling me. Other than pre-arranged calls from the doctor’s office, I don’t think he’s ever called me.

I answered and heard my mother’s voice. Mom calling me from dad’s phone… if anything, that’s worse. “Hi honey, how are you?” she casually asked.

I skipped the polite stuff. “What’s wrong?”

She hemmed and hawed for the longest few seconds of my life, and finally howled “My purse was stolen!”

She continued without pausing to breathe. “I’ve had to cancel the credit cards, we just came from the bank, we had to close all the accounts…”

I interrupted “Were you hurt?”

It took about 20 minutes of questioning, but no, she wasn’t hurt, and we can’t actually say for sure that the purse was stolen. She doesn’t know where it is. She thinks she forgot it on the front step last night, and she’s furious at herself for being so stupid.

My argument is that 1) dad saw her take it into the house and 2) no charges have been made on the credit cards. I think she has it in the house somewhere, but it’s fallen behind a piece of furniture or she put a jacket or something on top of it.

This has been well over two hours of discussion between me and my mother, and hours of frustration changing locks and closing accounts for my father.

A few months ago mom lost $600 that she says she won at the casino. I spent hours telling her that she’d misplaced it and it would turn up. She spent hours yelling that she was stupid and she’d left it easily accessible in her purse and someone had stolen it and she lost my birthday present. I told her I’d much rather have her happy for my birthday, but that was ignored, too.

A week later the money appeared. She promised she’d never doubt me again.

Now I’ve reminded her of that, and she yelled at me to stop bringing that up, I was right that time but I’m wrong now. And she’s stupid and everything is her fault and she deserves all of this.

If I ever meet the nurse who told mom that chemotherapy will make her emotions too powerful to control, I swear my emotions will be too powerful to control.

 

I just don’t know.

Mom has always been manipulative.

Granted, when I was a kid, asking me to do something probably wasn’t very productive. But manipulating me into doing things not only didn’t work, but it made me very resentful. I don’t know what the solution should have been, but dishonesty and playing my feelings shouldn’t have been it.

I got over it. I eventually figured out that manipulation isn’t a good way to treat someone, and after that I learned to watch out for it in other people.

(Digression: I’ve used honesty, and it hasn’t gotten me any better results. So hell if I know what the solution is.)

But mom, never one to give up on an idea simply because it doesn’t work (like me,) has continued to use manipulation to try to get me to do what she wants. It never ended, even though it never got her what she wanted and it almost always backfired.

So now I have no idea what’s going on. From what I’m hearing on the phone, mom is in horrific pain. This would seem to be the same pain that she had immediately after surgery, the pain that made her delirious. Yet that pain faded and she was fine for a couple of weeks. Now it’s back?

Or is she manipulating me? If so, why? What does she want me to do? Why doesn’t she just ask me? (This method works much better now that I’m an adult.)

If she’s making the pain sound far worse than it is to make me go there and I jump on a plane, not only have I reinforced treatment I don’t want to receive, but I’ll get myself into some serious trouble here at home and I’ll rack up even more credit card debt I can’t pay.

If this is for real and there’s a medical situation that I can help resolve, and I stay here, I am two steps below pond scum. In any case, she doesn’t do what I tell her to do whether I tell her in person or over the phone.

If I ask, I get denials.

I just don’t know what to do.

The current round of chemo should be over soon. Maybe things will improve after that.

 

An ordinary round of chemotherapy. Now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d use.

I was a bit concerned when mom started chemo again last week. She was almost instantly sick.

It might have been the chemo, it might have been something else, it might have been her fear of the chemo. (These are new drugs for her, and she didn’t know what to expect.) Whatever it was, it seems to have passed, and now she’s just dealing with ordinary chemo exhaustion and lack of appetite.

Slowly but steadily, the personality, wit, and intelligence I know as my mother is fading away. Sometimes the old mom peeks out, but those times are getting more and more infrequent.

Why didn’t anybody warn me about that?