An Update on My Mom

After months of going "no contact" with most of my immediate family once again, Riley and I were talking last night and she mentioned wanting to go visit my mom "one last time" (since my sister and my uncle Kevin are planning to have her transferred out to West Chester, and I don't necessarily expect them to tell me when or where.)

I knew Taylor and Ahlina are planning to come down next weekend to load up the car with more of their stuff from my mom's trailer. So I called Tay and she expressed the same sentiment about wanting to see my mom. And I figured I could just take both girls to see my mom together next weekend.

But I decided to call Sandy to make sure my mom was still at Oxford over in Langhorne and get her room number and directions on where to go and such.

Sandy was cordial and gave me all the information, but also said that Mom really isn't doing well. So after I hung up with her I decided to give my mom a call for the first time in probably three months and see how she's doing.

And she is not doing well.

When she answered the phone, she was really mad and said she was looking for me and Sandy because we "needed a whoopin'", as if we're little kids again in her mind and she's cross with us.

When I asked if she was doing okay she said she's in a lot of pain and HAS to get out of there: She NEEDS to go!

Then she started screaming HELP! and told me "I'm sorry, I have to let you go."

But she doesn't remember how to hang up the phone anymore, so I muted my end of the call and put her on speaker, and Kevin and I sat there listening to her screaming "HELP! HELP! Somebody get me out of here!" for five minutes straight.

It was absolutely terrifying and heartbreaking, and I sat there and wept until I finally pulled myself together enough to get up. And I told Kevin I had to go see her right then and there.

Official visiting hours end at 8:00pm, but I got there a little after 9:00 and nobody seemed to care.

When I got to my mom's room, she was disoriented and angry and mostly just kept repeating herself.

She kept looking at the doorway because she can see the emergency exit door out across the hall (and she desperately wants to get out).

Then she told me she was hungry and hadn't eaten in a very long time (as in days, even though she's given regular meals. She just can't remember.)

Aside from her confusion, she seemed in good spirits to see me otherwise. But then she pointed to her right elbow and asked "Do you see this cut?"

(There was no cut, no scar, and nothing to indicate that there was ever anything there at all.)

She swore uncle Kevin had cut her and punched "Aunt Irene" in the face. (I don't have an aunt Irene: just a cousin Irene, and uncle Kevin has never hurt her.)

But mom was visibly afraid of Kevin and really worried about Irene for some reason.

She has also become alarmingly paranoid:

She asked if I had my phone with me, then asked if it was turned off.

She kept insisting the government's trying to listen, and she seems really scared that people are spying on her.

She doesn't like her roommate because she thinks the woman is stealing her stuff, even though it's really just the nurses coming in and putting things away in drawers or just out of sight. (If my mom can't see it, it basically doesn't exist. So it's like a magic trick every time you pull her phone out from behind her pillow.)

Then she asked me how she got there. So I reminded her of when she drove Tay up to Allentown back in April and called me screaming in pain that her legs and feet hurt. And then she came home and went to the emergency room at St. Mary, and her pulse ox was almost down to 80 and she had cellulitis in both legs. So she had to stay in the hospital for a couple weeks and then she came here for PT.

She has absolutely no recollection of her trailer, her storage unit, or her car, but she was just repeatedly asking "Why am I here?" and "When can I go home?"

She just really wants to leave there.

She kept asking me not to go. And when I was finally ready to go, I eventually had to lie and tell her I would be right back.

Then I sat in my car and cried for 10 minutes in the parking lot before I drove home.

I took Riley over to visit my mom by herself this afternoon.

Mom was happy to see her, and mostly remembers her (although she did slip up and called her Taylor a few times.)

Riley was in tears when we left though. I tried my best to prepare her before we got to the room, but there was nothing I could have said to really prepare her for how far my mom has declined so quickly, and Riley was stunned since she and my mom could still have a perfectly normal conversation just a few months ago.

It really messes me up to think about that day my mom took Tay to Allentown. How she must have left a few things undone back at home, never imagining that that would be the last time she'd ever walk out her front door, never to return home again.

It is truly terrifying to think that we will all one day walk out our doors for the last time, but many of us may never imagine that reality until after it has come to pass.

I think that that only makes it all the more important to be thankful for our our health, our familes, and our other blessings while we have them.