Hurricanes of Life

Today is 9/4/19 and we have entered another hurricane season with the latest one named Dorian that is hitting Florida and projected to continue up the North Carolina coast.  It’s fitting that the weather seems to be a metaphor for the things that are happening in my life at the moment.  The bright side is that like a hurricane, once it blows through then we can step back and access the damage and hopefully move on.  I guess it depends on the damage.

The last two weeks have been an adjustment to the multitude of changes and then trying to digest the ones to come.  I’ve stated several times in this blog that the moment I’ve dreaded all my life for reasons to be described later in this post has arrived.  This weekend is my third one at my mom’s and I am packing her up to move back into the house with me while trying to transfer her hospice care between states.  To say I am unprepared would be the understatement of the century. 

I mean, I did understand that she was in hospice and knew exactly what it meant even if I didn’t have a clear time line.  I knew she was struggling to find people to come help her and I even knew why.  Mom can be a very demanding person and during this stage of her life all the filters are off.  Combined with everything else the fact that her step brother is as removed from the situation as he can possibly be so there would be no relief from that direction, much less getting him to answer the barest of questions.  It was only a matter of time. 

On the previous Thursday I had taken my foster dog to the vet for his final surgery to have his tail amputated which would allow him to be off his medical hold once he had completely healed.  I can’t say Walter is an easy dog to deal with even on a good day because he was not treated well in his previous life before rescue but I have worked very hard to gain his trust over the last 5 months and he has come a very long way.  So as I left work on my lunch break to pick him up from the vet and was trying to figure out how to get him in the house with as little stress on him as possible, I got the phone call from mom I had been waiting for right as I pulled into the driveway.

There had been several text messages earlier in the day, from her current helper, about the things that were going on in Chester which needed to be addressed.  Linda had a definite opinion that Tiffany and I should have already applied for FMLA and came to Chester to care for mom among other things.  She did not understand the scope or magnitude of this endeavor nor the reasons why things were as they were.  I mean how could she understand when we didn’t know each other and she had only heard mom’s side of the story where I am sure there were gaping holes along with a lot of questionable decisions.  Linda had texted me about her conversation with mom that day and said she was advocating for me in regards to mom’s will and POA, although I didn’t ask her to. So as I got a board from dad’s shop to make a bridge from the car to the porch to make it easy for Walter to get in the house, I answered the phone call from mom.

I asked her what was going on so she could tell me in her own words and when that didn’t quite cover the elephant in the room because she only asked that I take off Thursday and Friday in addition to my normal Tuesday and Wednesday, I hesitated.  Walter had decided that he was going to follow the trail of treats and move along the bridge towards the house at this time.  Once he was inside, I told mom that it was clear that things were at a critical point and that it was time to make a decision.  That decision was if she needed and/or wanted more help from me that it would be best for all parties involved for her to come home.  She agreed.  So as I am driving back to work I am trying to process all that is happening and all that needs to be done in a short period of time. And after returning to work and finding that most of the work was taken care of, I made a call to Tiffany and was told that she just got off the phone with mom herself.  She also agreed it was best for mom to move back in with me although I must state for the record, it was easier for her to agree because she wouldn’t be the one who had to take care of things even if she did hold the POA at that moment in time.

And before I continue the timeline of events I will address the reason I’ve dreaded this moment my entire life.  I’ve felt that my mom has had this expectation of being cared for in the manner she desires for most of my life.  It was not something I ever felt with dad and for some reason that made it easier to do just that for him in his final days.  I knew that mom’s lack of making any meaningful decisions would entail a lot of scrambling at the last minute to get things in order and it is happening just as I imagined.  I am not surprised, angry or even resentful.  I’m just resigned to the fact that I can’t let mom die alone and that it has been made as difficult as possible to handle everything at once.

I also have a rather large issue of being lied to and used.  It has seemed to me like mom has been playing a game most of my adult life and I don’t know the rules but to be honest, even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have followed them.  The rules were for her benefit and rarely others.  There was always a lot of talking and questions but very little real honest answers or meaningful actions.  Sometimes mom could be incredibly kind but I learned that for every kindness there were strings attached.  I will elaborate on this later but for now I want to get the timeline of events down for a few reasons.

So as I got home from work that evening I told my roommate and her son, detailed what I could about the situation, informed them that her son was going to have to deal with his own cats because I would also be bringing mom’s cat with us and that he will need to be out of the house by the end of the year.  He was slated to leave by the end of Sept. but I extended his stay for his mom while I was traveling back and forth to Chester.  The next day was Friday and I had to call and start the transfer between hospices, make arrangements to be off work for the two extra days and start the move.  All the while I was getting sick with a cold someone was nice enough to share.

After many phone calls and shuffling things around at home and work, on the Monday before leaving for Chester I tried to savor the last quiet night I would have for a long time.  But it was hard because I knew what lay ahead and just the thought of how much work needed to be done in such a short time was overwhelming, even for me who is used to working long hours.  On Tuesday, I arrived early enough to get a jump on things and started going through moms things to see what she would need because we could and would only be taking the barest of necessities.  This went on through Thursday morning in between taking care of her.  The pump for the well had stated to run continuously and was churning up mud through the faucets.  She called her plumber and he changed the filter which would give us enough time to get her out of the house.

