Typed and posted at 2am – because I needed to write stuff down.
Deleted at 2:10am – because you can’t publish personal family details like that.
7am – I’ve heard nothing .. so assume she’s still with us and have restored the post – because this is a place where I feel I can be open and honest.
10am – plan A is I’m meeting dad at the hospital
•••••••••••••••••
My father rang this evening to inform me he’d had to call an ambulance for my mother, his wife, ten weeks after that fall I mentioned in which she fractured her shoulder and refused to return to the fracture clinic the next day, even though we all know that’s standard practice following an A&E X-ray.
She also refused to go in to see her diabetes nurse .. a specially allocated lady who helped her five years ago at the point of diagnosis. Mother has refused to go in for her last two annual reviews, preferring instead ‘self-healing’ … and scenes played out in her living room of ‘I won’t be told what to do and I’d appreciate it if you lot (that’s dad and me) would listen and HEAR me on this one. I know what I’m doing.’
Now, while many will read this and think ‘why the F didn’t you just force her to see someone?’ living with a narcissist means you end up complying with all they want. You don’t even know you’re doing it. Except I now do… following my 23 weeks of counselling, therapy, soul-searching, call it what you will. I recognise that I’ve been an enabler to her and so has dad. Recently, I’ve utilised the lessons I’ve learnt and pushed the boat out a bit and dared to state that while I recognise her right to make her own decision about her recuperation, I would have felt better that she had at least seen a doctor who could explain why her side effects of diabetes were getting worse not better. She smoked more and warned me to ‘back off’ … had a physical reaction ‘you’re stressing me out, please stop this discussion, it’s not good for me.’
Well, she’s had it her way for the ten weeks. For the five years. In fact most of her life I’d say. And tonight she will be unable to grab a cigarette and will be giving the staff hell. She’s not a social smoker where she might enjoy one or three with a drink, she’s a 30-a-day uses them as oxygen smoker. They must have her on sedation because she will be feeling totally out of control and that’s just what a narcissist doesn’t want to be.
😶
I can’t sleep .. dad said he’d ring if the hospital rang in the night. The consultant said her organs had started to shut down. Her sugars in her blood … in fact, I can barely bare to repeat this, were 57 and in twelve hours they brought them down to 20. They’re aiming for 7. Whether she’ll recover to the point she can lead a relatively normal existence remains to be seen. Monday on the phone, she was berating dad for ‘not getting on with buying a bungalow’ … and even though he’s given up his one day a week little job which gave him company and something to focus on, she’s been moaning at his nursing skills. Yet when she first fell and Man of the Woods and I went in daily with meals to help dad out as much as her, after the third day she actually rang and asked me not to go, stating that she needed to ‘regain control thank you and I’m taking your father away for a few days – he’s knackered.’ (They got about 26 miles up the road before she announced it had been a mistake to try and she needed to go home).
Sorry to dump on you … I’ll read instead .. and I might delete this post in a minute
(This is not a post which will generate likes… it is a horrible read in fact. But it is a warning to anyone suffering from diabetes what the eventual effects on your body could be if you choose to ignore the medical profressionals)
IdeasBecomeWords 