I care for my mother - she does not have dementia, but seems to have every other ailment under the sun. Diabetic for over 40 years, rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure, thyroid & gallbladder removed when she was young, atrial fibrillation (now reliant upon a pacemaker), osteoporosis, diabetic foot ulcers, rectal cancer in 2005 which has left her incontinent, etc. etc. - the poor woman was dealt a really sh*tty hand in the health department, that's for sure. She broke her right hip earlier this year, and had that replaced in september. She was gone for 3 months at a SNF for rehab, and I felt like it was the first time I could breathe in a long time.
Now that she is back home (she lives in my home), I immediately noted how different I feel. I am chewing my fingers again, my temper is short, I'm anxious, I feel like I am a snarky smart-assed 15 year old whenever I respond to her...and I'm going to be 50 in July! To put it bluntly, I DO NOT LIKE the person that I become when I am around my mother, but I feel like I am powerless to stop it!
Obviously she is frail and she needs my help - am I resentful of that?? Am I trying to push her away, or prepare myself for what I know is to come down the road??? I just don't get it. She has never been the most positive person - always complaining about something & making comments about people's appearances that aren't exactly complimentary, but she's always been that way - it's not like it's news to me.
I know she can't help (to some extent) the position she is in, but there are days where I feel she COULD help me out a bit more than she does. Sorry for being graphic, but when she gets poop on the inside of her clothes because she didn't make it to the bathroom on time & the diaper leaked....she can certainly rinse them out or at the very least say something instead of just rolling the clothes up, poop and all, into a ball & leaving them in her room until she has a full washer load, can't she??? I have stuck my hand into god-knows-what more often than I care to admit, and I get SO PISSED OFF. To me, there is no excuse for that behavior, whether she's embarrassed by it or not. As a result, I have ruined a few of her articles of clothing by soaking them into a bucket with bleach water, but what does she expect me to do??? Just put her crap-filled clothes into my washing machine????? She then turns around & yells at me for ruining her clothes. UGH!!!
Instead of enjoying time with her, I feel like all I do is bitch & moan about every little thing she does to everyone. My huband & my oldest daughter are around her enough to sympathize with me for what I put up with, but everyone else looks at me like I'm a raging bi*ch for talking about my mother like that. I guess I need to be more cautious of who I vent to (THANK GOD FOR THIS BOARD!) but seriously...she brings out the worst in me and I just don't know how to handle it. (((vent over...whew!)))
