It was a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend a few years ago. I had gone with a good friend to the Indianapolis 500. I was very recently divorced and my son, age 8, was with his dad at an amusement park fairly close to our house. I had just returned to the area when my ex-husband called with a pretty horrifying story. His normally tough-as-nails mother had called him, hysterical, saying something about a pool, but he couldn’t make out anything else she was saying. He was on his way back to town, but in the meantime asked me to look for his mom.
So, I did. I think I knew all along what I would find. I knew my brother and sister-in-law were having a pool installed for my niece and nephew, ages 5 and 8. I stopped at a couple of places where I knew they hung out with no luck, so I headed for the hospital.
I went to the ER desk and told them who I was looking for. Just the last name, mind you. Immediately, the front desk person said I could come in the back. I didn’t know that meant really bad news. I said, “No, I can wait out here, no problem,” but she insisted. Into the back I went, and immediately I was confused. There was my mother-in-law, surprisingly calm, or so it seemed. I went to her, and she said it was my niece, it had been the pool where the football cookout had been held, my niece had been missed but there were too many toys in the pool to see her at the bottom.
A lot of the aftermath is a blur now. I went to my brother and sister-in-law, who were holding my niece’s body. She looked perfect and beautiful, but blue. I remember my sister-in-law looking at her almost reverently. I remember sitting on the curb outside the ER, waiting for my ex-husband to get there so I could tell him. I remember my son’s horrified face as he saw her as it sunk in that he would never argue with her again over who got the middle part of the back seat. And I remember the feeling of absolute hopelessness that I couldn’t protect him from that, or from the other ugly things in life.
That night, something broke inside me. I went to bed that night knowing things would not be better in the morning. My sister-in-law’s wails echoing in my ears.
It’s been years now. My sister and brother-in-law are doing as well as I think anyone could and I was diagnosed with PTSD. I thought I had a good handle on it, but I got a comment from someone that brought it all back. This person told me she hoped someone in my family, like my child, got sick so I could understand why she missed a ton of work.
Growing old is optional, growing old gracefully even more so.
My mom did not have it easy in the last 5 years of her life. Her first problem was with her sciatic nerve, which first caused pain then weakness in her legs and eventually left her dependence on a wheelchair. I tried to keep in mind that she was in pain, scared and unsure during the times when she seemed to be going the extra mile to be as difficult as possible, but I wasn’t always successful.
After my father passed (Mom went just 4 yrs later), my mother became a shut-in. This was pretty much by choice. We lived 4.5 hrs apart, I’m an only child and we have no relatives who still speak to us living nearby. She refused to consider moving and her house looked liked something you’d see on “Hoarders,” but that’s yet another story. She wanted to live completely independent of help, especially mine, because this was the first time in her life that she was on her own, so I think she wanted to prove to herself that she could.
Did I mention “shut-in?”
She was defiant, she was determined to be independent and she was lying…I had a 74-year old teenager on my hands.
She ordered food through Amway. She bought her clothes via catalogs. She banked via the mail. She had a few friends who would come over and check on her most days, but the situation was far from ideal. Her mind was not the best, but she was sharp enough to lie to me about anything that didn’t show her situation in the best of lights.
For instance, she never told me about the time she fell and had to call the neighbors to help her up. She never told me about the time, in a very confused state, she called 911 in the middle of the night because -best I can piece together- she had a dirty diaper and was having trouble changing it herself. The cops busted the front door open and were not at all pleased to find her in no actual danger.
She did tell me about the time she called 911 for a ride to her doctor’s appointment, only because she felt a grave injustice was being done. Something had happened with her scheduled special needs ride, and she reasoned that if the doctor needed to see her then she needed to take an ambulance. She had received a bill for $700 for that non-emergency ride and didn’t think she should have to pay it. I did talk her into paying the bill, hoping she’d learn her lesson.
I tried mentioning the idea of assisted living, but she wouldn’t hear it.
“They beat you and lock you in your room!” she screamed. Eventually, I convinced her to get some in-home elder care and a woman would come by three times a week for three hours at a time to cook, clean, and run errands for her. Finally, I could get the low-down on her condition from someone who would be honest with me.
This started out well, as Mom enjoyed having someone to talk to and she was now getting fresh, home-cooked meals instead of the packaged crap she ordered via the mail. But, it didn’t last. I got a call from the coordinator to tell me my mom was hitting the workers. She was also being verbally abusive. At one point, Mom chased a worker out of the house, screaming at her from the front door.
