Night-Night, Mom!

My mom’s been torturing us for months. She’s abusive on the phone. She physically fights caregivers and nurses and gets skin tears and then sees them later and thinks that she’s being abused, and it makes her angry. She sees people she doesn't like and talks about killing them. She has angry episodes almost every day. Her daytime caregiver can calm her down, but it’s having its toll on her and the nighttime caregiver, her daughter. We haven’t been able to secure weekend caregiving since a crackdown on casual caregivers in my mom's community. We’re almost out of the woods, with an agency in place, but mom hates every new caregiver she meets, and she acts out. Yesterday was no exception. I had to orient a new caregiver, and then spend time with her and mom. I wanted to take her for a drive, which she wanted to do, but she just futzed around in order to wind me up. She called me lazy when I let the caregiver put on her sweater and said that that was why I was so fat around the middle.

Two hours after I made my escape, I got a call from the caregiver because my mom was out of her mind, yelling "Get out!!". I counseled her to give the phone to my mom so I could keep her busy and make sure she doesn't fall. Go to the nurse's station and ask for Ativan, and grab my mom's favorite Pal, who was on duty that day. It all worked out, but I had to hear my mom's frequent refrain that "I'll REMEMBER this," which is funny because she has Alzheimer's.

I’m done.

A few days ago, the daytime caregiver and I took mom to the doctor’s office to fill out some paperwork for the community where mom lives. Something I heard, something that I already knew, struck me in a different way. The Physician’s Assistant said that we could give my mom more medication but that we haven’t because she has a strong caregiving presence in place and we (mostly the beloved daytime caregiver) can turn her episodes around. 

Wait. So we’re making the choice to allow her to torture us because we can take it? Why should we do that?

Basically, fuck her. It’s our life or mom’s and she’s 95.

So I wrote to my sisters yesterday, while mom was mid-meltdown with a new caregiver and told them I just can’t do this any more.

I am tired of her abusive rants. I’m tired of not knowing if she will accept new caregivers. I am tired of not knowing whether my time is my own. I am tired of all of the thankless tasks. Of carrying my phone in my hand wherever I go. Of feeling sorry for all of the people she interacts with because she is so awful. I have deep trauma about this. I cannot fucking stand my mom, but I am unfailingly nice to her. My sisters and I do things for her every day.

Surprisingly, my middle sister responded to my email and said that she agreed. She could have written the exact same thing. She’d had her own meltdown that day and said to herself “I can’t do this any more”.

I will not back down from this. I don’t care. I feel like I have spent the last 8 years in bondage to my mom. It's only getting more challenging.

Drugs. I want her to have more drugs. I want her to have a peaceful sleepy life so that we also can have a peaceful life.