Anger…

Chris thinks I’m probably angry at my mom.  I think Chris is right.

…let’s back up a minute, shall we?…

2003 or so…mom is using a walker (she was born in 1946, so this would make her a 57 year old woman using a walker)…because she has had a bad hip for years…and because she never got her weight down enough (per her) to have the doctors operate and put in a new hip.  Per my father, now, she could have had this replacement done, she just didn’t want to.  Not surprising.  My mother is cheap.  It would have cost money…money she didn’t want to spend – she wanted to wait until she was 65 (which is NEXT year, but we’ll get to that) to get Medicare to help with the costs.  Since 2003 she’s been put on SS-Disability because she can’t get around.  Why would you do this to yourself willingly?  Why not put up some sort of fight?  Why put yourself through hell because you’re too stubborn to get a hip replacement?  Okay…I understand, I do, I’d be afraid of a major surgery like that, too, but if it improves the quality of your life and allows you to ENJOY your life and your "semi-retirement" in Florida, why wouldn’t you?  Money isn’t the end all be all…we all know this, I think, somewhere deep down.

2008 (or was it 2007?  I can’t remember now) – Mom ends up in the hospital with 90% blood poisoning, and they think a stroke.  She is in a rehab center for over 2 months.  She survives – which is amazing all things considered – and her health has been all down hill since, steadily.

—pre this happening – in the early 2000’s – when they came down to visit, shortly after they moved to FL (which I think was 2002), my mothers leg was black – BLACK black BLACK – it didn’t look good.  It wasn’t pure evil black, but it was pretty darn dark, and darker than any normal, average persons leg should be unless their skin is naturally a bluish black (she is not, she is very German, for the most part, in the skin coloration department).  Nasty evil looking leg.  "Mom, what’s wrong with your leg?"  "Oh, nothing, it’s fine."  "Obviously it’s not fine if it’s that color."  "Well…the doctor says it’s fine, so it’s fine."  Over the course of the next couple of months I talk to her about this some more and she tells me the doctor has told her that her blood sugar is fine, that she is fine, that her leg will be fine – it’s just skin related.  W T F ???  Okay…fine, it’s my mothers life – she can believe what she wants…but, again, we’re back to this:  If you feel there’s something wrong, or something LOOKS wrong, wouldn’t you TAKE CARE OF IT?  My mother?  No.  Obviously she hears what she wants to hear.  If you don’t tell her what she wants to hear then she doesn’t listen…she’s like a little kid with their hands over their ears saying, "I can’t hear you I can’t hear you I can’t hear you!!!"  So…the doctor told her what she wanted…and, then after she had blood poisoning and got a NEW doctor (who’s really quite good, and is associated with Shands in Gainesville – the Teaching hospital at UF campus) all of a sudden the doctor that she was listening to "was a total quack" (no shit Sherlock!).—

My mother has also had numerous kidney surgeries over the past 2 years (okay, so that stroke must have been 2007) and I know those aren’t helping her health any, either…for "infectious kidney stones"…but, they weren’t bothering her – and everyone thinks those surgeries could have waited (even her regular doctor doesn’t think they were needed right at that moment – but, the kidney doctor did for some reason)…and that hasn’t helped her mobility.  Yet…she was in this position well before that came along.

Back to current day…talking to dad yesterday – he said that prior to the stroke/blood poisoning my mothers leg looked horrible (could it look more horrible than it had when I saw it years before?  Evidently, yes.) and that he asked her if she was going to the doctor for it and she kept saying, "it’s fine, it’s fine, no no it’s fine!"  So…she didn’t go, and viola, it wasn’t fine.  It also turns out she’s diabetic (they find this out with her sepsis and stroke – again, I say, No Shit Sherlock!) – and her old doctor is even more of a quack, of course, for telling her what she wanted to hear.  ::sigh::  So…in short, my mother COULD HAVE TRIED to do something about some of this, couldn’t she have?  Couldn’t she have at least tried to get a decent doctor, to get her hip taken care of, to exercise it, to try to be healthier, to realize that being very overweight and having a black leg and using a walker was NOT the epitomy of healthy living?

Before you answer me…I’m overweight – I’m working on it.  I do things I shouldn’t, and I know this.  I know I’m not the model of health, and I’m trying to slowly fix this – I say slowly as it’s a slow process…I wish I could do it overnight, but I don’t have the energy for it.  I’ve been listening to doctors for years telling me to "just lose the weight" – easier said than done, I know this.  BUT, I have had them test my blood sugar (borderline – I take meds at night for it, I watch how much crap I ingest now…and I know I should cut down on the alcohol)…I have a pain in my hip – they think it’s back related, I WILL go in for the x-rays they want to do even though I’ll be paying out of pocket for it.  They also want to do an ultrasound on my abdomen to make sure there’s nothing going on there (tender – it’s always been tender, but the doc thinks my liver might be a little large, so wants to make sure it’s not – okay, I’ll do it)…and I’ll pay out of pocket for that.  I had a bad pap and kept going back for tests over the years and ended up dodging cancer last year by getting that checked and having a hysterectomy due to pre-cancerous uteran cells.  I died on the table during my D&C which showed the pre-cancerous cells…but, I came out of it and survived and lived to get the main surgery.  We discovered that I really do have asthma based problems and that the tests weren’t necessarily totally correct…and now I breath a little better.  Borderline.  I have a feeling this is kind of how my mother handles things – "borderline" – if she can skate AWAY from taking care of something, she will – whereas I will go after it and try to fix it.<

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I may look like my mother, but I am like my father in the respect of taking care of things.  I don’t like b.s.  I don’t like the drama of things.  I just want to live a calm life.  My mother is upheaving all of that for all of us.  Damn right I’m angry.

In closing – for those of you that might want to say something about this venting entry:

…I love my mother, very much, but she is ridiculous.  She’s going to easily cause the death of my father if she doesn’t TRY to get better.  She told me right before she was put into the hospital (about 2 weeks ago), "I don’t want to get better because your father will leave me."  I told her he’ll leave her if she DOESN’T get better.  He doesn’t like the bullshit.  I don’t either.  My mother likes to pile it on, she always has.

I needed to get some of this out.  Please don’t leave messages telling me I hate my mother…because I don’t…I’m just really, really, really angry and frustrated, and I vow to keep working on NOT getting like that in the near future – I don’t think I could handle living my life like that.  (**and a side note – I haven’t even gotten into just how bad my mother is right now – she’s literally Delerious…I’ll save that for another entry, when I’m not venting).  Thanks for listening.