I got emails from a friend of Mom’s who had visited her, only to find her crying hysterically, saying “I hate my life!” and hitting herself in the head. When asked about it the next day, Mom acted surprised and said nothing like that had happened.
Then, Mom came down with a bad cold that required someone to stay with her while she was ill. The elder care folks were great and worked out schedules so that she was tended 24/7 until she got better. Problem was, despite appearing to hate these helpers, once Mom got better, she didn’t want the 24/7 visitation to end. In fact, now she was refusing to let them leave. I’d have been fine with the additional help, but we could not afford the $10,000 per month for very long.
I had to talk with Mom and tell her it had to stop. This did not go well, and there were tears, but in the end, she cut back to 1 visitation, 5 days per week.
The pain and weakness in her leg was getting worse, and it was spreading to the other leg. We talked to a number of doctors, but she didn’t like most of them and liked even less what they had to say. Finally, after yet another fall that she still would not admit to, she was in the hospital again. Her doctor convinced her to have back surgery, and at last she agreed. She was hell on wheels both pre- and post-surgery. She had a fear of falling that was off the charts.
When the nurses tried to move her in the bed, or, heaven forbid, try to get her to stand up, she’d scream. I’m talking hear-her-down-the-hallway screaming. I’d leave the room and stand outside biting back tears whenever anyone tried to work with her.
When she was well enough to leave the hospital, she went to a rehab facility to help her get back on her feet as much as possible. It was there that some medical genius, who I’d kiss on the lips today, put her on anti-depressants (yeah, I know, “what took so freakin’ long?!” – she refused them before because she didn’t want to “take dope”). Mom became a bit more reasonable and a little easier to deal with. More like heck-on-wheels. When I asked her why they put her on the happy pills, she said “so I’d stop screaming.”
Hallelujah!
During rehab, her doctor spoke with me, informing me that she could not live on her own. Preaching to the choir, sir. So, through hook, crook and threats of Adult Protective services, I got her to agree to move “temporarily” to an Assisted Living facility near me. I found a really nice place a mile from my home and they assured me that the beatings would be kept to a minimum. (Joke!)
We moved some of her favorite things up and set up her two-room apartment to look really nice and homey. When she got out of the hospital we drove her straight to her new home. Despite hearing how horrible it was, we watched her start to enjoy life again. She was making friends and playing Bingo every day. God forbid you came by during Bingo hours, only did THAT once.
Mom *loved* the call buzzer and actually wore the one by her bed out, because she used it so much. She still managed to keep things lively. I got a call from her one Easter morning, telling me she couldn’t move her leg and perhaps she had had a stroke. “Should I go to the hospital?” Well, the normal answer would be “Hell YES!” but I had learned to ask. “Why didn’t the nurse call the ambulance for you?” I ask. Mom said that they wanted her to check with me first. None of this was adding up, so I told her I’d be right over. When I got there she was wheeling around her room, fully dressed and looking fine. I asked which leg it was that she could not move. “This one!” she said, bouncing the leg up and down.
Her behavior continued to become more erratic, and I got a call that I never thought I’d get. Mom was flashing her boobs at the male help and at some poor, unsuspecting wheelchair repairman. Oy. A doctor was brought in and a diagnosis of dementia was made. This only pissed her off. She accused the facility and the doctor of telling horrible lies about her. “I’d never do that!” she yelled.
In the end it really was a stroke that took her. The weekend of Thanksgiving she had a massive stroke affecting half of her brain. She had her 78th birthday in the hospital, but was not aware enough to know it and she passed just a few days before Christmas.
I’m still working on cleaning out the house, but it is getting close to being done. I avoid driving by the assisted living place, still too many bad memories. I can laugh about Mom flashing the help. It’s two years later and I’m finally getting to the point that I don’t jump when the phone rings.
I don’t mean someone who really grows on you, I’m talking about someone who is easily influenced and can become readily addicted to or dependent on mind-altering substances. It can be drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroin. It can be prescription drugs like Oxycontin, Xanax, or a plethora of pain killers and muscle relaxers. Maybe it’s alcohol that interferes with or has to be part of everyday life. Now take that person and throw in the occasional, and now more frequent, anxiety and panic attack. What do you get?
You get the hell scared out of you!
Let me tell you first hand because dependency has been in my family for as far back as most of us can trace, and we are now finding out that the anxiety and panic issues have been in the family for quite awhile as well.
Have you ever been there?
I have and it scares me.
Have you ever felt your temperature begin to slowly rise for no apparent reason?
