There certainly has not been. As usual the reason is my mother and her dementia. A slight chance that I may be getting better at it as I go meant that yesterday, after a trip to see her the previous day, I spent most of the morning in bed sleeping.
Of late I have been reading a lot of informative literature about the psychology of adult children of alcoholics, one of which I am and so is my mother. It is this, plus her own personality and position in the family, as the permanent baby, that makes her so controlling and difficult. Additionally, over the last week, she has had a urinary tract infection, which, since she has been demented, makes her very aggressive. On Wednesday she was by turns, with scarcely a moment to draw breath, controlling and then aggressive and then complaining and then demented. For her the world was marching out of step, big time.
I did what I am getting better at doing, though since I am myself the daughter of a daughter of an alcoholic, I’ve always been quite good at it; I absorbed the shit like a little piece of blotting paper. I sucked it all up and didn’t reflect one millimetre of it back at her with the result that by the time I left, the swearing, haranguing and shouting had dropped to levels of mere grumbling and the carer, who had busied herself in the furthest corners of the garden, came back to join us in a cup of tea which was mostly civil. My mother has recovered so far as to say that she had been going to ring the council to give them a piece of her mind (as if she had any spare to give away) about the state of the grass verges, what were they up to, Good God she could do better with a pair of scissors, she was once out to do them and her husband told her not to touch them, they were rate payers and deserved better grass. Then suddenly, she said, she had remembered she was exempt from paying rates (by virtue, if you can call it that, of being batty) and decided not to ring after all. This was at four o’ clock, though at midday she’d have been asking for the council gardeners to be hanged, drawn and quartered at least, preferably twice so they got the full benefit of it.
So I think I did a pretty good job of soaking it up and calming her down, though I fell asleep almost the instant I got into the car, slept all through an evening of television and all the next morning and when I got up finally, I was OK. This is more than can be said for her principle carer who was carted off the hospital on Saturday night with chest pains. She had done over and above her duty on Saturday, dashing around after her shift to get my mother antibiotics for her infection. My mother, adorably, first refused the tablets after the first couple on the grounds that they were like horse pills and too big to swallow. So someone got her a branded potassium citrate drink, which she complained was too pink and made her mouth sore. All this time as she refused one medication after another, and was, I felt, by Monday afternoon on the verge of refusing all medication completely. I turned up on Wednesday with a sodium citrate drink, which I made up and drank some of to prove it was not nasty and she accepted it. I then examined the locked medicine box and found she was on Amoxycillin anyway. So, one way and another we got her on top of the infection and calmed down and the carer who was hospitalised is now back home with a fortnight off and the rotas in the care agency are undergoing a major reshuffle to accommodate the change.
The doctor has changed the medication slightly to increase my mother’s appetite, and she reported this morning she has put on a stone in two weeks. Before I get excited I’ll go and check the scales.
My husband, irritatingly, is still managing to lose weight on his obsessive weigh everything that goes into his mouth and enter it into his dieting app, diet. I am still short and round and am planning for as much stasis in everything as I can until the situation changes. What I most need to be is strong and reliable and rested. So blogs may be thin on the ground for a while, because I’m finally learning to look after myself first.
If we can limit the madness to just one person we’ll be all right. Just as long as no one mows the grass verge outside my mother’s house. On a bad day it could prove fatal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JaneLaverick.com – how nice to have a little sleep and then rest afterwards.