Mom had gone downhill so fast at that point that she needed help with the smallest of task.  A few people came to tell her goodbye and she gifted them with a few things she knew she would never use again.  The cars were packed and stacked with everything that was important to her and me such as pictures and mementos with a little left to be gotten on the last return trip.  Linda came by and helped me get her oxygen right as there were 3 different tanks to be juggled and we got her to the car.  I was pushing mom physically and mentally and could see that it was so very hard for her.  The ride took about an hour and a half and she was pretty quiet while she just looked at the scenery, such as it was, on the way home.

I had asked my roommate’s son to move the dining table, grab a small table from dad’s shop and take care of the delivery people who would be bringing the hospice bed and other equipment to be set up before we got home on Thursday.  It took a while to get her out of the truck, stuff unloaded and set up for the night.  I had ordered some plastic shelves, quilts to go over the back of them to give mom some privacy and some sheets for the bed.  None of it worked so I had to go to Walmart to get the extra long sheets on Friday morning and would have to return the other stuff later.

Then the hospice admissions nurse Brenda came on Friday and we got some of the admissions out of the way, more supplies ordered and more of her stuff set up.  It was time for mom to have a bath because I was getting the clean new sheets on her bed and who knows when the last time was she felt water on her skin.  I know she refused the baths with the aide when she came but I wasn’t taking no for an answer.  Her skin was flaking off and although she was trying to keep herself clean with wet rags I know it wasn’t doing the job.  So off we went stumbling to the tub and that took about an hour and a half.  She was worn slap out after all this. 

I had to work the next 3 days and Saturday evening I had finished most of the paperwork with both of our new POA’s and wills.  Reading became difficult with the words blurring and after a 12 hour day on Sunday, I was so exhausted I couldn’t even think about the next big undertaking I had to do on Tuesday.  My dear cousin came over on Monday night and helped me get all the paperwork done while she visited with mom.  My cousin asked me a question I have rarely been asked during my life from a family member and that was, “How can I help.”  While there was little she could have done at that moment, it meant the world to me that she would ask.  Also all during this time I was relying on my dear roommate to help mom and the dogs the best she could and she did a stand up job being as she is 70 years old with her own health problems.  I couldn’t have done it without her.

Tuesday, I left for Chester early at 6:00 am with my roommates son so he could drive her car home, cleaned out the fridge and freezers, packed the rest of the stuff, unhooked all the internet, tv equipment and scheduled the pickup of the hospice equipment.  Then I left for the courthouse to file the first of the paperwork and to drop off the POA’s at the bank, came back to the house to get a tank for hospice, let Linda pick up some clothes but she ended up cleaning out moms closet while searching throughout the house for anything else she could take and leave some stuff the neighbors would need to send mom’s mail.  Then on the drive home I had to get Walters meds, stop by the other credit union and wanted to finish one more errand before going to work to talk to the managers but traffic was so bad I just skipped it.  During the drive home I had time to think and evaluate this situation and I came to the conclusion that I had to go ahead and start the FMLA immediately because I wouldn’t be able to get a handle on all of this while trying to work too.  It was just too much, even for me. My roommate was exhausted, the dogs where all out of sorts with all the changes and the house started to look like an episode of hoarders with all the stuff piled up everywhere.

I made it home at 3:00 pm just as the nurse was knocking at the door.  Her name was Heather and she spent a good quality hour and a half with mom and me.  She answered all the questions my brain could think of at the time and I felt that the care given was so much better than what she was receiving in SC.  After getting up at 4:00 am that day I crashed about 10:00 pm.  Wednesday through Saturday was a blur of taking care of mom’s needs, getting her meds under control and understood as well as so many different people coming and going from the social worker, the Chaplin, nurses and aides.  Then I had to go through the mountain of paperwork that was piled around my desk.  So many things needed to be closed out by long distance and I was relying on her other neighbors who are also family on my Granddad’s side to help with what was left.  I’ll be forever grateful to them for that and the kindness they showed mom.

The paperwork for the FMLA is not really that difficult but most of it needed to be filled out by the hospice Doctor and then sent to the HR department at work.  One stipulation is that I must call work every day until the paper work is processed because I clearly don’t have enough to do already.  While it may be sudden the key people who needed to know, knew from the beginning that this was going to happen sooner or later.  It just happened sooner than we imagined.  One of the managers went above and beyond to help me get this together and again I will be forever grateful for her help.  At this time the plan is to take about a month of FMLA time to access the situation, try to stabilize mom’s health and wrap up as much of her stuff as I can in between.  I hope to return after a month and then have work on stand-by as her condition progresses to the point where I have time to be with her in the end.  We shall see.

As for mom’s needs, she has to pee a lot and was having trouble pooping so we were up and down with her all the time.  She would sit on the bedside potty for as long as an hour at a time.  Her morphine needs to be given every 2 hours to help open her lungs and the Xanax every 6 hours to help with the shakes and anxiety along with steroids, stool softeners and her hormones which she still wanted to take.  We were trying to get her to eat and find something that she could and would get down.  Her memory wasn’t doing well and hadn’t been for a while now that I’ve had time to look at her notes that were written over and over again.  The next post will detail more about that and the emotional roller coaster we both have been riding for some time.

But for now I will leave you with a little plea for anyone who has not started or completed making arrangements for those final days that sometime come sooner rather than later.  If you have read this post, then you know not only how hard it will be for you, but how hard it will be for the ones you love or want to care for you, so please start making these decisions as early as possible.  I understand that it may be difficult to face your own mortality or even the overwhelming amount of work but I can promise you that it will be worth it in the end for everyone that loves you. 

Emotional Roller Coaster