We’re in the emergency room waiting area, it’s 9:30 pm. I’m sitting next to my mom and she has told me to keep my mouth shut. I’m triggered like a 13-year-old girl and hating her, hating me. I haven’t felt this way for sometime now.
This past year, a lot of moments that are strange and unusual and offensive get swept away with the excuse that her dementia leaves no mental capacity for her to be as manipulative as she once was. But the familiarity overtakes me every now and again and tonight it's like a tidal wave.
I am frustrated. I was at home getting ready to relax after a long day when I got the call from her memory care team. Since she recently moved, this has happened a few times in the past week. I was thinking they had once again fallen short with the care that they were providing, especially when she is sundowning, and now they want me to rush over to address it. When I arrive at the facility, I ask them to take her vitals, which they stumble through at best. Everything indicates that she is fine except for her changing ailment complaints: chest pains that shot across her chest a few hours ago and now her abdomen is hurting. I am reticent to take her to the ER. We start fighting like we used to do when I was younger, when she would just boss me around. I finally resolve to take her to the ER to dismantle the argument. It is also a way to navigate around the sub par performance of the "caregivers" (not "nurses" as one whispers to me when I tell my mom the nurse will take her blood pressure). Aha.
The ride feels long and arduous and is literally a half a block away. I have been told many times to not talk once we get there. Truth is she doesn't know where she is when we pull up in front of the ER. She asks me what this place is? She wanted to go to the hospital. I am so frustrated I practically scream that this is the hospital.
I pull her cumbersome wheelchair out of the back of my car and struggle with opening it up. I am crazy laughing at myself for not watching the nurse collapse it at the facility. Sooner or later I get her in it and wheel her through the metal detectors. She sits across from a gentleman checking her in to the ER. I stand behind her mumbling some of the answers that he needs, though she wants to do it all by herself. She signs all the paperwork, her signature still looks fairly intact. Then he tries to confirm her address and I tell him she now lives at Porter Place. It bothers her. She doesn't want him to know this because she still thinks she has a house.
This is how I came to be sitting next to my mother, fuming about that all too familiar feeling of her diminishing my presence. Minutes pass as she digs through her purse. I watch the two ER people enjoy cookies from a thoughtful supervisor. Other patients come in to be helped. My mom asks me if I want a Werther's? I turn her down. By the time they called her back, her anger towards me had dissipated. I am not so lucky.
...
I've been sitting in the ER room staring at my mom for hours; it is the early morning now and I am tired and loose. I actually like being up every so often in the middle of the night but the chairs are hard and I want to go to lay in my bed. A paramedic is helping out because they are short staffed. She has the distinct joy of having to catheter my mom if she can't provide a sample soon. My mother has mistaken her for a man and seems to be hitting on her. This adds levity to the situation. We laugh together and the woman graciously says it’s common with older adults, my mom misses the joke. I consider how my mom hits on all the doctors when she comes to the hospital. It might be why she likes to visit so often. The medic manages to get a sample and sends it off for testing. She turns out the light so we can sleep a bit while we wait for the results.
I wake up from a crampy snooze, sitting in one chair with my legs stretched out on another. Why is this taking so long and who is the drunk guy in the other room? He is playing music and provides comedy relief for me now. It's 3 am and I'm sick of waiting. I search out the results from the doc. It's slow for them to identify a UTI and administer some antibiotics. My mother is perking up from the IV and meds. She keeps making conversation to fill the space, asking over and over about going to New York with the girls in the summer. I keep answering the same questions, as if each time it's a fresh request and novel idea. I know the whole time it's complete bullshit because I'm not going cross-country on a bus to NYC; quite honestly neither is she, but it's Mother's Day now and the least I can do is indulge her.
It's 4:15 when I finally load my mother back in the car. The drunk guy gets released at the same time as us and we follow him and his music out. I marvel at how they walk him out the front door of the ER and leave him to his own devices to get home. He wanders off in the dark towards the park across the street. I assume he's in college.
I take my mom back to Porter Place and the staff is sleeping when we come down the hall. I tuck her in bed and leave as the "caretaker" not "nurse" comes to check on her. I'm grateful now that we went but I just want to get home. Birds are chirping as I pull away.
...
A rough day follows. D and the girls have a special breakfast waiting for me when I get up at 11 am. I am out of sorts and emotional all day, not showing up very well for my family on a day when they are trying to celebrate me. I hate how I acted and how my mother acted towards me but I can no longer hold her accountable for her actions. Sure I can write it off as an infection, but there is no way to absolve the darkness triggered from our history. Add to that my disappointment for not doing a better job as an adult handling my sick mother. Then layer on questioning the move to memory care since the experience has been underwhelming and the transition hard. I am left feeling horrible about myself, horrible about how everything is being handled, and horrible for wanting it to be over.