When your parent becomes your child!

Although the main focus of the blog is usually on the funny things that happen and great places we get to see along the way.  There is a part of my life that I said would be a part of the blog.  That part is far from fun but is a part of life that many people my age face, it involves caring for my almost 89 year old mother.  The woman who took care of me, taught me to be a good caring person and whom I could never repay for taking care of Elizabeth, so I didn’t have to put her in daycare. These days I find myself being more a parent to her than a daughter and wondering if I am ever doing anything right.

An example of this came to me when I started scheduling Mom’s quarterly medical appointments this week.  She needs to see her eye doctor, dentist and podiatrist this month.  While making the appointments I realized that my brother and I never got away from taking someone to the doctor.  If you have a child or elderly parent you know exactly what I am talking about.  When your child(ren) is/are young you seem to always be going to a doctor.  For me, Elizabeth had an added attraction known as a sub-mucus cleft palate.  The first eleven years of her life she and I went every three months to ENT appointments, these visits usually resulted in a trip to Children’s Hospital at least once a year for tubes.  I can’t tell you how many games of I Spy we played in waiting rooms. On top of that we had the usual pediatrician, dentist and orthodontist appointments.  Throw in the times she was sick during the year and well you get the picture.  I remember thinking as she got into high school how wonderful it would be to no longer have so many appointments. 

But, oh how life loves to play tricks on you, because just as Elizabeth was reaching her senior year of high school it was time for Mom to give up driving.  At 81 her reflexes and perception were off and it was time for her to stop driving.  With her no longer driving, getting her to doctor appointments fell to John, Elaine and me.  I remember early on before I took on scheduling the appointments, there were more than a few times when John and I would be very busy at work. Then out of the blue Mom would call one of us to tell us she had a doctor appointment the next day.  Talk about having a homicidal thought moment, it took us a couple years to break her of that habit, trust me.  She didn’t understand why we couldn’t just take off work with a days notice.

Now instead of going less, I go to more appointments and find myself still sitting in waiting rooms filling out forms, answering questions about how some one is doing and monitoring prescriptions.  However, this time is way tougher than when it was Elizabeth, because now I deal with someone who denies there are problems, lies about what is really going on and tries to get out of going to the appointments, way more than my little one ever did. (With the exception of when Elizabeth had to go for surgeries - she could be a tiger at times. she once jumped out of the cage/cart on the way to surgery. I will always be indebted to that wonderful orderly that caught her.) In the last year I found myself in situations where I could tell the doctor didn’t know who to believe.  It is so frustrating because all I want is for her to get help and she just wants to be left alone or thinks there should just be a magic pill to make everything better.   

While I know it may appear I am looking for sympathy or complaining about my life, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  I know I am blessed to still have my mother.  But working through these situations is way harder than parenting ever was for me and I know I am not alone in my struggles.  Over the years hearing stories from those in the same situation has helped me greatly. I hope my stories will help others in similar situations, while letting them know they are not alone and that most importantly there are no right answers.