I have and it freaks me out.
Have you felt your breathing begin to get a bit shallower, each breath becoming more of a gasp than a serious breath?
I have and I just want it to go away.
Have you felt your throat dry and then begin to close, slowly sending you into panic mode?
I have and will hate it when it happens again.
Have you had to wonder what the hell this was all about when life really is not to bad?
I always wonder. And really, what the hell is this all about?
The medication prescribed to combat such issues to me are often very addictive.
Now you have me.
I freak out for no apparent reason, then think about the little pill I am about to take. If I continue to have to take them, it’s very likely I will be dependent on them. Not taking them wreaks havoc.
I don’t mind the occasional sleepless night. But when it happens, I pace around the house, then into the yard and then in the car with no where to go because it is 2 in the morning. Then I go back in the house. I don’t want to wake others up because I feel it’s wrong. I don’t want the medication, but without it sleep, and a productive day, will be out of the question.
Shouldn’t I feel positive about the fact that there is a medication to help me through such time? I don’t want to become dependent on the medication, but I really do want to sleep and enjoy my sanity.
One is just feeding off the other and it is just wrong.
So I go to my 6 month check up with the oncologist. He’s been my doctor for years. Nice guy who gets me. I am in the exam room when a strange doctor comes in and out of my mouth flies: “Who the hell are you?” SNAP! Dr. Young-Thing proceeds to tell me he is a resident (oh crap), and that he is going to examine me. Like a deer in headlights, I say, “Like hell you are…where is Dr. S?”
I thought for sure he was going to push some hidden button for non-compliant patients. But he sits down and pulls up my chart online. Dr I-Have-Tattoos-Older Than-You proceeds to overview my ENTIRE medical history with me. We are talking 7 years.
I’m thinking: Noooooo, it was 2003 superstar, now get me the real doctor and do your fancy learnin’ on someone else.
“I am going to examine you–is that okay?”
To which I say, “No, not really, but I will let you see the magic that is my mastectomy!”
Oh, I was in rare form. (undoubtedly precipitated by a phone call with my parents not ten minutes earlier that mimicked Terms of Endearment–where I was ready to go Shirley MacClain on my dad’s sorry ass—”Get My Mom the medicine NOW!)
Dr Young thing: “I am feeling for your spleen, don’t find it.”
Me: “Wow, you need to study more.”
Dr. YT is fairly flustered by this point and steps out–leaving me the keys to the kingdom– My personal files online, for me to read! AHHH yeaaaaa! You know I did, kids. I sat right down and scrolled through that puppy like I was on a shopping spree at eBay. Okay, you ready…Here it is…the undeniably recorded in history and for all of UCLA and the world at large to read as a description of me as written by a my oncologist:
“This is a pleasant lady, alert and oriented x4, in no acute distress”
A resounding endorsement for Zoloft if I have ever heard one.
By then my real doctor, the author of my epitaph, comes in. I tried really hard to be “pleasant, alert, oriented x4 (not sure what the highest possible score is, but I am optimistic). Now, he has passed several of my is-this-doctor-a-dipwad litmus tests and so he is familiar with my work as a pain in the ass patient! He does his thing, and I tell him they should tell folks before they send a resident in to a patient.
He asks, “Why?”
“Because I had cancer, have no boobs, and a right to choose who looks at the train wreck that I call a body, reads my history, and for that matter is in the same room with me.”
I think I lost points for “pleasant lady…”
But then I look up at Dr Young Thing, and see his name tag. “Dr. Krishna” to which I said, “man, not much pressure with that name, huh?” They both started laughing so I think I got some points back for pleasantness.
The best…and I did this for all of you…is when I left. I saw yet another Dr. Young Thing standing in the back office. He was beyond GORGEOUS! I said to the whole staff, “I will have him as my resident next time, thanks”. Could have heard a pin drop…
Love to all of you pleasant, alert, and oriented x4 women out there who are only occasionally in acute distress…
For the last five years, I’ve been lying to everyone; my parents, my children, social services, but most of all, myself.
My “courtship” with my husband lasted just three months before we became engaged. A year and a month after we met, I married him. I blindly ignored the warnings from my parents, my loved ones, and my own eyes. I thought I could change him. He would be better after the wedding, when all the stress was gone.
How wrong was I?
Within months of our marriage, what I saw scared me, but I decided to stay, thinking, “I can still change him. I can make him better!” I was so arrogant!
We had just conceived our first child when he sprained my arm. I told myself that it was an accident and justified it to everyone else.
