In the last few days:
1) My aunt so totally redeemed herself that I'm too tired to write it all here. She is a wonderful woman, and ultimately she was looking for someone to help her circle the wagons more tightly--someone whom she could trust to leave her sister with while she went home to her own family for the holidays. Apparently to her and my godfather, I am the rock upon which my mother and father are leaning right now.
2) I gently dropped the hammer on my brother to motivate him to at least try to see if he can stay for longer than 24-hours over Christmas, and to call more than once a week to make Mom a priority instead of to yammer on for an hour about some date with a girl from Yale. (more about this tomorrow after I get rested)
3) Sociopath has never called to speak to my mother. In fact we've all placed bets that she will call LATE Christmas eve to demand that someone drive 2 hours to pick her up and bring her home, wherein she will remain until she gets her gifts and then she will demand to be taken home. We have also placed bets that Dad, while telling us that it's because of my mother's ill health, will drop everything (as he always does) to run to Sociopath's beck and call.
4) I have apologized more times in the last few days to my sisters for any little thing which I perceived they might be hurt or find fault with--what I don't need right now is to have them turn against me or a rough road from the outset. Taking care of Mom is difficult enough without us all turning against one another.
Still, there are times when I have to take control of the situation and get their attention. I recognize that they are being respectful in their own way by hanging back and awaiting "orders" when I'm around (I did the same thing when Aunt Mary was still there), but sometimes I wish they didn't make it like that for me. I suppose I'm willing to take the credit for her care, but I don't want to have to work so hard with them to get it. Ha.
5) Mom is sharing a little bit more than just her pain concerns with me. I can tell that she does not want to die, that she is very upset about it and fighting it the best she can. She has never wanted to miss anything, and it's no different now.
6) The delivery of her meds is not through Hospice but through the family. The first night she came home, we had to go to the pharmacy to pick up her new medications. She had been schooled by the nurse that she was not to mix her meds, nor was she supposed to go back to the meds she'd had in the house when we took her to the hospital a week prior. Even so, as soon as the nurse was out of the house, she started in on each of us, belligerently looking for one of us to crack and give her one of the old pills (I picked up all the old bottles, gave them to my father and told him to get them out of the house and not to tell anyone where he put them. He wondered if that was a good idea, and I told him it was the only way we could ensure that the "weaker links" wouldn't cave in to her demands. He saw the light and the meds left the house to destinations unknown). The wagons circled that night, and she was NOT happy about it.
The nurse comes once every two weeks to count the narcotics to make sure no one else is sampling the goods. We are supposed to keep strict records of how many and when so that they can reconcile it with how many are left. At 2:14am when you're whupped, it's often easy to forget to write it down in the journal, but we've been doing pretty well with it so far.
The pain meds she's on currently are working so much better than what she was on last week, and she is much more comfortable. In some ways I'm thankful that the family is in control of relief delivery, but I know that soon it will become more difficult, as will she, and it will begin again to take its toll on the rest of us. So for now we are all happily playing angels of mercy, even though every pill brings on the barrage of comments about how we're all controlling her.
Always a pinch of salt in the open wound.
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