she's back

Yesterday's visit with my mother was horrible. Didn't I start another blog-post with that sentence. dammmmm

Since that post, last month. I went with Mom to her physician and had her medications altered. She was put on a medicated pain patch, that would hopefully ease her chronic pain, and then ease some of her anger, that may be a side effect of her chronic pain. The medication patch didn't agree with her. She became very lethargic and very shaky-twitchy.  She is now on a different pain medication that I think is working well. She was very active at my last visit, getting up and down from a seated position very easily (well, easily for her, she did it by herself, not needing two helpers.) And shuffling rather quickly up and down the halls with her walker.  And, not moaning and groaning whenever she moved her body.

However nice the lethargic docile person was to be around, she was definitely too sedated and too dopy and unable to do anything for herself. 

So... the mean nasty woman is back. She slapped me, I know she has been slapping her aides too. (Something we never did in our family.) She yelled at me for my whole visit. One third of her sentences were clear loud nasty sentences, the other two-thirds were loud nasty jumble words. She gave me the finger. (Something we never did in my house! And definitely something a second grade teacher would not tolerate!) She swore at me, in two languages, (Something also not tolerated when I was a kid.) 
"You're no longer my daughter." well that stung.
"But you're still my Mother."  I replied.

She told me to go into the hole (?) she told me to go into the black room (?)  She was SO SO angry.

"Why am I here?" Mom demanded of me. She repeated the question that her neighbor,Ten-minute-Tina asks every ten minutes. 
"Because you need help. You can't live by yourself."

"Yes I can! I am fine, there's nothing wrong with me!!!" she screams at me and stamps her walker up and down on the floor.


She is still refusing to take her medications, she is refusing to bathe or shower. She doesn't want to be with the other residents. She doesn't want to eat the "garbage... yuck...bla... bla.. no, no, no, no!" at meal times.

One of the aides found another of her rings, in her top drawer, sterling silver with turquoise stones.  She waves her hands at me and yells "Ring? Ungh? Ring? What ring?"  So I made an educated guess and told her she purchased it in Arizona when she was visiting there.  Then six or seven times throughout our visit she would yell at me "Ring? Hey, hey! Whose ring?"  So I repeat my story.  I recognize that ring as one of hers, but she does not remember it. And she knows it is not the ring she SHOULD be wearing on that hand. W's ring, the one that got too small.

Her doctor's aide called me today, they are adjusting her mood stabilization medication. We'll see.