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Look, anyone can fall into a horrible situation and I am never one to say never…..but in  the scenario regarding my mother, she has been an amazing contributor to society. She has been burnt out, overwhelmed, freaked out……but she kept on plugging away to give me the best life possible and to teach me that anything I want to accomplish is mine for the taking. She taught me to never blame other people for what is happening in a negative way in my world, but to take my own life by the horns and move forward in a positive way.

My mother worked at minimum 70 hours a week and always made time for me. She used to say, “It’s quality, not quantity.”  My mother is an author, of more than several books. She didn’t go to school for this, she had an idea, a passion and she found a way to be one of the very few people who got a book published on their first attempt.

With that said, she has paid her debt to society. She also has paid the debt to be in what is meant to be a professional enviroment. She doesn’t deserve to be overmedicated such that she is not a “bother” to the staff, she shouldn’t have to have her face pressed to the glass of the ward window wanting and needing so much to get outside breathe some fresh air, to have conversations with inteligent people, to have herself elevated by the facility back to a place of normalcy for her. I know that she will never be the person that I have always known, but my MUM is in there and I am so afraid that they are breaking her spirit and pushing her to regress within herself.

If this was up to my mother, she would be much more responsive and interactive with her care to get herself back on the right track…..but they have already counted her out. Count out the people who blame everyone else for their problems, who take others down with them, who don’t do anything in the world but breathe in the air around them.

How does my mum spend her day? Well, we paid to have her in a professional facility. Where they would rehabilitate her, not over medicate her. The intent of her being there was to regulate her meds. They now have her on a lockdown ward.

We are reactive to our surroundings. When you have my mum, who is such a vibrant, amazing human being, locked on a wing with people who are incontinent and non-coherent, how do they expect her to react? They are meant to rehabilitate and develop a program for her, she is an individual and they are meant to take care of her the way she needs, they are meant to be professionals.

I had a meeting with their staff. Their head nurse was so utterly disrespectful they had to remove her from the room. Is her hosility due to her inability to properly manage my mothers care, or that I am challenging her authority? How do they know which medicine is working and which isn’t when they are constantly upping her doses and adding new meds to the mix? This is irresponnsible and gross negligence. They aren’t showering her properly, we already saw the sores on her breasts.

My  mum was diagnosed with dimentia (alzheimers) almost 2 years ago. My mother is an unbelievably elegant, beautiful, charming and accomplished woman. We started to notice that she wasn’t as social as she usually was. My uncle suggested that perhaps she move into independent living with the thought that as she got older she would potentially move through their level of care if need be, plus my husband and I travel a lot…..hence, she would be safe.

She has lived their just over 2 years. She started to date a man, 95 years young about a year and a half ago. This was the first man that my mum had really dated since my dad died in ‘94. She was the youngest and most beautiful woman there. I don’t think she ever really loved it, but she is a trouper.

My uncle decided that we should change her doctor to one closer to where she lived. It made sense. I met this doctor, didn’t like him, but thought that I was just sensitive. ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR GUTT! This moron doctor (in my opionion), changed my mums medication and didn’t tell my uncle or myself. I noticed her personality swiftly change. She was also diagnosed with a urinary tract infection, which she had never had one before in her life. As a matter of fact, my mother has rarely been sick a day in her life. I asked them to fax me an updated list of medications. They sent over a list which was not updated. I called the pharmacy to have them send me a list of what she was on.

I  was appalled to find out that they had indeed sent me the wrong list. I addition, the resident services director at my mums apartment came 2x a day to give her pills. My mum hates taking pills. Super independent woman, doesn’t like to be told what do do, and never needed pills. I couldn’t believe that I kept in consistent contact with this director, and she didn’t tell me about the pill changes nor the fact that the pills that had been started and stopped were ones meant to be weened off. No professional alarms went off there.

I believe it was the week after the new year, the resident services director called and asked me to pick up my mum. I had told her that I was taking her to new doctors and she asked that I keep her through the appointments. My mum apparently had gone down to the dining hall and started talking to the various residents and tables about her boyfriend breaking up with her. She said that this made the residents uncomfortable, and could we  come and get her.

No problem. We picked up my mum. She didn’t seem right. I had never seen her like this before. She spent the week with us. I took her to a new GP (who also turned out to be a super moron in my opinion), and her neurologist. We picked her up on a Saturday. On Sunday the place she lives called and was concerned. They couldn’t find my mum, didn’t know how to tell me this but that it was reported that day that she was suicidal. I explained to them that their facility asked me to pick my mum up. I also found out that one of her friends was looking for her, was concerned and reported her as such. I asked the representative from the facility to please make note of the confusion…….my mum was not suicidal, and had made no calls since she was with me.

