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Runwithscissors, I don't think KoA has been "fighting" her mother's truth, at least that's not how I've interpreted the posts.
I think she's been pretty clear that she knows her mom isn't going to get better at this point in life.
As for the "grrrs" and facepalms -- above anything this forum is a vehicle for venting. Lots of times we just express frustration at things even if we have accepted we can't change them. I think the sad truth for most of us on here is that we know we really CAN'T change anything.
Runwithscissors, I don't think KoA has been "fighting" her mother's truth, at least that's not how I've interpreted the posts.
I think she's been pretty clear that she knows her mom isn't going to get better at this point in life.
As for the "grrrs" and facepalms -- above anything this forum is a vehicle for venting. Lots of times we just express frustration at things even if we have accepted we can't change them. I think the sad truth for most of us on here is that we know we really CAN'T change anything.
THANK YOU.
I've gotten a lot of excellent advice and real support (ie, real insight and pointers that translate well into real life) on this forum. I love that aspect of it. But I also appreciate that here, I can vent. I can't say all this to my dad, or my kids, or my husband. I mean, I share some of it, but often it's after I write it out here and sort through my feelings - and bounce them off of others who can relate.
Unfortunately, sometimes I get feedback that's not really constructive or pertinent to my particular situation, but that's just part of being on a forum made up of folks we don't know from all walks of life and experiences and backgrounds and situations. I'm sure in fact that I myself have written responses to others that for whatever reason aren't really applicable.
And since I often do learn from different perspectives, I really DO read each post, even the ones that are not pleasant to read, rather than just dismissing stuff that isn't sweetness and light. But it's usually pretty easy to sort through stuff.
I know my mother is declining. I know her challenges. What I DON'T know is whether or not it's possible to address her eating disorder and her mood in constructive ways that give her a better quality of life. I also am constantly on the lookout for solutions or help that can be beneficial to my dad, since this is much harder on him than it is on me.
My parents have been married for 56 years. When it's all said and done, it really doesn't matter whether I think my dad (or my mom) handled their relationship or my mom's mental health issues "right" leading up to all of this. I appreciate the commitment my parents made to each other, and I need to support their efforts to age as gracefully and as comfortably as possible - at least that's what I believe is my responsibility.
My mother, for all her difficult and gnarly and unreasonable ways, has shown me love throughout my life. Does she show love the way I do? No. But I know she loves me and I believe she has done what she has been able to do, with her mental limitations, all of her life. My mom is not an evil person and never has been. In fact, my mom is a good person with good intentions. If I didn't believe this, I would have a different attitude entirely. My mom has struggled, at times unsuccessfully, with mental illness her entire life. She had a wretched childhood. She came into this world with serious issues. I have had more advantages than she ever dreamed of, even though it was difficult being raised by a mentally ill mother.
My parents grew up and got married in an age when mental illness was not understood at all, and was a huge stigma. (It still is to some extent, but at least we have better information and a better understanding of it - and better treatment options now.) For decades, my father honestly thought that the extent of my mother's issues was "PMS." Wow, that was one helluva case of PMS. Actually, she was bipolar and was finally diagnosed in the late 1990s. By then, they had been married over 30 years. Their relationship was firmly entrenched and definitely "codependent" and my dad is definitely an enabler.
It has been gut wrenching to watch him come to grips with the natural outcome of his faulty responses and understanding of the situation. I have watched my dad tear up and say over and over again, "I feel like I've done everything wrong. I feel like I've mishandled this entire situation. I've created an unworkable situation. I let my wife down, my kids down." He is haunted by all the "lost opportunities" to help my mother before things got to this point. But hindsight is always 20/20. What he did right - or thought he was doing right - was that he protected my mother, supported my mother, remained faithful to my mother, for 56 years. Not many people can say that, even in a marriage with two mentally healthy people.
My mom's confusion and decline is not caused by one factor. Yes, she had a stroke ten years ago but she rallied very well after that - and returned to an active, intellectual and socially engaged life for 8 years afterward. She's had no further strokes or "brain bleeds." Yes, my mom fell and broke her hip, which is a huge setback, but that wasn't the START of her decline - it was the inevitable outcome of a serious decline already in progress. The surgery didn't cause her confusion or eating disorder - that was already in place for at least 18 months prior to the fall and surgery. Her confusion isn't caused simply by a UTI - I wish it was that simple. Her confusion and lack of reasoning abilities is the result of several things - the stroke, mental illness (including an eating disorder), and now we find out that she has "white matter changes" that are extensive and chronic throughout her brain. In other words, some sort of increasing dementia, whether it's Alzheimer's or simply vascular or any other number of sorts of dementia.
