Ewereka's Journal

The last few days have been absolutely  horrible for me and my dad.  I finally gave up my apartment so that I could move in with my folks--that way when I have an attack and need help it would be easier for them and when they need help I would be here to care for them.  Only, I wasn't planning on it taking effect so soon! 

 Thursday I was babysitting for my great-niece while her mommy and daddy worked. My dad was cooking pot roast for my brother and his family--9 people in all.  About 3 o'clock the kitchen sink clogged with onion peels and the disposer quit working, Dad turned pale and said that he didn't feel good, meanwhile Mom is in their bedroom throwing up all over their bed and the carpet!  (They are 75 and 73 years old, Mom had two heart attacks last year while having back surgery so isn't too active and weighs about 270 lbs.)  She had laid down to take a nap while the baby slept.  Meanwhile, baby had also woken with a dirty diaper and hungry.  Are you getting the picture that the day is quickly going downhill?  Five o'clock rolls around and the family shows up for dinner--which did actually taste pretty good, I think. I can never relax when the house is full of company but then add Mom and Dad being sick, the kitchen sink being stopped up, etc....my brother takes off to take one of his daughters to cheerleading practice leaving one behind.  "Mommy, Daddy and baby" quickly clear out also with some flimsy excuse.  That leaves me with the stopped up sink, two vomitting parents,  my brother's teenage daughter  uptight because she needs to get home to do her homework, a bed that needs changing and a carpet that now needs cleaning.   Sometimes I wonder if I am supposed to be laughing or crying.

My brother does come back about 1 1/2 hrs later to pick up his daughter and starts back out the door.  Thank heaven Dad felt up to asking  him to help unplug the kitchen sink...much to my brother's disgust because after all, Kristen needs to get home to do her homework and his show is on at 8!  BROTHERS!!

By 8:30 Mom has thrown up 3 times, has a temp of 101 and is no longer responding to us.  We would try to tell her to vomit in the bucket and she wouldn't even try.  We would try to help her move to the bathroom and she looked right through us as if we weren't even there.  After trying to pick her up off the floor for the second time Dad told her that he had to call 911 because he was too sick to help her, I couldn't take care of the two of them and she was not cooperating with either one of us.  She just stares at him like "I dare you!!" but says nothing.  I am beginning to wonder if she has had a stroke, she hasn't thrown up enough to be dehydrated, her temp is only 101 so she shouldn't be delirious, so is she doing this out of spite or what?  The guys from 911 get here and she talks to them! They ask her to move from the bed to the gurney and she does it without falling to the floor and moves like some prima dona ballerina.  Now Dad and I look like total fools!  These six burly guys are looking at us as if to say--who is it that is having trouble communicating?

We get to the ER and Dad goes in with Mom while the doctor checks her then makes a run for the bathroom to toss his cookies.  He's really not looking good.  Thank heaven my brother had dropped everything and come running (this time) when I called their house earlier to say that we had called 911.  Dad drives himself home while Tony stays at the hospital with me.  I tell the doctor about the unresponsiveness and they do a CT scan--nothing. I explain that she has hit the floor two or three times, that Dad is home (and by phone has filled us in that as soon as he got home he threw up and had diarrhea 3 times each in the half hour that he had been home--he IS sick!.), and there is no way that I can care for her alone, especially with the way that she had been acting, by myself, along with Dad's being sick so please, please, find something so that they can keep her over night, if nothing else, observation for 23 hours, please?!.  Mom's reports come back--No dehydration, no sign of stroke, she is responding to them, everybody's got this viral thing, buck up and things will be better in the morning.  They give her a small bag of fluids and SEND HER HOME for me to handle. It is now 3:30 a.m. and we are on our way home.  By 6:30 a.m. I had changed their bed 3 times and helped Dad get Mom up off the floor twice.  I manage to get a couple of hours of sleep then have an appointment at 10:30 at the pain clinic which I can't cancel because it is Friday and I am out of pain medicine.

I make it to my appointment and start feeling queezy--is it AIP from the stress or "the viral thing that everybody's got"?  I ask the doctor what he wants me to do if I should happen to loose pain medicine, like vomitting it as soon as I take it and can see it drifting to the bottom of the stool ...you got the picture? (I know this whole story is so gross), could he please allow a few extra this time? (I know that he is trying very hard to help control addiction tendencies but have a heart) WRONG. If you can see it, reach down, grab "em and swallow again. Otherwise, hope that you absorbed enough of it to do some good. GGGRRROSSSS.

By the time I get home I am running 102 temp. and really not feeling well. Dad has called my brother to bring the kids over for dinner to eat the left overs from the night before because there was so much and none of us would be able to eat it all.  I throw up! Great--the three of us are now throwing up, Mom is out of her brain and company is coming for dinner. Can it get any better?  (I promise, I am not making this up!)

It is now Sunday, I think. My temp is still 101, I am so dehydrated from vomitting and the diarrhea that I have had to take my contacts out--I don't even have enough tears to keep my contacts hydrated comfortably, my back is strained  from trying to pick Mom up off the floor a total of six times, my abdomen hurts like porphyria  and I would love to get hold of some of my great-niece's diaper rash ointment! Dad is feeling better, not great, but better.  He got up and went to church just for a change of scenery and a breath of FRESH air this morning.   Mom is doing better and says that she has no memory of the last few days.  Did she throw up?  (Yes, Mom. You did.) What is the bruise of her left hip? "You mean I fell?"  You had to change the bed how many times?  I don't remember any of that. (Evidentally, for her age and physical condition, the 101 degree temp caused delirium. Which the doctor did not bother to take into consideration when she sent Mom home!!) 

However, now Mom is in a funk because Dad  has explained to her that she either starts exercising "seriously"; there will be no more of our waiting on her--if she wants something she is to get up--which she can do-- and get it herself, and she will be eating all of her meals IN THE KITCHEN (not in front of the TV brought to her by one of us); go back to rehab or pick her own nursing home because neither of us in any kind of physical condition to go through this again.  How much does she expect us to go through?

After her heart attack and back surgery last year she went through cardiac Rehab, then had to start rehab for her back but she did not take that seriously.  She finally told them that she had had enough so they had to discharge her because they could not make her do it.  The doctor told her earlier this spring that she had to go through rehab again because she was not in good enough condition but she came up with some reason to get out of it again. Dad bought her a Nu-Step bike which she promised  she would use but it is a joke how she uses it.  She puts no resistance on it but still insists that she is exercising.  She does not take walks and barely moves from her recliner all day, except to move to the bathroom.

Now, some of this is our fault for waiting on her. I am afraid to tell her "NO" for being in the daughter position. I am also unsure of just exactly how much pain she might actually be in. But I think I have done her an injustice by waiting on her because she doesn't even use her muscles to stand up unless she wants to move to the bed or once in a while go out to eat.

Please forgive me for venting for so long but I didn't realize that a person could change so much as they got older.  I have watched two grandmothers go through alzheimers and took care of one grandfather for three months as he died from heart failure but this time it is my mother and I can't talk back.  It breaks my heart to see what she is going through but even more it breaks my heart for what she is doing to my dad.  They say we hurt the ones we love the most--guess its true.