The good news: Mom’s biopsy came back benign. Yay!

The bad news: She was admitted to the hospital the day following her surgery. I brought her some groceries that afternoon and she seemed OK, although still out of it. On my way home, with Peanut in the car, I received a call from the gastroenterologist’s office: take Mom to the ER. She was in severe abdominal pain and was having mucousy, bloody bowel movements.

I wrangled Hubby into picking up Mom, met them at the ER, and Hubby took Peanut home…we don’t like having Peanut in the ER: way to many nasty germs floating around. Finally, after about 3 hours, they were able to take Mom into the back. By that point she was convinced she was dying, her pain a 10. They took abdominal X-rays, gave her some pain meds and were getting ready to do another tube down the throat to check for blood in her stomach when I finally left around 10:30. She was admitted later that night and wasn’t released until yesterday.

The gastroenterologist saw her once while she was in the hospital, for all of maybe 10 minutes. Her primary care physician at least had the courtesy to check on her daily and got her started on antibiotics as well and left her with prescriptions for more antibiotics, pain killers, and something to relax the intestines.

No one knows what’s causing the pain. Mom still is very uncomfortable, has a headache, which she’s had since being admitted to the hospital, and has diarrhea. Obviously, something is still wrong. She has a follow-up appointment with the primary care doctor on Friday and a home health nurse is supposed to contact her today and possible visit. Thank God for medicare which will cover the visiting nurse. One small benefit.

I have no idea what to do anymore. I’ve been encouraging Mom to get in touch with her old gastroenterologist, who is a good doctor, but semi-retired and does not accept Medicaid (mom has both Medicare and Medicaid), but who may be willing to adjust his charges to help her. The only reason she ended up with the crappy GI doc is because he’s in the same clinic as the primary care doc, and they like their patients to use in-house specialists.

I feel ready to snap. I’ve been fighting the GI bug Hubby had last week…have had the trots since Monday. Peanut’s had a couple of rough nights, although last night was a good one, once he fell asleep, thankfully. I’m tired, feeling off, and beyond stressed over dealing with Mom.

Mom is as difficult as ever. She’s frightened and depressed. When she has a spell of feeling better (like last night around dinnertime), she starts getting ornery again. Started in with Hubby over the knife he used to slice the dinner. Later, after a phone call with my aunt, she started in about her. I don’t want to hear it any more. She complains nonstop. If it’s not her ails & ills, it’s Hubby, my aunt, the neighbor, medical staff, whoever. Nothing positive. Ever. If I say Peanut had a rough night, she immediately goes on about how he’s probably coming down with something. If I say work is busy, she gets all whiney and says how soooooorry she is I have such a bad job. If she can’t hear the medical staff and they have to repeat questions, she goes on about how rude they are. Or that they wear too much perfume. Or their incompetence. Yesterday, her neighbor stopped by to check on her and she had nothing nice to say about that. I really wonder if she’s beginning to lose reality.

She’s also going on again about not living alone. I agree she shouldn’t, but don’t know the answer. Her therapist has suggested living in a private group home. It may work – she’d be in a private care-giver’s home with 3-8 other adults. However, I’m sure she’d have to share a bedroom and I think it would drive her crazy. I don’t know if it’s something she can afford, even if she sells her mobile home. And once her home is gone, it’s gone for good. There won’t be money to buy another one. The therapist gave a state website to try, so I’ll follow-up on it.

I’m exhausted from being caught up in her drama. This month it’s the GI thing. Next month it’ll be something else…