Happy Friday? NOT.

A picture of a baby Belgian is in order to calm my
"poor nerves". Nobody has any Compassion for my poor nerves... ::snicker::

Today is Friday for me, sort of. It doesn’t mean I get a nice peaceful time of no stress; that’s not the case… I have an appointment tomorrow with a social worker in regards to my developmentally disabled brother. I’m hoping we can set something up for him that is a permanent full-time residency. Judging by my mother’s state and health (I will elaborate later), I don’t think she’ll last very long taking care of him when she isn’t even taking care of herself. After that she will be seeing a cardiologist. Yay.

Yesterday, I got into work and was barely there a half-hour when my sister texted me; “Mom called, she’s not feeling well, she needs to see a doctor.” I call my mother, and she sounds frail and weak and complains about chest pains. What am I supposed to do? I drop everything and go.

It was heartburn. After the battery of tests, EKGs and X-Rays, the original complaint ended up being reflux. Of course, my mother’s other already-diagnosed problems came up, since she’s doing nothing to remediate them; not taking the prescribed medications, not attending or setting up monitoring appointments. After being berated by a doctor and being told she’s a “walking stroke”, she still just says: “Oh, how I feel can easily be corrected by a good night’s sleep…” If it was so damned simple, why drag me out of work to take her to an all-day emergency medical jamboree? Seriously, that rocket into the sun seems like a better idea every day.

I have to call her each day now and nag her to take her medication, still wondering if she’s just plain lying to me about taking it. I watched her bald-face lie to the doctor about fifty million times while I was sitting there… “Oh, I gave up drinking years ago…” she declared gazing straight into his eyes, “I drink lots of water every day…”; “The other doctor was wrong…”; “I can feel it when I have high-blood pressure, I had high-blood pressure yesterday...”; “The other doctor told me not to take that medication anymore”… I sat there, tightlipped, leafing through a falling-apart copy of People, wishing I was evil enough to be able to smack some sense into her. But I figure, at 72, she’s not going to change. She will still like, and cut corners, and manipulate as much as she always has, if not more.

We can’t pick our family. If I could, I’d have a few people I’d gladly connect myself to—the rest would be on their own. However I cannot choose the people who believe me obligated to them. It’s easy to think you can write them off and let them be responsible for themselves, but there’s always that horrid little thing called guilty obligation that keeps you tied to damaging people. Now it’s up to me to solve all the problems she created; and she is just along for the ride. Tomorrow will not be fun. I will waste my time and energy driving her to consult with doctors she will ultimately ignore, and to pick up medications she won’t take… for what? If she doesn’t value herself enough to take care of herself, why are we making an effort at all? I thought I lacked self-discipline… Wow. She makes me look like an overachiever.

I vow I shall never, ever be this much trouble to my child(ren) if I am ever blessed with one.