Finally came through for Mom, today.

I took Mom to the ER today, after she reported (today) waking up with hours of chest and back pain yesterday. It isn't unusual for her to experience symptoms that would send most people to the hospital. It is very unusual for her to allow me to step in and guide her to actual medical care. She usually avoids medical care and simply berates herself and excuses physical symptoms as yet another example of her "laziness", etc. As I told her before she agreed to go -- what's the worst thing that could happen if they find nothing wrong and send her home? And that's pretty much what happened, thank goodness. But for $90 and 4 hours she got medical testing that would have taken a lot more time and money if I'd simply gotten her to an appointment with her PCP.

I mention this because the last time I was in that ER triage room was about a year ago with my Dad, a few weeks before he passed. He was a frequent flier at that heart hospital, but that particular visit he had been discharged from a rehab hospital because he had no real chance of recovery. He had badly broken his arm during his last hospital stay and then, post-surgery, had fallen on the same arm and lost most of the skin on it (plus another break). The wound was weeping copious amounts of lymph fluid. They cleaned it up, re-bandaged the arm, and were on the cusp of discharging him back home where he had no hired caregiver, no handicap accessibility (he was by that time unable to walk by himself). He was actively dying but had refused hospice care, convinced he would not only survive but walk again, despite the permanent nerve damage in his lower body.

I watched him in the triage room and then fled to my car and wept. I should have been the caregiver he didn't have, and I was trying to get to the point where I could be (if only he and my mom would let me), but letting go of a career I'd spent a lifetime developing was hard and I had agreed to several weeks' notice.

I should have been there. I should have been there to clean his wound, to clean his feet, to help him to the bathroom and the car, to make sure he didn't fall again and end up back in the ER, to make sure Mom didn't order restaurant food delivery that he craved but that he no longer had the kidney function to tolerate. I should have been there -- but I wasn't. I should have been there for a couple of years, but I avoid them, even though I only lived 15 minutes away, because they made it so hard to help them. Impossible to help them, really. Impossible to me.

Since Dad died I've run in to roadblock after roadblock with Mom, all due to a persistent inability to follow through on any tasks of daily living on her part -- and a more persistent and stubborn denial that she won't be following through the next day. She hasn't washed clothes in months. Every piece of silverware in her apartment is dirty and piled on the counter or filling the sink. Dog urine covers the floor; where she tried to mop it up she simply ends up spreading it around. My husband pays her rent (before this apartment she lived rent free in a home we own). We both love her to bits, but if they won't let you help them...

Well, if they won't let you help them then you tell yourself two opposing things: 1) I can't help them because they won't let me so I'll stop beating my head against that brick wall, and 2) I am the worst, the very worst daughter in the world and my parents have suffered in horrific way, even to their death (for which I was not present, arriving an hour after the fact), because I am too weak to overcome their resistance.

But you know what? Today was a good day. She let me help her - cheerfully, even. At the end of the day we are both less anxious than we would otherwise have been and have a lot more medical information.

This stuff is hard, ya'll. The very hardest thing I've ever faced. So much love. So many chips on both my shoulders. The regret is crushing. The love, though...

So much love. And hope.