All my dad and I want is for her to have a complete mental and physical evaluation by a geriatric specialist, so that IF there are meds and treatments available for her VARIOUS issues, we can implement those to better the life she has left. See, if she can get a grip on the eating disorder, she could live several more years - maybe even many more years. It's the eating disorder that is causing the extreme weakness and the physical vulnerability to infection, the inability to heal quickly, etc. So far, her heart and other systems are working pretty well. She has no conditions like diabetes, hypertension, COPD, nothing chronic like that. Her LACK OF FOOD AND WATER - which is self imposed and which she is in complete, total denial of - is what has caused her to faint, to fall, to pass totally out, to have her blood pressure plummet, etc. We have to get to the root cause of this eating disorder if we can ever expect her to gain some strength and regain some of the activities she's always enjoyed so much (getting out in the yard, walking, getting out and about AWAY from the house and the sofa).
We aren't expecting her dementia to improve, frankly. We just want to do all we can to alleviate depression and self imposed starvation. And you know what - maybe we can't alleviate it and if so, then that's just the sad truth. But we won't know unless we try, and leave no stone unturned. So that's what we're doing.
One of the hardest things I had to do with my Mom was to accept that she no longer wanted to make much effort to stay alive. She didn't eat or drink nearly enough, and I, her doctor, the nurses at her AL, all tried unsuccessfully to get her to eat more. She was not bi-polar and didn't have an eating disorder. She was ready to go. This all started about a year before her cancer diagnosis. Your mother is younger, so it could be something different. It's hard to let them go when they are ready. The medical system is geared toward finding problems to "fix". Sometimes they just don't want to be "fixed."
One of the hardest things I had to do with my Mom was to accept that she no longer wanted to make much effort to stay alive. She didn't eat or drink nearly enough, and I, her doctor, the nurses at her AL, all tried unsuccessfully to get her to eat more. She was not bi-polar and didn't have an eating disorder. She was ready to go. This all started about a year before her cancer diagnosis. Your mother is younger, so it could be something different. It's hard to let them go when they are ready. The medical system is geared toward finding problems to "fix". Sometimes they just don't want to be "fixed."
I do agree with this.
My mom has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (diagnosed 30 years ago) as well as an eating disorder, based on her REASONS for not eating - she thinks that just about every form of food is filled with toxins and poisons and additives that are geared to kill us all - and that is the absolute truth. Food and anyone trying to get her to eat food has become the enemy and she sincerely sees them as the enemy.
She also seems to actually believe that she is eating a balanced, healthy diet - in fact, a diet far superior to any diet that anyone else she actually knows is eating. She seems to adhere to this bizarre diet in order to PROLONG her life - that seems to be her reason, that is. I honestly do think that she really does believe this - just as an anorexic person really does believe that they are too fat when they look in the mirror (she has stated repeatedly over the past few months how she enjoys being so slender).
The medical professionals have been using the term "anorexia" in relation to her eating habits and I do think this is the category her behavior falls into. She does not seem to be suicidal. In fact, she acts as if anyone who says she doesn't eat enough is absolutely ridiculous - why WOULDN'T she be eating a healthy diet when she has devoted so much time and research into this endeavor? She looks at the rest of us and recoils in horror at the food we eat.
She thinks my dad's diet is absolutely atrocious - even though his recent round of bloodwork showed that his nutrition and cholesterol and mineral levels were all excellent. Hers are the ones that are totally jacked up, not his. If you try to point this out to her though, she honestly thinks you're lying to her for some bizarre reason.
Now she's in a wheelchair - just found this out today. This time last week she was booking across the church parking lot using nothing but a cane - in fact, my husband was surprised and congratulatory on how nimbly she seemed to be getting around.
She fell the first time Monday because - against her doctor's orders - she was not using a cane or a walker (they don't even want her to use a cane because her balance is so poor but of course she disregards all such advice) but instead was sailing across her tile kitchen floor wearing socks - also against doctor's orders - and not wearing her glasses or her Medic Alert bracelet either, I might add.
OR eating - I'll add that too. That is, she told us that she was just about to eat three scrambled eggs she had fixed for herself when she fell. My dad took a picture of the eggs - it was no more than a portion of one egg - maybe 1/2 an egg. She hadn't started eating them yet - this was the breakfast that she had just fixed for herself and was about to sit down and eat. No toast, nothing but a portion of one egg.
Sigh.
