Mom’s on pins and needles

That title makes me giggle… go figure.

Most of the time I post about mom I think to myself, “Gosh, that post sounded really negative.  I hope people reading this aren’t getting the wrong impression about our situation.”  This thought often times makes me rethink whether or not I should post.  So today’s post is going to be a combination of how is mom doing and me explaining a bit about why I think my posts sound negative in contrast to how mom presents herself when she speaks to people.  I will use today’s adventure with acupuncture as an example and hopefully you will understand why my posts may be making our life sound bleak.

Mom was pretty excited about acupuncture and the possibility that it could help alleviate the horrible sensations in her hands and feet.  When she would talk with family and friends about her experience with the first session, she described how she didn’t feel the needles and that it was a pretty positive experience.  Today was her second appointment and after taking a Valium and enduring an anxiety filled ride to the clinic, we got into the acupuncture room and if mom could have crawled out of her skin and beelined for the door, she would have in a heartbeat.  She was dreading this second session.  So if the process was as easy and wonderful as she portrayed when talking about it to others, why was she so panicked?  Well, the simple answer is that things are not as rosy as she lets on.

I am sure that you have all encountered the following situation, most likely with strangers or acquaintances but perhaps also with those closer as well.  In passing one of you says, “How are you doing today?” and your reply is almost certainly, “Fine.”.  At the simplest level, this is what is going on with mom.  Why do we answer fine when asked how we are doing? Sometimes we truly are fine, but if we are not and you really want to respond with, “Shitty, thanks for asking.”, you don’t respond that way.  There are a number of reasons for this. Of course, the “fine” response is pretty much programmed into us as an automatic response, but if you go delve deeper you realize that you do not want to burden the person asking with the truth because you really wouldn’t want to hear anything other than fine when you ask the question yourself.  So we put on the “fine” mask and move along with our day.  It is just what we do.  As we all have had these interactions with people, we have all probably had that time when we asked someone how they were and they paused briefly and you thought, ‘Ughh.. just say fine and lets move along.”  The question was just a pleasantry, a way to acknowledge someone was in your presence, not really a question. So when someone is sincere about wanting to know how we are feeling, we still feel the sense that we should keep with the “fine” mask.

Now I realize that I am trivializing this topic a bit, but really it is to illustrate why I seemingly have two mom’s.  The one that people interact with and the one that I see when I am driving her to an appointment that she is terrified to go to.  Why I have a mom that is smiles and laughter around others and irritated and anxious in my blogs.  Why I have a mom that has it together when socializing and the one I see that can’t remember what the hell she was doing when no one else is around.

This morning we had a little incident, that occurs fairly often, and after it was over mom said to me how she admired how level headed I am.  We were pulling into the gas station to get gas (as people often do in those sorts of establishments).  She opened her wallet and flipped out.  Her debit card was not in her wallet.  She started to panic.  Well no, she was in full panic mode.  Zero to Sixty in a second.  She had lost her card.  This is one of her biggest fears.  Her mind is racing now, “did I leave it somewhere? did someone find it and use it? oh my gosh, what are we going to do.”  I said to her, “MOM calm down and don’t panic.”  I told her, “Before you get all upset, look in the other pockets of your purse, you might have misplaced it.”  Sure enough, first pocket she looked in, there it was.  And then she realized she intentionally put it there because it is easier to get to.  Our lives are a series of panic moments strung together.

That is not to say we don’t have good times.  We do.  We have some really wonderful times.  They are just not as often as they used to be.  I wish that wasn’t the case, but our reality is that mom has chronic health problems and those problems present daily (or even hourly) challenges.  That is just the way it is.  This reality certainly doesn’t make me think of her or love her any less.

Mom is a strong person, there is no doubt about that, but she isn’t always rosy. An interesting thing that happens on a regular basis for her is that people will tell her how good she looks and then ask her how she is feeling.  She feels obliged to respond in a way that suggests she feels as good as people are telling her she looks.  She actually gets annoyed when people tell her how good she looks because a great deal of the time she’s feeling pretty crappy and the person she sees in the mirror doesn’t look that great to her.  So hearing how good she looks is confusing for her and frustrating as well.  I am certainly not suggesting that people stop telling her she looks good, especially if you genuinely feel that way.  Just helping you understand how she interprets that message.  Back when we had the terrible experience with Lyrica, she said something to me that I took to be a quite honest thought that she would never have expressed if she was of sound mind.  She said, “Why are people always telling me how I feel.  I don’t feel good dammit.”  Of course i made the mistake of trying to rationalize with this deranged woman and lost, but I learned a lesson!  I think in a previous post I likened it to trying to rationalize with a drunk.

Mom wants others to feel good when they are around her.  She doesn’t want people to be uncomfortable as she feels most of the time in her own skin.  She desperately wants to be well and normal again.  She hates feeling useless, she hates not being able to remember things, she hates that she cannot do things as easily as she once did and she hates that she feels dependent on others.  This is mom’s reality and for her it sucks.

So let me pull the mask off mom for a moment and let you see behind the scenes.  Mom rarely sleeps more than an hour at a time.  When she does manage to sleep it is usually in strange sitting up positions and she twitches a lot and mouths words as though she were talking.  Mom eats every couple of hours, but doesn’t really enjoy food.  She cannot seem to find anything she likes, but eating is an activity she can still do.  She has a difficult time sticking to one task for any length of time.  She gets up and down A LOT.  When she walks she stumbles, often times pinballing off the walls or other objects because she has a very difficult time walking in a straight line (walk next to her for a short distance and you will notice it).  She has fleeting thoughts and often times cannot remember what she was just thinking about.  If something interrupts her when she is telling you something, well its gone and she may or may not be able to recall what she was telling you.  When asked by the doctors if she has pain, nausea, heartburn etc, her usual reply is that she never has any of that. Yet she chews tums like candy and uses her pain pills and nausea pills frequently (to which she would say that I am mistaken).  Just this week she has taken Valium several times to help her sleep or relax.  The walks that we go on are not really for exercise, but are to help her calm down when she is feeling antsy.  She has to investigate any noise she hears, even if it’s very apparent that it’s just one of the kids in the kitchen. She spills or drops things all the time.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.  My posts seem negative because things are not that great and the task of looking after mom is not all puppies and other such warm fuzzies. I wouldn’t give up this job though, it is too important.  She is too important.  I owe it to her to make sure she is taken care of the best that I can.

So keep on telling her she looks great and giving her the opportunity to don that mask, hell it might just be doing some good.

Oh, I almost forgot to add today’s update on mom.  Mom is doing quite well 🙂