That is terrible... I hope she was joking even if it was a bad joke!!

I am so sorry she did this to you! I hope you will forgive her, and try to open a dialogue as to why she felt it necessary to do this, with no provocation or reason.

People just don't understand how hard it is to live with RA, without adding to the burden. Maybe she feels you are unavailable, or wrapped up in yourself. If so, it's because no one can understand the pain and being disabled. I was lucky, my daughter was compassionate. She started dressing me, brushing my hair when she was only 10. It was too demanding on her, but I had no options even for home care, because I was not properly diagnosed. She did end up becoming a social worker, to help kids.

As for your daughter, Maybe something is going on in her life to upset her? Or maybe that you are leaving for the winter again?

Hugs and I will keep you in prayer!

What on earth caused her to say that? If you've been complaining, is she taking your complaints of RA as whining and as a suicide potential?

Yes, some dialogue with her is definitely needed.

My husband and I are both baffled by her comments. She has history of mental illness and I wonder if she had been drinking. This is the same daughter who wanted to pull the plug on me right away when I was in a coma. I think she is more interested in inheritance than me living. Regardless her comments upset me greatly when I already have so much to deal with. Sorry to be so personal but I needed to vent.

oh sure vent anytime. but after the vent, on your end, since you know she has mental illness I am sure you know that you can not let her define your reality and that she does not define your reality. right?

some of my family members i love in a more responsibility and respect kind of way. in other words I just do because i have to but said family members (in my family) who suffer from varied types of mental illness and deny my reality are not part of my own care team.

I take care of them. they do not take care of me.

when my family members talk like this (i have a couple with psych issues) I don't allow them to make me crazy.

they can't comprehend anything other than their own stuff.

my recognizing that is liberating. i swear that they are not what is that word, you know wilfull. they are just not mentally able.

it sucks my having to recognize that but I substitute best friends for each of my mentally ill family members and I do for my best friends and they do for me. family can be created I have found.

do you have your own therapist? what does he or she say?

hang in there.

depot

Be patient because karma is a bitch.

This is the post that put me in a great big funk when I read it last week. See? Here I go crying again just reading it. It's taken this long to answer.I have a daughter and although she has never said anything like this she can be mean like her Father, my husband. She's our only daughter. My husband is bipolar (on meds) and I think she is to but won't go to the doctor. I know what RA feels like and the thought of my daughter saying this to me made me cry for you. This was the day I sat outside and cried, looked at our pool and wondered about walking into it and not coming out. Friends are Gods apologies for family. We're here.

I'm going through some family stuff now. Just furious about how death can bring out the worst in us.

I think we all need a thread devoted to sweet and funny things. How about it? I'll start it. I'll call it, "Need A Giggle?" And I hope everyone will contribute because I could use a good laugh.

Sorry melly65-I didn't mean to put others in a funk. I agree friends can make a huge positive impact

I hope that you are feeling a little better in the days since your post, and thank you for sharing your experience with us so candidly. When I first read it, I could really relate to your feelings of hurt. It is very hard to deal with people we care about who can't or won't give back to us. Many of the symptoms of this disease are invisible and it takes compassion to be able to see it for what it is. It hurts when we love people but they are not able to even be compassionate toward us. It also made me think, too, about how I have been toward others, namely my own mom. I have always looked on my mom as a hypochondriac, always sick, never feeling good, but nothing wrong. I have been impatient with her at times, judgmental at times. I have been exploring my own symptoms now over the past year and a half, symptoms I have been having really for a while, since I had my last son....a very complicated pregnancy. I live in a rural area, many generations of my family have all lived in this same area. My grandmother's generation never talked about illness....my mom's generation talked about it but never called it by its actual name. As I began to try to figure out my own symptoms, I discovered that my mom and my grandmother and many other people in my family have also been symptomatic, probably undiagnosed. My mom told me that her doctor told her in her 30s that she was "negative for lupus but borderline for RA!" One blood test at a PCP and off she was sent, no further visits, no referral for rheumatology, no treatment. I think about those days now and suspect that she has felt the same way I feel, and I did not respond very compassionately, either. :(

My mother is bipolar and prone to saying really awful things out of the blue. As I understand it, it is part of the disease. She quit treatment and meds without telling anyone. We've convinced her to get back into treatment. It can't come soon enough ...

That said, words hurt and I'm sorry that you have to deal with this on top of everything else :(

Words do hurt. It's up to you to be strong and put it in context. It's the disease talking.

Bipolar can be well controlled with meds. But a warning to those of you with family with bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder can be terribly non-med compliant. They lose their judgement, and impulse moves them. They hate the meds, because they are not having the fun and the highs they used to have. They don't realize that not being on meds, causes them to have no insight to what they are saying/doing and that they are very "clever" with their insults, and the world is their oyster. Eventually, they generally end up getting depressed/suicidal and go back on the meds till they are stable, then long for the natural high, hate the doctors for overmedicating them, and go off the meds.

Repeat, rinse!

But some people, particularly the bipolar 1's get insight into the need to take their meds, particularly if they are hospitalized involuntarily for being psychotic. The bipolar 2's don't have this built in reality check, except for suicidal depression.

I have a life time friend, who I just found out in August is bipolar 2. I don't know how I didn't see it earlier, she had all the symptoms. When people with bipolar disorder get older, and they are often unmedicated, they become severely depressed. But then, when they are put on meds and stabilized they go off as this old friend did. She hated the drugs, said they caused terrible weight gain. (Some do!) But when I saw her, it was like the light had gone out in her eyes. She needed those meds, but to start them at 65 or so was really a tough go, especially because she was always a rebel. And bipolar disorder can also cause memory loss leading to dementia if it is not treated. Maybe something to tell those unmedicated bipolars?

Sorry to turn this into a rant about bipolar disorder. I just thought I would share a little, in the hopes it might help someone here deal with family members who are off the wall in the way they treat you. With RA, the pain pushes you to get treatment, esp. when it works. With bipolar the fun pushes you to not take meds. Very sad!

Just to clarify she is not bipolar

You mentioned that she has a mental disorder. If you feel comfortable, please let us know what it is. We might see things a little differently.