These oversights and deceits are not due to dementia. though I'm pretty sure they're due at least in part to some sort of mental illness. My mother did not "forget" to use her cane or walker or to put on non skid shoes around the house. She simply does not want to do any of this because "she knows what's best for her body, not the doctors" (words I have heard ad nauseum over the past month). Why doesn't she do physical therapy according to her? "I know my body better than they do and I know that those stupid exercises were detrimental to my health." Why doesn't she drink the coffee on her breakfast tray? Because there are toxins in the disposable cup. Why doesn't she eat the toast they bring her? Because she doesn't know where the butter came from, and she doesn't know if the bread has preservatives in it or not, but it probably does. Why doesn't she eat SALADS anymore? Because she's pretty darn sure that all that produce is filled with toxins, grown with synthetic hormones, etc. Why won't she shop completely at Natural Grocers or eat only food that comes from there? Because she doesn't believe that "all" their foods are "really" GMO/preservative/additive free.
I promise you - if she grew veggies in her own yard and harvested them herself, she'd be convinced that the government had put something harmful in her soil so they were still "poison." She's already certain that her water is poisoned, so of course she couldn't water her garden with city water.
Last edited by KathrynAragon; 04-30-2016 at 01:06 PM..
JMHO but I think your mom is a master manipulator and you and your father are her victims. I am happy to hear she is hospitalized because she needs help. And it's help you and your father can't give her because she manipulates you. Even in her demented, malnourished state she still knows how to push your buttons. You and your dad can't MAKE her want to go on living. If she wants to check out, she will. But there is a much better chance she will improve around strangers than at home.
She uses her illness to get the reactions she wants from you, your father, and even the rest of the family. She feeds on the drama she creates. I feel very sorry for you and your family. I am sure it's never been easy to be around her.
JMHO but I think your mom is a master manipulator and you and your father are her victims. I am happy to hear she is hospitalized because she needs help. And it's help you and your father can't give her because she manipulates you. Even in her demented, malnourished state she still knows how to push your buttons. You and your dad can't MAKE her want to go on living. If she wants to check out, she will. But there is a much better chance she will improve around strangers than at home.
She uses her illness to get the reactions she wants from you, your father, and even the rest of the family. She feeds on the drama she creates. I feel very sorry for you and your family. I am sure it's never been easy to be around her.
I've got one of these for a mother. So I get this. I'm sorry you have to go through this, Kathryn.
I've got one of these for a mother. So I get this. I'm sorry you have to go through this, Kathryn.
Yeah, it's tough but it's tougher on her in the end, because as is evident, everyone's chickens come home to roost.
She's two hours away, emaciated, so starved that she can't even stand up, on a psych ward where she can't have any of her "beauty items" which she is very, very attached to, and she hasn't had any visitors and won''t till at least Monday because it's a long drive and frankly, I've already spent more time visiting her in the hospital this past month than she's EVER spent COMBINED going to my aid if I needed help or support or encouragement. So I don't feel a burning conviction to knock myself out making a four hour drive to spend two hours with her.
And if the truth be known, it will probably do everyone, including her, some good to be this far apart and to allow her to sit with the ramifications of her decades of manipulation, abuse, deceit, and denial. I know that sounds mean, but here it is - the outcome of all of those decades of an unhealthy mind set. Maybe if she had gotten the mental health help she needed - and if my dad had insisted on it - when (and even before) it was finally diagnosed in the 1990s, she wouldn't be in this situation today. But she has refused treatment, denied a problem, and lashed out at anyone who has tried to help her, every minute of her life and as of Thursday, was STILL doing so.
So here we are.
I'm going to go plant some flowers in my yard and then come in and have a big salad for supper. Then I'm going to take a bath, put on some jammies, and relax with a cup of Earl Gray and two shortbread cookies and watch a couple of episodes of Call the Midwife. I'll talk with my husband for a bit (he's coming home from working out of town in a couple of days) and probably a grown kid or two, and enjoy a beautiful, quiet evening with my dogs.
Tomorrow I'll go to church with my dad, then out to eat, and then I plan on doing some shopping for some outdoor pillows and rugs with a girlfriend and grabbing some coffee later that afternoon.
My mom can sit there and ruminate, stare at her navel, raise cane, eye everyone and every food item suspiciously, or whatever it is she's going to do between now and Monday and I'm just not going to worry about it. She's in a safe place for now and frankly the break feels great.
Sad to say it, but my dad seems to be feeling very chipper and enjoying piddling around the house, eating ham sandwiches from the depths of hell and watching whatever he wants to on TV. I think we all needed a break. Maybe it's good for my mom too. I hope so, but that's not my focus for the next couple of days.
Kathryn, I feel for you, having a parent who uses manipulation to control others is tough, I am glad your mother is hopefully getting the help she needs and that you and your father are getting a much needed break.
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