It’s December 26, 2023, AKA Boxing day. The big Christmas celebration is over and the new year is right around the corner. I wish that I could say 2024 is going to be a fresh start. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of hope for what is coming.
About 5 weeks ago, I was sitting in a hotel room, relaxing in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Tamara wasn’t with me so I had been trying my best to find things to do, and to force myself to interact with others. Many people have no idea how incredibly hard I struggle with social anxiety and always feeling like I don’t fit in. So spending a week away with a bunch of folks from work, who by the way are all awesome, was something I was worried about. But I forced myself to go, and realistically, I had a great time.
However, things took a very dark turn on Wednesday of that week.
My mom turned 77 this year and has been living alone in the same house I grew up in, for the last 10 years. During that time, she has essentially become a bit of a hermit and chose to not go too far beyond the walls of her home. She’d venture out to the drug store, or across the street for snacks. As she needed to, she’d take a taxi to Walmart or Giant Tiger to get groceries but beyond that, she stayed home. Even during birthdays or family get togethers, I’d arrange for her to come over but the visits were always short, and she often refused to go anywhere else.
This year, her mobility became more restricted as her legs began to swell and she had a hard time climbing the stairs in her home. Despite repeated conversations with her, she insisted she was fine. That is until five weeks ago.
On Remembrance Day of this year, she told my mother-in-law she was sick and throwing up and couldn’t come to my kid’s Sea Cadets presentation. When I came by to visit her later that night, she had no memory of this at all, and claimed she had a doctor’s appointment coming up. I told her I would come by to pick her up and take her to her appointment. Yet when I did, she refused to go insisting everything was fine and she didn’t need to go see a doctor.
I was irritated and left her house and pointed my car right at her doctor’s, who also happens to be mine. After a lengthy discussion with him, I learned a lot of what had been going on that had been kept from me, the least of which was the fact that she had no appointment that day and had missed her last one. Knowing I was leaving in a few days, I opted to wait until I got home before I did anything.
Then I got a message while in Punta Cana and it all changed.
After a frantic series of Facebook calls and messages, I learned that the police and EMTs had been called to my mom’s home. No one had seen her for 24hrs and there was concern something had happened. After Tamara was able to go over, they all found my mom sitting on the floor by the stairs.
She had apparently slipped and fell down a portion of the steps and could not find a way to get up. We don’t know how long she had been sitting there but we suspect it was for several hours. She was brought to the hospital where she has remained since.
When I finally did get home and did get to see her, it wasn’t my mom in the hospital. She looked like her. She sounded like her. But this was not the woman I had known for 50 years.
Completely confused, mom had no idea where she was, why she was there, and why she wasn’t allowed to go home. Every day she was there, the story was different. One day she was going to swim with my father and me home. Another day she insisted that she could take the ferry back to the house. During one visit, she insisted that one of the other patients in the room she was in had stolen her yarn, but seemed quite confused when I showed her the bag that contained nothing in it.
For a few weeks, she would have no memory of anyone coming to visit her, yet someone did almost every second day or so. Just a few days ago, she didn’t realize my daughter was her grand-daughter. And even yesterday while opening her gifts from all of us, she said didn’t know where I lived, and said she wanted to leave Moncton and move back to her home on Cassidy St, which is in Moncton.
Her demeanor recently has been closer to her regular self, but memory and cognition are always up and down. Thankfully, the swelling in her legs is all but gone and her mobility is far better than it has been in a long time. However, the biggest reason for this is the hospital’s monitoring of her medication intake, ensuring she takes it when she should. After she got admitted, we found a stack of prescriptions in her purse that hadn’t been filled; hence the major mobility issues.
Now that she’s been transferred to the 5200 wing, we’re hoping to get a better assessment of her long term prospects. The waiting game has been somewhat difficult, and exasperated by the holidays when a lot of tests and other assessments get put off.
I have been struggling a great deal since first seeing her in the hospital. Every visit is different. Sometimes she’s more lucid and more like the person I know. But regardless of whatever mood she’s in, much of what she says makes little sense. She often speaks of people who have been dead for years as if they are still alive, but then has moments where she realizes they aren’t here any more. Virtually every visit includes a conversation about why she has to remain in the hospital and can’t go home. There was one day this week where she called the house six times convinced she was at work and was waiting for me to come pick her up to take her home. Another day she was convinced she was in a weird mall with a Walmart and wanted to go shopping.
It seems the trauma of the fall she had has accelerated some sort of dementia and from what I keep reading and have been told, it’s unlikely to recede to any significant degree.
As her son, I want to do anything and everything I can, yet I feel completely helpless. And worse yet, there are moments where I feel immense amounts of guilt, and even irritation at her situation. The other day I was getting mad at her for calling the house again and again. That anger turns to guilt as I know her mental state isn’t right, and she really doesn’t understand or even remember that she’s called multiple times. And since there’s nothing I can do to make the situation better for her, that frustration turns into more guilt and helplessness.
At the start of all this, I processed the situation by grasping onto the things I can control. Taking care of her bills, making sure she’s comfortable, going to visit her, and even taking steps to ensure things are ready should the absolute worst come.
But with much of that done now, I’m left looking to the new year wondering exactly how this is going to unfold. I’m a planner. I like making plans and being able to follow them. So it bothers me immensely when I can’t do anything to help her.
I talked to a counsellor about the situation and he asked me what bothered me the most. I told him the lack of answers, or the questions around why this happened or what I could do. He then asked me if learning those answers would actually make anything better. And of course, I said probably not. For someone who likes to have a sense of what is going on, not being able to know the “why” for mom’s situation is difficult. It’s like searching for control of a situation that has no real control at all. We’re simply at the whim of whatever her mind and body decides to do.
With having the week off for the holidays, I thought it would give me some time to really process and think about things. Instead, I’ve been off work for two days and I still can’t stop wondering about what is going to happen and what I could have done to help her.
With everything the doctors, nurses, and others I have spoken to, my mom’s future isn’t looking too great. With 2024 approaching, I’m supposed to be thinking about what new accomplishments and goals I want to complete in the new year. Instead, my mind is racing with countless thoughts of the inevitability of what is to come.
So for those of you who see me, talk to me, or even just catch a glimpse of my life online, know that as much as I am putting on a smile for everyone, life for me right now is really a struggle. If I snap, or seem impatient, know that it isn’t anything personal, and that I’m likely just having a harder day than normal.
For any friends or extended family members who might want to go visit mom, feel free to, but be prepared. Depending on your relationship with her, she may or may not know who you are, and will likely not remember you visited afterwards.
