My days have melded, one into the next. The last six months have seemed lost. I don’t recall many details–wait, there was the great kitten rescue from October through December, but for the most part, I feel I have been battered by the endless stress of sorting information, of problem solving, of managing finances, of hiring aides, of standing up to some bullies, of dealing with people who have mastered the art of doublespeak.

In the middle of all this, this meaning a phone that is rarely on the hook, of folders of information and data and details and notes about phone calls and communications, I have not taken my diabetic cat in to the vet for insulin regulation. Remember, my cat family is formerly feral; it took years for them to really be domesticated but there is a thread of wild that will always run through them. I tried yesterday to get the guy into a carrier and ended up with a punctured blood vessel in the knuckle area of my middle finger. Said finger goes from red to blue to purple from the base toward the tip. I gave up. He skulked away. I bought a bigger carrier and was about to tackle him again today when the phone rang and rang.

In addition to my cat, Princess Blue the lovely mama cat of the kittens I rescued, was trapped and spayed last week and recuperating in someone’s home or garage, still in the trap. The news is that the city agency that did the surgery sent her back with papers that indicate that she has a mammary tumor. This is a heartbreak. I was beside myself and didn’t know what to do on top of all the other stuff I don’t know what to do about. She is sick and can’t be let out. I am beyond lucky to have a friend who rescues sick animals and pays for their medical care, bless her, out of pocket from her pension and retirement. (Damn, my router just failed and I lost two paragraphs). She has offered to have our vet examine and operate on this poor animal, that is a mastectomy for a cat six times, likely an outgrowth from so many litters over so many years. It’s a hard life outside for animals that have been tossed aside. We are hoping that someone, some kind soul will take this poor thing in for a warm quiet life until the end of her days which likely are shortened. We don’t know what the prognosis is of yet but it is sad.

I sometimes wonder why I do these things, get involved in things that many people would shy away from or turn their backs on. I second guess myself constantly although I feel I am doing the right thing, and the “right” thing never seems to be easy. There’s always a complication. Perhaps it’s just another test, but it is getting tedious. And all this “stuff” affects my health…

Remember those ocular migraines? Last Friday I began an anti-seizure medication which I stopped after two days. The side effects were upsetting and there was no way I could stay on that and function normally. Actually I haven’t functioned normally in half a year. I am going through the motions of life with a sick feeling in my stomach waiting for the next call and the next shoe to drop. I want a boring quiet life.  I have a new  prescription– a calcium channel blocker for those ocular episodes, which is a heart medicine that will likely impact on bone loss. Nice. I haven’t started that yet. Enough!

You see, I feel all of this is stress related and if I could just get enough sleep, just calm down all this would stop. But here is a for instance of my new life:

Yesterday, I set up a few cat carriers with treats in hopes of luring the feline party in question and camped on the couch in an effort to catch the orange guy and haul him in without bloodshed. I began to nod off on the couch, enjoying the quiet. I was just beginning to relax.

The phone rang. It was my mother’s aide with a question about the mail. This same event had happened years ago when I moved her into the assisted living. Her social security got taken off direct deposit and the money mysteriously wound up on a debit card issued from the United States Treasury Department. Where is my ninety-five year old mother going with a debit card? The last time this happened I had to make endless calls to the bank that was hosting these cards and to social security. I tried to do what I had done years ago to patch a call to the social security office with me on it, to my mother on the cell phone. Get this: holding the mouthpiece of the land line to the earpiece of the cell in an effort to convey my mother’s wishes, to leave her damn direct deposit alone, to the lady on the other end. My mother who has been on oxygen, who has had pneumonia and who could barely talk a week ago with out choking to death, was screaming into her phone that I was holding to mine: “I wish to have my funds remain on direct deposit!” But despite all the maneuvering and “can you hear me now’s” the woman couldn’t hear my mother and I, as power of attorney, had no say in this matter. Nightmare. The aide was kind enough to make the call again and hopefully it is OK now but I am sure my blood pressure was approaching stroke level.

Just as I was about to relax... In addition, the Breville fruit juicer I shipped down was nixed by Cynthia the aide who deemed it “too flimsy.” Back it must go but not before I had to get on the computer, make a return requisite, print out the shipping label and then mail it down to Florida where Cynthia will have to shlep it to a UPS store. See how this goes?

Now for today:

I called the fellow in charge of the Emeritus assisted living, waiting on hold so as not to lose the guy who is forever at a meeting, for thirty minutes and let him have it about the crap that has been festering there and here, meaning in my ocular migraine head. He has mastered the art of doublespeak, has an answer for everything and always leaves me asking myself why I bothered.