My uncle, husband and myself went to the facility to discuss what was happening to my mum. They suggested admitting her into the “health center” for her to get her medications regulated. We took my mum out for her bday that night, to a friend of ours place. His whole staff made her feel like a princess. We told her what the plan was just the way the facility told us to. It was a bitter pill for her to swallow but she is a trouper. We got her into the car the next morning just to get a call from the facility. They wanted us to take her to the hospital and then have her Baker Acted. This means having her put into  a mental facility for “observation” for usually 3 days. There was no way I was going to let this happen. It was ridiculous. They had a week to work this out, to give us proper guidance……we had spent 3 hours with them the day before. So, called the lawyer, got them to allow an outside person to see if she was suicidal. Firstly she wasn’t, secondly, if they need to get her meds straight why would you ever responsibly throw her into a mental institute which would administer all sorts of brain chemically altering medicine. I understand that they have to CYA but not to the detriment of someones well being.

So, we brought my mum in. The only bed they had was in the area which I call the drooler section. (no disrespect ). These are all the worst cases of dimentia here. They are incontient and incoherent. These are the people I refer to as the droolers. They are trapped inside their bodies, no one interacting with them except to change their diapers. They constantly groan and moan. This is where they put my mum. It was meant to be temporary.

The next day I got a call from their psychiatriast. She blatenly told me that my mum was “gone,” that I had to come to terms with this. She also wanted to put my mum on the med that had made her personality change so quickly. I told her this. G-d forbid this “professional” actually looked at my mothers chart. So, my stab at diagnosing this doctor is this:

1. She wants to put my mum on the pills that made her unstable. Her retort to me was that she had a ton of elderly patients and that was what she normally perscribed them. Again, diagnosis in a box, how reactive were her existing patients with this.

2. A room came open almost immediatley in the “nicer” section of the Health Center. They were going to move her, but the doctor wanted my mum in a lock down wing because she is a flight risk. They had also put a “wander guard” on her to protect her. Great, I want to keep her safe too, that is one of my biggest priorities, but that wasn’t good enough for them. All ex post facto of what they told us.

3. Keep her with the droolers and no interaction with anything which would rehabilitate her. They are concerned because my mother looks great and is nimble on her feet. NO ONE WANTS TO BE WHERE SHE IS! SHE SHOULD BE TREATED WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT. ANYONE WOULD TRY AND FLEE….THEY ARE MEANT TO BE PROFESSIONALS TRAINED TO DEAL WITH SOMEONE LIKE HER.

THEY ALSO GAVE HER AN ANTI-PSYCHOTIC TO GET HER TO “SETTLE” DOWN. HOW DISGUSTING. THIS IS A DOCTOR. THIS IS SOMEONE WHO IN MY OPINION IS IRRESPONSIBLE.

4. My diagnosis of this doctor is (based on my opinion) is that her personal life has been sqandered. She has no one close because she repels everyone. She is so disilusioned with life that all she does in her medical practice is write and re-write the same medical scripts, she is negative and has a g-d complex. She just bangs the old insurance card. Please one after meeting a person for 45 minutes has the true expertise to close the door on someones life the way she has tried with my mother.

In today’s medical world it seems as if every doctor has a simple diagnosis broken into age categories. Every child under the age of 5 is diagnosed with Autism, every child over the age of 5 has add or adhd, adults have bipolar disorder and the mature adult, Alzheimers. It seems that doctors over perscribe and diagnose these diseases instead of looking at an individual as an individual. What about working with each person to rehabilitate them to the best of their abilities.  It is a joke. There are entire facilities dedicated to memory and Alzheimers, but yet everyone gets the same standard pills, general diagnostic testing and is then sent on their way until their next exam. Why have they wasted the concrete . and personal and goverment funding for these facilities when these facilities offer you less support then your own circle of influence. No doctor agrees and says the same thing. No one is willing to go the extra mile and really get to know their patient so that they may do right by them (I am generalizing here). 

People who were diagnosed with AIDS 20 years ago were handed a death sentence. Today there are many people living long and fuitful lives. If we look to discard people with dimentia or Altzheimers as if we could never change the fate of AIDS where would we be today? Someone has to buck the odds. Why can’t it be my mum or someone you love? This is a disease they can’t even really diagnose until death, but they all try and push this label on you.

So, I wrote a 3 page diatribe. I was actually pretty proud of myself. It took me days to know how I wanted to approach this, and then I did the unthinkable. I didn’t save before I jumped away for a few moments…..Hence, my first real post evaporated.

My husband created this blog for me to talk about what is happening to my mum and consequently those around her and myself. He knows that whatever I try and do I like to extend and have it hopefully benefit other people. This is all about getting the conversation started. I hope this is a safe place for people to come. I invite you to rant, to rage, to rationalize, to rejoice.

Our families need us. They need us to be strong, they need us to be sane and we need some g-ddamn reasurance that we are doing the right thing by the person in our lives who has been victumized by this disease.