May 14, 2019

Turning Down a One-Way Road

So that’s that. My mother most likely has Alzheimer’s. Or so said the nurse practitioner at my mother’s follow-up MRI appointment. Quite the change of diagnosis from “it’s just stress” we had been told just a year prior. (Not even a full year.) The only good thing that came from the previous visit was a baseline to see her degression. And there is a lot.

The nurse practitioner showed me, and only me, the scale of it. I don’t know why she chose to reveal this information to just me, maybe she thought I wouldn’t have had an overreaction or that I would be able to comprehend what was happening. Whatever the reason, it is what it was.

The decline on her results was sharp. Almost entirely a straight line down from where she had been. I wish I had taken a photo or had them print it out to fully digest what I was seeing. I cannot stress this enough, it was severe.

I posted the results on twitter and the outpouring was so overwhelming. Those that had gone through something similar were the ones to offer their assistance or advice. Even some who haven’t, offered an ear to bend, fully providing (a stranger on the internet) their phone number. I am overwhelmed with love that I don’t even know how to process that. It showed me a world that seems almost counterculture to what twitter appears. It proved to me that at our core human beings are a community and will gather to care for each other.

I don’t think my mother has very long. I arrived at that conclusion by one, witnessing her descent over the past few months (which has been rapid to say the least) prior to concrete test results; and two, being haunted by those three graphs.

The part that frustrates me the most, above knowing I will lose my mother, is that there is NOTHING I can do to stop this. This is a one way road and it’s all downhill.

April 15, 2019

A Glimpse at Insanity

My mother’s mental capacity is deteriorating at an accelerated speed and I don’t know why. Her delusions are getting out of control to the point that she is speaking absolute non-sense or scary ideas (like “the voice said it and I just knew”). Her visual perception of things is also off the charts. I think I mentioned in the previous blog that she thinks her house is sinking, well she is still holding onto that fact. Even though she has accepted (to an extent) that she’s wrong. She has worked herself into a panic about getting the house clean but in the end only creates more chaos.

I am absolutely at a loss.

Yesterday, my father called me to tell me he lost his cool at her because she got confused about why she had gone into a store. For whatever reason, he sent her into buy a 7 lb. bag of ice. (Why he didn’t just do it is beyond me.) When she went in the clerk came out to ask my dad what he wanted.

The rate at which she is declining makes me think that she is either accidentally ingesting my father’s pills, having her own allergic reaction to her own medication, or there is a brain tumor. At this point though we don’t know. She has an MRI scheduled for the 24th and hopefully that can shed some light into this darkness.

The thing I find most distressing is that she is convinced she is going to die soon. So I have been commissioned, by both parents, to write out letters to her sister’s so that they know how she feels. Yet, when I went to check-up on them today she was talking about more of me writing a book about her experiences. It was so very surreal, primarily because there is almost a strange thread of logic there, it’s just decorated with baubles of “crazy.”

March 26, 2019

Duty Bound

I don’t know what to write here. I had previously tried to make some poetic entry about me facing my call to a “hero’s journey” but it felt ridiculous and just a tad over-the-top. Not to mention a little conceited as if I am some hero that can vanquish the demon I am about to face. Yet, it isn’t even my monster. It’s my mother’s.

A year ago my mother went through a slew of tests to find out why she was having such a hard time trying to find the words to speak what it was she wanted to say. She explained it to anyone that would listen that she could see what it was she wanted to verablize but could not make her mouth do it. The final diagnosis was that she was “stressed” and needed to get on anti-depressants, see a therapist, and read the bible. That last instruction was a legitimate resolution given to her by the nurse practitioner. He advised her to memorize passages to help exercise her brain. Even after all of that, did she even take his advice? No. Instead she has chosen to watch fox news and become obsessed with checking her bank account, multiple times a day, and printing it off every single time as if it was her first time viewing it in months.

At the time my family and I accepted these results because we didn’t want to bring ourselves to believe what we feared it could be, alzheimers. His thought that this was over-stress fit into the ditch of denial we had dug and we gladly lay in it, until at which time it has become blatantlty obvious that this was not the actual answer.

In that time since her first visit, it would appear we have returned to the situation even worse for the wear. My mother’s thoughts have now become consumed with paranoia and panic that the foundation to their home is sinking. She also has become consumed with shuffling and rearranging piles of paper.

The foundation thing was a sharp alarm. She took me through their house pointing out all these very, very mundane things as if there was some catastrophic event that had occured, while simultaneously alluding to the idea that some person had snuck into their house to rearrange their posessions and leave without taking a thing. Her persistent insistance was even more troubling.

