Saturday, April 2, 2011

911

It turns out that the hospital and the surgery were the easy part of this week. Once I had Mom moved to a rehabilitation facility, all hell broke loose. Mom seemed fine when I was with her on Thursday afternoon. She rested in bed while I put all her clothes away. She ate some lunch and I signed a bunch of papers. She got agitated when she was asked to sign some papers and it basically went downhill from there. I finally left the facility when she began to beg me to take her home.

She ended up calling me all afternoon with the same plea.."take me home....I don't want to be here". She finally packed all her clothes, put everything on her over bed table and rolled it as far as she could until the staff got her into a wheelchair. She then proceeded to move to the lobby where she sat all afternoon and into the evening demanding to be taken home. The staff kept calling me and then putting her on the phone so she could beg directly. They finally called to say that she had called the police and told them that she was being held against her will. The staff asked that I come down to talk to the police.

I sat in my car in front of the facility waiting for the police to arrive for about a half hour. I arranged for my best friend to come over and be with me. I just did not want to handle this alone. She finally arrived, the police finally arrived....and the talking began. The officers did a great job...really trying to reason with her that she needed to be there to get stronger after her hip surgery. At one point the nurse asked if I would help hold Mom down so they could give her a shot of Atavan. I told her I could not do that ....she would see that as a total betrayal. We called my brother so the officer and Mom could both talk to him. After they talked to my brother, I talked to him. He felt Mom was upset to be in the same facility where Dad had died in 2007. I told him that was a complete smokescreen. Mom would say anything to manipulate people into giving in to her. I knew it was a complete waste of time to try and reason with her, but I let the process play out. There is no reasoning with someone who has both paranoid personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. Throw a little dementia in there and you have a very toxic stew.

I finally left because I knew there was nothing else I could do. The officers somehow got her to her room and kept talking to her. I don't know if they ever gave her the shot.

Since Thursday I have checked on her each day via phone. She was with a staff member all day on Friday because she tried to leave the facility. She was pouring over the yellow pages...probably trying to find a moving company to take her back to Arizona. Today she took her vitamins and her pain pill and had 8 hours sleep last night. Maybe they do have her on Atavan. All I know is that I can't take care of her anymore.

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