That was what I sat down for until I realised that I if I couldn't write every day or so then I probably would go mad.
I've had a weekend of meltdowns, large and small, due to mother emergencies, real and imagined.
How glad I am that I come home to the sounds of silence. No cat/dog/kid whinging to be fed. No husband/partner demanding clean underwear and cold beer. No friends wanting to know what I'm doing for Christmas. Just my little sanctuary of nothingness which is staying that way forever.
I am on the brink, ready to fall over the cliff, checking out what's left of my brain. One more phone call from the old bat and my sanity will snap.
I haven't written much about her lately because I know there are people in cyberland who actually like their mothers and would be very upset if they were to fall off the twig or who have mothers who've already gone.
Political correctness only goes so far though.
The doctor is coming tomorrow so I have to try and waylay him before he comes into the house.
Tell him to just look at the cancer lesion on her face, feel the suspicious lump in her right leg, tell him about the dizziness that we suspect is her potassium/sodium levels fluctuating but most of all tell him not to engage in any dialogue with crazylady.
All I want him to do, is listen to what's coming out of her brain but that might not work. She has the uncanny ability to pull her remaining brain cells together for half an hour to come across as normal. After all, he's only coming for a social visit as she's not really sick. This from a woman who thinks the cat is the dog that's been dead for 6 years and when I corrected her, said there wasn't much difference between the two.
She's already rung three times today for me to go over and clean up and dust for the visit. She doesn't want him to think she can't look after herself. I expect another call about 7.30 when she realises she's left the TV guide somewhere and needs to know what's on tonight.
Last week I was accused of trying to kill her with morphine. My sister tried to bump her off by cooking fresh food. My nephew tried to do her in by staying out late. Whatever we do, she wants the opposite.
This is not a dramatic weight loss, skin and bone type of cancer. It's a slow decline in all physical and mental capacities, and it's also killing us. It's like living with an emotional vampire so if I don't blog for a while just put it down to having my brain matter sucked out of my ears.
18 comments:
I thought you might have been going to waylay the Doc in order to ask him if there was some way of speeding up the 'process'. (Which frankly I think you should anyway. If only to have some alarm bells go off and for him to consider that some respite for you might be what's actually needed most)--who is suffering here?
I was thinking along the lines of Caroline. It is happening, it is part of your life and you will look back upon it. It won't go on forever. No one said it was easy and this clearly is not. But you have to do what you have to do.
CLOSING DOWN -MY COMMENTS!
Hello darlings, ha ha, hope that didn't scare you. Listen, tomorrow is Savers half-price sale, and guess what, I was there today and couldn't wait, got a Rank Arena portable TV for $12.99, and it didn't blow up!- how's that. But silly me: tomorrow it would have been $6.49. Yes well you can never tell with us bargain fiends, we sneak in sale eve to check out what to pounce on next day -and next day find out some rat grabbed it at closing time the day before! ha ha, great practical joke, the best.
-Robert.
I got those coathanger blues
I got second hand shoes
I got loving you
Which is mighty fine
Savers love
Nine point nine!
ha ha ha!
ROBBERT!!!
I always remember the advice my Old Dear used to give me when times were hard, when emotions were fraught and when life seemed like a never ending trudge through a vat of dark, dreadful treacle:
"Wear shiny shoes. Girls'll never want to go out with you if you don't wear shiny shoes. That's the first thing a girl looks at, is that, and if they're not shiny she'll think you're not worth knowing."
I'm sure her advice will benefit you as much as it benefitted me...but hopefully it's comforting to know that you're not the only one who's life has been completely buggered up by other people.
The hour before dawn, they say, is always the darkest. In my experience it's also the noisiest...all those bloody chaffinches and sparrows and bluetits warbling their ruddy heads off.
This also might sound like a bit of crap cod philosophy...but once you've tumbled off the edge of sanity completely it'll make more sense.
How can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?
Unplug the phone my dear....or better yet just go on a holiday.
If you want my address, do come visit cus we may just jump off a cliff together or give eachother strength, laughter and love.
High time for it I reakon.....for both of us old fuddies.
Chio.
YOu can't close down the blog when I've just found it!
Sorry to hear about your burden with your mother. I empathise - it can really tear you up inside , all the conflicting feelings.
I'm with Andrew and Caroline, it won't go on forever... and I guess that's not much help to hear right now, is it?
Feel free to come over to Feminoz and vent any time you like.
Keep the blog or you will go mad. At least you know with the blog that there's a host of people thinking good thoughts about you, and if we all wished for the old dear to be put out of her misery (the one in bed, not you, by any means) then maybe something might shift in the fabric of the universe...
Hang in there! and both Morgana and Caroline are speaking sense. You need some respite.
((((Hug))))
Oh dear. My mother (a sour old bat) also had cancer and died 3 1/2 years ago. No one was sorry to see her go except my brother because she died without ever telling him who his father is (and his birth certificate has never been found). It's terribly hard for you being so nearby that she feels able to call on you constantly. My mum was 4 hours away by train. You will get through this and in some part of her mind I'm sure she appreciates you even though she doesn't seem able to say so.
The thing about the medical professions (and I was involved in assessing people for nursing home eligibility for a short period) is that if there is family around then it assumes they will pick up the slack. But there ARE other services around to do it.
I'm impressed you're still stringing sentences together.
Caroline, she's never going into respite again and never leaving her home except feet first and she's not bats enough to shove in a home.
Andrew, I think the Doc was a bit shocked today and I gave him a list of things to look for before he got in the house. If she would just stop making up stories when she can't remember, before she gets us arrested.
Rh, thank goodness I don't have a Savers anywhere near me. I love sales.
Hughes in shiny shoes, it rhymes.
Agree with you about the sodding birds, damn pests singing the sun up and getting it on in the tree outside my window in the dark.
Morgana, unplug the phone would work if she didn't have esp that bores through the brain until I have to put the phone on.
Hi Oz, we said last Christmas it wouldn't go on forever and here we are staring down the barrel at another yuletide of joyous crap.
Duckie, I hate wishing away her life, it's bad karma (see next post) but it isn't much of a life, just pain and driving us nuts.
Thank you Helen, that htmlgoodies site is great.
River, my sister lives across the road from her so it's easy for her to say 'piss off' and then go home. This is the third time we've nursed her through serious illness and we know it's the last so we've got no guilt.
She's been assessed Mikhela but she won't go and I don't think I could go through with making her. Respite earlier this year nearly killed me but she had a good rest.
Don't they have home nursing in Victoria? AP has nurses that come in once a day, and they're Govt subsidised. Have you got the equivalent thing there? Probably not, you're a smart woman and I can't see you leaving any stones unturned.
Not ill-wishing, WELL wishing. Wishing her misery to stop. Soon.
Patina on the copper, witch.
We have home nursing Duckie but she's not in the way of needing that kind of nursing. It's more of the handing out the right pills at the right time sort of thing.
Thank you Davo.
Jahteh I am so sorry things are like this....please hang in there any way you can...surely it can't go on too much longer. Actually what you have said in your posts referring to your mother and her effect on you life... if you went back (or after its over) and pulled it all together oyu would have the makings of a good book... not quite a horror story but close...but people need to kno9w the effect what you are going through has on your whole life. There will be time later... think about it...
my mum was lovely but this doesn't mean all mum's are or were
aren't blogpals nice?
LOVE from the Camperdown library.
MC, I have given your story to the sister and she is horrified at the way Don was treated.
Hello Helena of the low plains and high hills.
"CLOSING DOWN THE BLOG"
Sensational Headline.
Golly, you're worse than the old Truth.
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