Where In The World Is My Mama?

Mom is not getting better.  If anything she is getting worse, according to Daddy.  Since being put under anesthesia for surgery on her wrist over a month ago, she has not been the same.  The theory seems to be that sometimes elderly people have trouble coming back from being put under, especially if there was any dementia at all prior to.  And she did have signs of slight dementia starting.  She imagined bugs and got some crazy notions in her head, but nothing serious.  I mean, she’s always been a little bit crazy, but I had noticed some slight slipping over the last year or two.  But, it’s like my brother Ken said, “On a scale from 1 to 10 of dementia, she went from a 1 or 2 to an 8 or 9 overnight.”  It is very frustrating because it’s now been 6 weeks since the surgery and she shows no signs of improvement. 

It seems like she cannot differentiate between her dreams and reality.  And she apparently has some doozy dreams…

She gets fixated on things and will not be convinced they are not true.  It’s almost like she’s in a waking dream…or series of recurring dreams.  One of the recurring ones is that the nursing home is shutting down and they are kicking her out.  One day Daddy arrived at her room and she kept talking about all the furniture out in the hall.  She said they were gutting all the furniture from all the rooms because the place was shutting down the next morning.  Of course Daddy tries to humor her by going back out into the hall and looking around.  He tells her there is no furniture out there, but she argues with him about it.  Then she tells him the nurses told her the power was being turned off later that day because the place didn't pay their electric bill.  She insists they are “putting her to the street in the morning.”  I know how badly she wants to go home, and I’m sure this is just her mind working out a way for that to happen.  In her mind, if the facility kicks her out, she’ll have to (get to) go home.

The nurses and staff bring all of her meals and drinks and manage her medications for her now.  For years she has been very meticulous about her pills; organizing them in her pill boxes and keeping charts of when she took what.  Now she is often convinced that the nurses are getting them all mixed up and giving her the wrong meds.  On those days she refuses to swallow the pills; one day she even spit a pill back out into the water glass.  Other times she is positive that they are trying to poison her and she won’t eat.

Another of her recurring fantasies involves money.  I’m sure her subconscious mind still holds onto all the worrying she did about their financial situation before the house was sold and most of the bills were paid off last spring.  She gets upset at Daddy, telling him that it’s his fault, he messed up something and now they owe thousands of dollars and everyone is mad at them and they are going to be homeless.  He tries to explain to her that they are ok and the bills are being paid, but she argues and won’t believe him.

The kind of comical one is the imaginary party going on at the hotel across the street.  She claims there is a hotel across the road from the nursing home, and people are always having big loud parties.  Apparently, they come and get her from her room in the middle of the night and make her go to the party even though she tells them she doesn't want to go.  We think she imagines the hallway outside her room is the “road” and when she hears people talking or laughing in the hall, she imagines they are having a party.

 

She constantly sees people who aren't there.  She thinks people spend the night in her room.  One day there was a cat that got into everything and ended up hurt but nobody would help it and it was running around crying.  Her ongoing bug/insect hallucination has just gotten worse.  The bugs from the house in the valley that had followed them to the mobile home have now followed her to the nursing home and the place is infected.  The other day she asked Daddy if he saw those firemen come through the wall.  She said there was a smoke in her room and a hair dryer caught on fire so the firemen came through the wall and took care of it…no, they didn't tear down the wall, they just came through it.  It would be almost funny if it wasn't so disturbing.

 

The one that hurts is that she imagines I am there a lot, sometimes there in her room, sometimes I’m at the party, and I either ignore her or I am outright rude or mean to her.  Daddy tries to tell her that I wasn't there, and she says she knows I’m in Florida, but then she will still insist that I was there the night before and was mean to her.  When I got to visit her last month, she asked me why I wouldn't speak to her at the party the night before.  I explained to her that I had just gotten to town and wasn't even there the night before, and she said maybe she had dreamed it.  I agreed that she must have dreamed it.  I told her how much I loved her and tried to tell that the next time she thought I was there and being rude or mean, she should tell herself that she must be dreaming because Suzi wouldn't treat her like that.  But I spoke with Daddy yesterday and it seems I had spent the night with her the night before and had been “plumb ugly” to her.

I know I shouldn't take it personally.  Poor Ken had her look him right in the eye and say “I hate you” because he wouldn't take the cast off her broken wrist.  And I know Daddy puts up with it every day and is able to let it roll off.  I know it’s not really what she thinks or feels, it’s just the disease or whatever it is that has gone wrong with her wiring.  In a lucid moment she will tell me that she loves me so much and doesn't know what they would do without me.  I know that she loves me and that she is proud of me and that she realizes how much I have been there for them and how much I've done for them.  But, I can’t help but wonder what is it in her subconscious mind that defaults to making me the bad guy.

Maybe it’s because I took charge of their financial situation last year and told them straight up how things were and what they had to do.  Perhaps somewhere in her poor mind she resents or even blames me somehow for having to move.  I know she feels like we forced them into the mobile home, even though we tried to make them understand they really didn't have a lot of choices.  Again, I know that in a lucid moment she fully understands what happened and realizes that we more or less saved them from a very scary financial future.  But, if she is currently acting out her subconscious and her dreams, it seems obvious that she is still working through all of that, worrying about money and housing.  Perhaps her worried mind has somehow put me in the role of the authority figure, the parent so to speak.  That doesn't really explain why she would imagine me ignoring her…I know I’m stretching.  Maybe it’s simply because I haven’t been to visit in a while.  Perhaps she simply got used to me being there so much over the last few years and now her confused mind doesn't understand why I haven’t been around lately.

 

I know I shouldn't take it personally.  But that is easier said than done.  As of today, it seems she is having trouble remembering how many children she has.  When Daddy told her she had three, she argued and said she thought maybe she only had two.  Of course Daddy said it broke his heart to hear her ask that.  I've tried to brace him for the day he shows up and she doesn't know him.  He says he knows it might be coming.  We talked a little bit longer, and something was said again about her not remembering her kids.  I laughingly said that I didn't even want to know which one of us she didn't remember.  Daddy didn't volunteer an answer, just laughed and changed the subject.  So, hmmm … but don’t take it personally, right?

We have decided to go home for Christmas because I can’t stand the thought of Daddy alone his first holiday in the new place, and I want to see Mama.  I’m really worried that she is giving up.  Daddy said she has made several comments about it not being worth it, and how maybe her time is over and she should just give it up.  When he questions her further on the subject she waves it off, but I can tell it worries him.  And I know it has to be so frustrating to her in her more lucid moments, because she does realize that she gets confused.  And now Dad said she has stopped talking about going home.  That worries me.

Ken took this picture a few weeks ago.  She doesn't even look like the same woman I've always known.  The way she holds her mouth and the set of her eyes are completely different.  I just wish we knew what has happened.  Where in the world is my Mama and is she coming back?