His sister assaulted me when I was pregnant. He put me down in front of his parents. His mother assaulted me many times. They told me it was my fault. It was all my fault. Everything was always my fault.
What’s worse is that I genuinely believed them!
They threatened to take my baby away from me if I left. I was so scared of them, I stayed.
Now that WAS my fault! I should have left, but I didn’t!
He raped me the first time when our daughter was just five days old. I can still remember the searing agony that tore through my whole body as he did it! The tears and cuts burning with fire, my screams mingling with those of our daughter who was in the same room as us! That was my fault too apparently. After that, I had to have treatment for an erosion in the womb. That was also entirely my fault.
He was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Now he had something else to justify his treatment of me. He “needed” round the clock care, an excuse to stop me from working.
He moved me away from my parents to an isolated town and wouldn’t let me visit them. My parents still blame me for that, as if I had a choice!
After our second child was born, the abuse got worse and worse. I confided in my midwife about him raping me when our daughter was five days old. She and all the other midwives we saw made a point of reminding him that sex wasn’t allowed before my six week check. Normally a woman is signed off by the midwife within days of giving birth. They visited me for over a month to protect me. As soon as my six week check was over, the rape began again. This time almost every night and sometimes while I was asleep.
I haven’t slept for almost two years! I began to crave the oblivion of deep sleep, but I couldn’t because of the fear of what he would do to me while I slept. Twice he raped me anally because I had a period. If he wasn’t doing that, he would say things like, “I was hoping to have sex with you, but I can’t because you’re bleeding,” as if it were somehow my fault for being a woman.
That wasn’t the end of the emotional abuse. There was always shouting and yelling. The police were called. Social services were called twice. He isolated me more and more from our friends and would only let me go out with one of the children at a time.
He’d lock me in the house and “forget” to leave my key behind. Sometimes, he would move my keys, and when I wasn’t looking, would put them somewhere I’d already looked. I thought I was going mad!
When our son was five months old, we went on holiday with his family. While we were there, he dragged me out of the room by my legs in front of our daughter and threw me out into the rain with no shoes and no coat. When he finally let me in half an hour later, I had to sit in my wet clothes feeding our son, while his mother lectured me on how the whole thing was my fault.
A week later, I was rushed into hospital with chest pains. Everyone noticed the bruises and three people made separate calls to social services on my behalf. They sent two police officers out that night to check on the children and me. It was so humiliating! He would never let me speak to men because as far as he was concerned, I was cheating on him with every single man I spoke to.
While I was visiting my parents, he kissed another woman. I wish I’d left him then! But I listened to his sob story about how he was really going to change this time! He did change …for the worse.
In November 2012, his brother assaulted me. I had to go to hospital and was on crutches for six weeks because my sciatic nerve had gone into spasm. I lied in the hospital and said that I’d fallen in the kitchen. I was so scared that my children would be taken from me this time.Do you know how much sex hurts when you have sciatica? Especially when it’s rape.
In May 2013, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The doctor believes there is a link between Fibromyalgia and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was another excuse to isolate me further from everyone. I wasn’t allowed to do housework because I was “too ill.” I’d given up fighting him. I was so far into my shell, I couldn’t even care for our children.
He slowly crushed me to the point that I didn’t know any different.
We had a visit from our new health visitor. He told her that he was afraid of bathing our daughter because he was afraid of having sexual feelings for her. I was shocked and scared, but I didn’t know what to do! I should have left him there and then, but I couldn’t! I was paralyzed by five years of emotional, financial, and sexual abuse. He’d groomed me for this very eventuality so that I wouldn’t leave him!
The next day a social worker turned up with two police officers who seized all of our computer equipment. They told me that I needed to get the children out of the house. I replied that if they were going, I would be going too. They agreed.
My children have been protected by social services for three months now. I’ve ended the relationship and am seeking help for the abuse. Social services are being as helpful as they can be, but the health visitor thinks I should have left and should not have my children back. She thinks I’m a failure as a mother.
Maybe I am. I should have left. I should have sought help sooner. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I obviously don’t deserve my children. Obviously love isn’t enough!
It was a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend a few years ago. I had gone with a good friend to the Indianapolis 500. I was very recently divorced and my son, age 8, was with his dad at an amusement park fairly close to our house. I had just returned to the area when my ex-husband called with a pretty horrifying story. His normally tough-as-nails mother had called him, hysterical, saying something about a pool, but he couldn’t make out anything else she was saying. He was on his way back to town, but in the meantime asked me to look for his mom.