The moment my heart truly sank was watching my mother sit and stare at an e-mail she had printed that contained at most five sentences. For at least fifteen minutes she read and re-read it and still could not grasp what it said. I would tell her, she would say “yeah,” shuffle through the papers and come back to that same e-mail to run through the same task.

Since then my thoughts have been obsessed with thinking of her, my parents, the situation but I refused to see why. It wasn’t until another one of my cousins, who I NEVER speak to, insisted we talk.

I learned today that my mother’s older sister has been diagnosed with alzheimer’s. Hearing that made my suspicion even more concrete. There are now too many red flags to ignore.

The thing I find most enfuriating with the situation thus far was my cousin’s phone call, wherein she implored to me to think of my mother as if I hadn’t been already. As if I lived some fanciful life with no thought or care of my parents. And in the same breath telling me that my mother wanted a baby so much and was so excited to finally have a child, and oh how she loved me, to guilt me into caring for her. These thoughts bring about a lot of anger in me, mostly being why is it that everyone else got to live their fucking life and have their children but fuck what I want or desire in my own? Now it’s all about my parents.  Their lives now run mine, as if I’m supposed to let them because they cared for me. Well, I didn’t want to be born. I didn’t ask for life. They selfishly wanted children so that, what, they could have someone to care for them and watch them fucking die?! It’s ridiculous. And if that is truly the way of life, and how things go, who the fuck is going to be my servant when I’m old? I can’t have children without a lot of fucking effort put into it, and how am I meant to make my slaves if I’m meant to be burdened by my parents?!

I say the last part in jest because the logic of “you care for your parents, like they cared for you” bull shit is irritating.

The worst part of all of this, is if I was to have children (which at this point seems pretty ridiculous to even bother) I could possibly do the same to them. I’m very nearly my mother’s age when she had me. So I could get dementia and have my brain turn to mush right when their lives are really starting. And if that were to happen I would want to be put out of my misery. Alzheimers does nothing to the one with the disease and does EVERYTHING to those watching you have it. And that to me is my own personal hell. Just like this journey will be.

March 12, 2019

Shoot Me

I can’t sleep. As much as I want to quiet my mind I cannot. My thoughts are consumed with how foolish, gullible, and childish my parents have become. They never used to be this way. But as the years pass I find them becoming increasingly naieve. However, in the same breath they are also ultra suspicious of everyone and have multiple locks on their doors behind security screens. It’s insane.

Tonight I was called over to do IT work, per usual. For whatever reason they were having trouble logging into their bank account. I would walk them through it over the phone but my mother can barely speak and my dad has never used a computer. So I have to be there to do it.

After I get there I become privy to the fact that they were very nearly scammed by someone using the most recent trick in the books. The grift is someone calling up an elderly person and pretending to be a grandchild in peril and requesting money. The marks are given a place to wire the cash by a designated time before they can ask anymore questions. And my parents very nearly did if it hadn’t been for my Aunt and Uncle telling them what it really was.

The thing that annoys me the most is the telephone call was littered with red flags, but my parents are so gullible and trusting they thought NOTHING of it.

First off, after my father answered, the person on the other end said “Grandpa.” That immediately should have forced my father to respond, “Sorry, you have the wrong number.” He has no grandchildren as I am his only child and have no children. For whatever fucking reason, my dad said “Blake?” and the person replied “Yes.” Which even if that was the case they would not call my parents and say “Grandpa” he would have said “Uncle.” And if my cousin was actually in an accident and required an immediate $2K he would not have called them. Nor would he have asked them to forward the money to a place in Wisconsin where he does not live.

My parents though, saw nothing wrong with this phone call. I am glad they did have some sense to contact my aunt and uncle to question the validity.

My parents, in classic fashion, over-corrected and despite not having given them any information (however even that is in question) they went to the bank to change their account. I can only imagine what it was they told the poor clerk at the bank. Because, even I could barely understand what had actually happened.

The real culprit here is old age and the fact that my parents have barricaded themselves into their homes, only leaving to get further sustenance or cigarettes (in my father’s case.) They have no hobbies and they speak with no one, except me when I am called over for IT work or for my weekly visits.

And I am torn. One part of me is furious that I have to endure this, this is my life and I don’t want to waste it with incompetent adults. On the other-hand I want to cocoon them in bubble wrap and place them in a safe corner away from further harm. I just don’t know what to do.