Next Stop, The Snake Pit

I can't even recall how many years ago this was, but there was that one Christmas where we went to see mrguy's mom and after she didn't answer but we could hear her cries outside, and after mrguy kicked in the door, we found that she'd been on the floor for a day, unable to move. We took her to the ER and there was a host of deferred maintenance, such as a UTI, toenails that looked like something out of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, general inability to get around, and out of control psoriatic arthritis. Once they got the major stuff out of the way they sent her to rehab to get her mobility better (this after we saw a doctor tell her "Get up, Mary", assuming that she would do it and she said that she couldn't). There was nothing preventing her walking, apparently, aside from a lack of doing so.

Anyhoo, the place where they sent her was full of people, like her, with challenges they were trying to overcome, and some people who did not overcome those challenges, if you get my drift. They made her work hard on her mobility, and was in better shape when she left than she'd been in for years before.

Anyhoo, anyhoo, she called this place "The Snake Pit", which totally cracked us up. And the name has stuck for any such skilled nursing or other environment your loved one does NOT want to be in.

My mom has been in her current community for almost 7 years now. She complains about it. It's nice, and she has a huge window with a view that she really appreciates, but she's always complained about living at this place and talks of moving. I get it, it's not the fancy suburb that she's used to, but she could *not* continue to live in the family home. In the back of my mind I've always thought "You have no idea, mom. Next stop is the snake pit".

Yesterday's journey to the park with my mom and our caregiver went something like this -- pick up sandwiches, pick up the ladies, drive to the park, pick a bench in the shade because it's hot, we sit down. My mom starts whining about wanting to sit in the sun but I don't want to sit in the sun because it's too strong and she will be unhappy. The whining continues, so in a snit I move us to the sun. Then she says she's hot and takes off her shirt (with my help) and then starts pointing her finger to the shady grass under the magnolia on the other side of the park that we can't access in a wheelchair. Then she points to her reddening neck and points to the original bench and says "Shade", so we move everything back to the first bench. I turned to our caregiver and say "What do you bet she wants to go back to the other bench?" We had our answer in about 5 minutes, burst out laughing and we high fived cause it was so funny.

I wish my mom had been able to appreciate what she had at her current home. She had the love of at least one caregiver who has worked for her for 6 years. She was able to see her kids more often than she did when she lived in our family home and one sister would routinely travel 5 hours in a plane to see her. I, personally, appreciated the stability of this place, even though my middle sister kinda hated it.

Today I settled in for my day off that I wasn't expecting to devote to my mom. Had an excellent morning with mrguy and the cats, and spent a good amount of time researching the history of Chinese acrobats in the US, as a friend's wife is descended from prominent acrobats who came here in 1940. Then I did some transcription of a genealogy discussion that I had with my Norwegian cousins in 2018. I had my phone muted, cause what could happen the day after I had devoted myself to my mom, right? Then I eventually felt a buzzing. Oh mom. She had spurned her caregiver, the one who only works on Sunday. She made a scene in the dining room and wasn't allowing the caregiver into her apartment. The poor caregiver, who did nothing wrong, felt chagrinned. It wasn't her fault but I had to intervene, again. I had to drive to her apartment and settle that shit down. Didn't I do this on Thursday also? Oh yes I did. 

And after I drove to her apartment and thought of things to amuse her and let her examine my hands and see which fingers we had that were alike, and let her tell me about all of my shortcomings while she held my ear and also told me that she wants to see me every day, and as I tried to soothe and reason with her and asked her to let me go home to mrguy I thought -- next stop, the snake pit.

You have no idea.