REALITY CHECK

 Okay… I’ve had some time to process everything that’s gone on over the past several days, and I am now ready to bring you all into the loop on what’s been going on.

As you all know, my mother is 90 years old, very physically frail after her near-fatal car accident seven years back, and is weathering perpetual exhaustion due to dealing with lung cancer and chemotherapy while living alone. She has a large support system close at hand, so she is being taken care of, but from what I witnessed during my Thanksgiving weekend at her house, I’m just being realistic when I say that it’s obvious her time is running out. Needless to say, that worries me sick, so I am doing what I can to make her remaining time bearable, a task that is quite difficult when one lives in another state and has a life dominated by thrice-weekly dialysis sessions and their subsequent deleterious side-effects.

So, on Monday I was in my dialysis chair getting treatment when I received a text from my mom’s close friend who’s a Registered Nurse. Upon seeing who it was, my heart sank, but I opened the text and tried to remain calm. The Rn was alerting me to mom being in the ER at Norwalk Hospital because she was having difficulty breathing, and it turned out that it was not the lung cancer but was instead Respiratory Syncytial (sin-SISH-uhl) Virus, or RSV. That was the first I had heard of that virus, but apparently it’s been going around. She’s been in the hospital all week and I was even contacted and asked for permission to put her on a ventilator if it should come to that. Thankfully she has not needed a ventilator, but I’m just glad she’s in a facility where she is getting observed and cared for 24/7, plus her RN pal is keeping close tabs on her and checking in with me. And I have been calling mom several times per day, checking on how she’s doing, chatting with her to keep her spirits up, and letting her grouse about the horrible hospital food. During all of this, mom sounds quite frail and was clearly scared during the early part of her hospitalization, but today she sounded pretty much back to normal, probably because she has been told she will be going home tomorrow. She was told that every day for the past two days, but the third time may be the charm.

While worrying about my mother’s health and current situation, without her knowledge I have been attempting to book guest services at one of the Davita dialysis centers near her house, as the company has treatment centers all over the country and patients are told. that we can book into any of them if we need to be in another state. That’s great on paper, but I have tried to book guest treatment at any of the Davita centers in and around Fairfield County for the past two Thanksgiving/ Christmas holiday seasons and was told in no uncertain terms that no spaces were available. Originally, no spaces were available due to the COVID lockdown and nobody traveling for the holidays, but this time I attempted to book slots ahead of the actual holiday week for Christmas, as I would like to be at my mother’s house so I can be as much of a help and a comfort as possible.

During Wednesday’s dialysis, I had a conference with my center’s social worker and told him of my mother’s illness, advanced age, and how her time is running out, so would he please help me facilitate getting me. a booking at a center in Norwalk, the town right next to my mother’s. He sadi he was glad to help and that he would get back to me as soon as possible. He contacted me this afternoon and told me that there was nothing available in Norwalk, so now he would try Fairfield and get back to me when he heard anything. If his efforts are anything like mine over the last two years, I expect another strike-out.

The crux of the matter is that I absolutely cannot take time off from dialysis to care for my mother. If I do, I MY SYSTEM WILL BECOME TOXIC AND I WILL DIE. But I live and get treatment roughly 90 minutes away from my mother’s home, so my daily presence there without my regular treatment on Monday, Wednesday and Friday is impossible. I would gaudy get treatment and endure the post-treatment illness and recovery into the next day in Fairfield County, but it’s looking like that just is not going to happen. The best I can do at the moment is show up after Friday’s session and stay until having to leave on Sunday to resume my regular weekly treatment schedule on Monday.

My mother and I have had a famously difficult, contentious relationship for the past 46 years, and many has been the time when I wished I could simply remove her from my life, but during the past twenty years or so, she has opened up a lot about what made her into the dysfunctional, iron-fisted, belittling, judgmental harridan who was a nightmare to grow up with, and I now see her as a victim of the cruelties inflicted by her psycho mother, my abusive cheater of a father, and the world in general, so I now see her as a victim who needs understand ing and compassion, not scorn. She is still very much a trying presence for me to be around, but she’s the way she is due to what I would armchair diagnose as some form of PTSD that she has refused to manage because doing so would make her appear “weak.” She’s entitled to her opinion, but I call bullshit on that. If she had been able to let her guard down enough to get help and actuall work to heal from the trauma of her miserable past, she’d be a totally different person, but such was not to be and I just have to deal with it as best I can.

When raising me, my mother had no examples of how to parent or how to foster a healthy psychological/emotional environment, but she di the best that she could and it could have been worse. Anyway, knowing what I know as an adult, I cannot help but feel for the Mildred that could have been, and because of that I will not abandon her, and I will do my best to make her remaining time a positive family experience. I just hope something can be worked out with the dialysis center.

Needless to say, all of this has left me a sleepless, stressed-out disaster, and if I could I would just dig a hole, disappear into it, and hide out for the duration.