BUT, I was able to get an apology for my first gripe: why didn’t anyone contact the family or the resident when my mother returned on hospice? Why didn’t anyone honor the motto: The Emeritus Regency Where Our Family is Committed to Your Family”? After that opening I let lose about the rats that still reside in the wall, the sink that needs to be replaced since she’s move in almost four years ago, the laundry that wasn’t being done, the garbage that isn’t picked up. It seems that because my mother is still considered an “independent” her services are limited, but if I wanted to start shelling out an additional $300 and up and get her on a level of care, maybe then they’d wash her clothes.

God help me.

There’s more. You know I am so grateful to Cynthia the aide and her honesty and all her help. Now picture my mother is screaming in the background that she wants her food (in this God forsaken Assisted Living the food order must go in to the kitchen and then it takes time for pick up, sometimes way over an hour!) because she’s hungry!!

This is quite a change from a month ago when she was complaining that everything tasted like poison. But there is more! This woman, my mother is wailing at the top of her pneumonia-healing lungs that Cynthia left her alone in the middle of the night! That Cynthia was no where to be found when she had to go to the bathroom! That she called and called and no one came and that three times she had to go in her diaper. Cynthia is trying feebly to defend herself from a woman’s accusations. A ninety-five year old woman, my mother, who is inferring that her aide left the apartment in the middle of the night and did something nefarious. Cynthia is laughing nervously and I am getting a sick feeling in my stomach which is bouncing me between two walls: the wall of: my mother sounds like she is paranoid or getting dementia and the other wall: the possibility that the aide did leave her alone. My mind is at war with my gut. Cynthia would never, could never do that, she is too honest, she is too trustworthy. She is too involved. But she took the live-in position more as a favor than as a desire and maybe she did go home! Could that be? Or, could it be that the poor woman was in a deep exhausted sleep and just didn’t hear my mother calling.

The fact remains: If I kept my mother on round the clock care, three eight hour shifts, it would cost about ten thousand dollars a month, but by having a live-in, the cost is six-thousand (how am I even typing these figures? And that doesn’t even include the rent!) and we need to conserve because the funds are running out. She doesn’t understand that a live-in needs to live and that includes sleeping! Eight uninterrupted hours of rest, a few breaks during the day, and the aide must bring her own food and make her own meals. My mother accused Cynthia of taking her food, that her portions were getting smaller and I am thinking that that place, that assisted living that turns my stomach, is serving food she doesn’t even finish and if someone wanted the left overs isn’t it better than wasting it? Though Cynthia insists she never would eat her food, my mother claims a cookie is missing. Or something.

My marbles are missing.

So do you see, can you imagine my agitation?

• I was unsuccessful at getting the cat in the carrier
• but couldn’t have brought it to the vet anyway because the phone rang as Cynthia needed help with the Social Security Department and had some complaints about my mother’s food service and, oh yes, THE RATS IN THE WALL WERE BACK
• I called the big wigs in the office with my complaints
• I fired off some emails to the advocate
• I called hospice and asked why my mother’s health wasn’t being followed up
• I called the aide back and got this earful from my mother who, called Cynthia a LIAR a few hundred times and insisted she wasn’t getting her money’s worth. “Now you’re going to try to make me look crazy! You’re a liar!” she yelled. I was ready to strangler myself with the phone cord–yes I oft use a land line because no cordless batteries can keep up with me
• Got a call from the cat trapper who was supposed to bring Princess Blue to the vet hasn’t as yet–I am worried about her being in a trap for so many days
• got a call from the aide, always during dinner my prep, about my mother and why she is still on hospice and maybe it would be better if she weren’t, she’d get to see some doctors: there has been no follow up on her breathing, her eating, her fractured arm, her blood pressure. Cynthia is ready to make appointments and shlep her into the world and she is content to stay in the house and insists the doctors should come to her. I am beyond the ability to hear what I am listening to

I, my friends, am in the middle of everything: doubting my sanity, doubting my mother’s sanity, doubting the help’s credibility; and not wanting to.

Today I had a headache. A real throbbing headache. It was welcome. Much preferred to an ocular migraine. Maybe it is signaling that despite all this tension, chronic nausea, anxiety, and my purple finger, that life will be back to normal, whatever normal means. I spend much of my time as my gut heaves secretly wishing this will all end … or that I will wake up.

If I could just find clarity in the blur of my life.

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

continued here