I'm open to any and all suggestions/support. Just kind of reaching out. Kind of needing to tell someone what's going on...sorry this is a really really long post. I guess I'm kind of processing right here on the forum as I write this.
My mother is in bad shape. Her cardiologist called me on Wednesday night to let me know that she could die at any moment of a heart attack, and I had to make a decision about whether to take her to the emergency room to pursue aggressive treatment (echocardiogram and likely cardiac catheterization) or let her stay in her assisted living apartment with new medications that might ease the respiratory distress she is in. I've been in kind of semi-denial since then. (Semi- in that I did talk with her younger brother yesterday and today about the situation, but I have not gone to see her...partly because I'm freaked and in denial, and partly because my PTSD stuff has been in super-high gear for the past week and I think going to see her would have killed me). That's how intense all this is. It's me or her...at least that's what it feels like.
This would be easier if she were completely unable to make decisions for herself, but she is not. She just has little understanding of the bigger picture. This is not new, but has gotten worse with her mild dementia. She is a piece of work. Impossible. A fiesty fighter who is hell-bent on having her own way even though her own way is crazy (she is a narcissist...not an intentionally nasty one, but...). I have been trying to protect her (from my father who had his own issues...all very complicated...and from herself) since I was very young. I don't know why...survival then, enmeshment later and still. She refuses to discuss her end of life wishes. What she is most upset about at the moment is that she needs to go to the dentist to have her tooth fixed. She is and always has been the queen of denial.
I am so very sad for her though. I am trying so hard not to fall into her energy, her pain. To take it on as I always have. I'm pretty sure she is dying. I had this same feeling about my father before he dropped dead suddenly 7 years ago. I wrote in my journal a month or two before he died, "I am watching my father die from the inside out." Something ineffable had changed with him, and I had a hard time with it. I have the same feeling now about my mother (although this time, there's a lot of medical red flags to support the feeling). After I had the sense about my father, I finally persuaded him to talk to me about his end-of-life wishes, and to share the key information about banks and wills, etc. (He was 80). After years of refusing, he finally agreed to talk with me about it on a Sunday afternoon. He committed what I think of as "passive suicide" the following weekend. There is still part of me that feels like I am the one that precipitated that. (He'd had a suicide attempt when I was 9 or 10 and was a raging alcoholic...functional until he hit his 60s then all downhill from there).
Tomorrow, I am going to try to talk to my mother, yet again, about her end-of-life wishes. She will be 86 on Wednesday. She is not a candidate for any sort of surgery. We went through this once in the fall when we learned she has possible thyroid cancer and we opted out of the surgery. But now this situation is rather a crisis. She has some awareness of how bleak things are, and she keeps calling me, wanting me to make it better. This is nothing new. The night she found my father, she called me instead of 911. I got there before the EMTs. What a mess. But that's off-topic.
So, even though my mother is what my therapist once referred to as the "ground zero" of all the trauma, I am sad for her. I do not want to see her suffer. I want to do what is best for her...what every human being deserves. I am begging the universe to just take her in her sleep...for her sake and mine.
But that's not going to happen. So...how do I talk to an 86 year old woman who has a severe anxiety disorder, is narcissistic, and has mild dementia (but even before that had very limited self-awareness or any sort of comprehension of the world beyond really surfacey stuff). She deeply loves me in her own bizarre way. I feel quite compassionate toward her. But I'm so mixed up in so many of my parts...part of me knows what the right thing to do is, but lots of parts of me are terrified to talk to her. She will blame it all on me because she doesn't know how to do anything else. And I'm scared I will not be able to fend it off. That it will be like the aftermath of my father all over again.
I'll stop writing now. This is all so mixed up. Just ignore if it makes no sense. I think maybe just typing it out and knowing that somebody might read it has helped me. Thanks if you got this far.
My mother is in bad shape. Her cardiologist called me on Wednesday night to let me know that she could die at any moment of a heart attack, and I had to make a decision about whether to take her to the emergency room to pursue aggressive treatment (echocardiogram and likely cardiac catheterization) or let her stay in her assisted living apartment with new medications that might ease the respiratory distress she is in. I've been in kind of semi-denial since then. (Semi- in that I did talk with her younger brother yesterday and today about the situation, but I have not gone to see her...partly because I'm freaked and in denial, and partly because my PTSD stuff has been in super-high gear for the past week and I think going to see her would have killed me). That's how intense all this is. It's me or her...at least that's what it feels like.
This would be easier if she were completely unable to make decisions for herself, but she is not. She just has little understanding of the bigger picture. This is not new, but has gotten worse with her mild dementia. She is a piece of work. Impossible. A fiesty fighter who is hell-bent on having her own way even though her own way is crazy (she is a narcissist...not an intentionally nasty one, but...). I have been trying to protect her (from my father who had his own issues...all very complicated...and from herself) since I was very young. I don't know why...survival then, enmeshment later and still. She refuses to discuss her end of life wishes. What she is most upset about at the moment is that she needs to go to the dentist to have her tooth fixed. She is and always has been the queen of denial.
I am so very sad for her though. I am trying so hard not to fall into her energy, her pain. To take it on as I always have. I'm pretty sure she is dying. I had this same feeling about my father before he dropped dead suddenly 7 years ago. I wrote in my journal a month or two before he died, "I am watching my father die from the inside out." Something ineffable had changed with him, and I had a hard time with it. I have the same feeling now about my mother (although this time, there's a lot of medical red flags to support the feeling). After I had the sense about my father, I finally persuaded him to talk to me about his end-of-life wishes, and to share the key information about banks and wills, etc. (He was 80). After years of refusing, he finally agreed to talk with me about it on a Sunday afternoon. He committed what I think of as "passive suicide" the following weekend. There is still part of me that feels like I am the one that precipitated that. (He'd had a suicide attempt when I was 9 or 10 and was a raging alcoholic...functional until he hit his 60s then all downhill from there).
Tomorrow, I am going to try to talk to my mother, yet again, about her end-of-life wishes. She will be 86 on Wednesday. She is not a candidate for any sort of surgery. We went through this once in the fall when we learned she has possible thyroid cancer and we opted out of the surgery. But now this situation is rather a crisis. She has some awareness of how bleak things are, and she keeps calling me, wanting me to make it better. This is nothing new. The night she found my father, she called me instead of 911. I got there before the EMTs. What a mess. But that's off-topic.
So, even though my mother is what my therapist once referred to as the "ground zero" of all the trauma, I am sad for her. I do not want to see her suffer. I want to do what is best for her...what every human being deserves. I am begging the universe to just take her in her sleep...for her sake and mine.
But that's not going to happen. So...how do I talk to an 86 year old woman who has a severe anxiety disorder, is narcissistic, and has mild dementia (but even before that had very limited self-awareness or any sort of comprehension of the world beyond really surfacey stuff). She deeply loves me in her own bizarre way. I feel quite compassionate toward her. But I'm so mixed up in so many of my parts...part of me knows what the right thing to do is, but lots of parts of me are terrified to talk to her. She will blame it all on me because she doesn't know how to do anything else. And I'm scared I will not be able to fend it off. That it will be like the aftermath of my father all over again.
I'll stop writing now. This is all so mixed up. Just ignore if it makes no sense. I think maybe just typing it out and knowing that somebody might read it has helped me. Thanks if you got this far.
