Finding Humor While Patience is Tested

The last few days have been very difficult.  Because of the trauma of being neglected and abused, my mother has needed constant attention.  Every 10 minutes during the day she needs something…her feet down, more ice chips, a mirror, something to eat, a different pillow, to go to the bathroom (which entails me lifting her, holding her with one arm while pulling down her pants, shifting her body over the porta potty and lowering her),  etc. etc.   My husband and son help when they can, but my husband wrenched his back the first day.

I bought a medical chair/bed that is a godsend.  She slept in it the 2^nd night since it fully reclines and is on rollers, with side tables.  Because she is on morphine and her body is very weak,  most of the time she smokes a cigarette, she is unsafe with it, nodding off, but very insistent and stubborn about smoking it.  The third night, she wanted a nicotine patch on, since I told her she can’t smoke while I’m sleeping.  Big Mistake!!  It wired her and she didn’t sleep at all.  My son stayed up with her until 2:30, when my husband woke me and said he heard them on the deck.  I went out and took over.  After getting her to bed, she used the call button three more times.  Once, because she was freezing, once to go to the bathroom and then so that I would put her in the roller chair.  The nurse and case manager came over yesterday and gave me some Ativan to help her sleep.  She is sleeping now…12 hours so far.

I now have her in diapers because she was soiling her clothes.  Her bed sores are getting better and since her feet have been elevated, the swelling in her legs/feet is gone.

My patience was severely tested the last couple of days because of the lack of sleep, her buzzing me constantly (once just to ask me what I was doing! urggg), and the manipulation she employs.  My son asked me if having a baby is this difficult, because if it is, he doesn’t want any kids.  I told him that it wasn’t this difficult!

Yesterday, after my mother used the porta potty on the deck, my dog got a hold of one of her feces and was making a meal out of it, while I’m trying to get her back on the chair.  My mother was totally grossed out and I just laughed!  Then an hour later, I come outside and mom is starting to vomit, so I put a plate under her to get sick on.  She drops her false teeth on it and I get to clean it all up!

I called my brother to see if he could help out some, perhaps one day this weekend and he said he and his wife had plans to clean out her mother’s garage as a late Mother’s Day gift, but he’d see what he could do.  I told him I really need some help, that he needs to step up to the plate, and that all of my plans have gone out the window.  He said if I’m going to get crappy about it…I said calmly that I’m not getting crappy….I just need a little help desperately!

I know that everything changes and that things will get better!