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[ChairmanPoo]

The lack of resources in healthcare can be appalling. You're particulariy cognizant of this when you work at a small hospital dependent of a large one for most things. 

[nenjin]

Well this is one of the two major hospitals in town, and this one has two massive campuses. Drives me fucking crazy about this town, it's so obsessed with high dollar appearances. At one campus they have a full time fucking pianist who plays in the main lobby. A fucking pianist.....and three detox beds.

[martinuzz]

Heh. I was baffled by the same thing over here in my town. Accompanied my mom to a hospital appointment, and there was this guy way past retirement age playing the piano in the waiting hall. He played very well I must admit.

Our hospital may not have a severe lack of needed facilities like the one you describe, but still. Public discussion on healthcare in the Netherlands is all and only about affordability since a couple of years now, so it makes just as little sense. Sure, some nice classical music can be very soothing. I can't imagine though that installing some speakers is more expensive than paying a live musician. Although budget cuts on the culture department for two decades have forced musicians and artists to take any job they can.

[nenjin]

Things are, more or less, improving. On her side, she's way more lucid than she's been in a long time. Her strength is coming back. After a little PT she's starting to be able to get to the bathroom by herself. Her attitude is....still pretty decent. Still contrite. Getting a little waspish but who can blame her. She's not fighting us or the nurses so that's a great sign.

We're starting to fray a little though. Her sister can sometimes complicate things with her attitude and has pitched in a little while my brother, his wife and I have attacked my mom's house with a vengeance. It's looking good although it's a lot of dirty, thankless work, and there is still a lot to do. They've honestly done more than I have, but I've spent most of time driving across town, or calling half a dozen people asking questions and trying to figure out the future. It's kind of irritating because she keeps coming up with excuses not to really throw her weight into it like the rest of us are. She's my mom's blood, I expected a little more of her than this. My brother's wife has been amazing. She had her whole vacation shit canned, has been thrown knee deep into not-her-blood's filth and has done it all with a good attitude. I'm pretty lucky to have them both.

Still, there have been problems too. Had a shouting match with my brother the other day over how I am choosing to handle things, or thinking they'll need to be handled. He and my mom's sister object to me trying to answer for my mom at all when she's talking to care staff. They don't want me trying to do stuff for her, they think it's disempowering and counter productive. They're not wrong. On the other hand, when she's not being completely truthful I feel I need to say something because I know better. And I just want to help. I figure when the staff thinks I'm a problem, they'll tell me to leave.

It wasn't great day because I'd slept like shit after deciding to visit my mom at the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. Couldn't sleep. Didn't get much after the fact too. But I was sorta worried about any early morning incident since my mom still kept refusing to call the nurses to help her get out of bed. To be fair she's having to pee like 14 times a day right now, not sure why. I figure her bladder muscles are just as weak as the rest of her body so she's not peeing very vigorously.

I feel caught between a lot of people's opinions right now. My dad, who is constantly giving me worst-case scenario advice and telling me what I should be prepared to take over from my mom. Power of attorney, realistic conversations about Do-Not-Resuscitate with my mom, getting signed as her medical representative, figuring out her bills for her, making sure her house is paid for.....basically all the adult shit I've spent a lifetime trying to avoid. It's all realistic, prudent advice, but it's got my head in a worried place about the future. And then on the other side, I have my mom's sister and my brother trying to even me out with limited degrees of success and skill. They're also not wrong. But there's bad blood between my dad and my mom's sister, so, they're both saying shit about each other to me at a time when I don't need to hear any of it. I'm the locus of all the decision-making since I'll be the one who is still here in two weeks. My brother and his wife leave Friday probably. My mom's sister is planning to stay another week. Maybe. Ugh. My dad is just like "Call me when everyone is gone and let me know what's up." FFS. The internal strife is just making this harder, and I'm not innocent of contributing to it.

Anyways, right now I'm just the info gatherer and main rep for what's going on here. And it's a little frustrating to have everyone looking at you to handle things on the frontline....then criticize you and your decisions/thoughts. Even when they're right, it rankles.

Long-term the plan is still unclear. She's still not out of detox yet but her vitals, appearance, strength and clarity of thought are improving every day. She'll probably be discharged before next week, is my estimation, but that all depends on her. From there, she may or may not need more physical rehab before she can be admitted to drug/alcohol treatment. And the two big physical rehab centers I've called are all booked full, and they won't do more besides until they get a discharge reference from the hospital for her anyways.

Her coming home can't happen, not yet. She's not ready and honestly, neither are we. She still needs managed care and supervision. So I'm going to have to pull some magic to get her from the hospital directly into another facility. If we're lucky, she will just be physically strong enough to be admitted directly to drug/alcohol rehab. But my suspicion is they won't accept her if she's on the border of physical independence. It's all hard to say. My mom hasn't truly been sober for months now so no one is sure how fast she'll actually recover.

Today was a better day all around. Hard work but more optimistic. No fighting. One day a time, right?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could always talk to her care staff and dispel any misconceptions or lies privately. Which is why becoming her legal medical representative is important, since it obligates them to listen and gives you authority in this matter.

Since the rest of the family is leaving, just lock down the legal authority and outlast them.

I'd also advise you not to play hardball with the treatment center, if it comes to that. Hospitals are used to that kind of thing and always have their legal obligation for treatment haunting the back of their minds. People who run a treatment center are probably going to be a bit more willing to strike back, and all of them have experience dealing with the aggressively persistent in the form of their patients. Try for a clear case of why she needs treatment and get legal solidity with the hospital referral.

[nenjin]

I don't think I'll have hard a time with the treatment centers. They just can't tell me anything without info, which I respect. All the rehab/treatment centers do want to help, they're just bound by the need for process. (And apparently, the total lack of availability. The two big physical rehab centers in town are both booked solid, and I was told by one lady that the hospitals in town are so full they're funneling people to the physical rehab centers in large numbers right now.) For the treatment centers, I also understand their reservations about admitting mom based on her physical capability. They're going to have her up early and going to bed well after dark, and she's going to be physically active there. If she's too weak to participate in her own recovery, they'll just kick her out. (Which is something I've not yet thought about, is my mom sabotaging her time staying in rehab by inaction or being intractable. It's not really in her nature to do something like that, she's a doer but....lots of shit has changed lately.)

I'm just genuinely afraid of what bringing her home straight from the hospital might do to her mindset. The house looks very different from when she left it, but it's still her house. I'm afraid once she sets foot inside it, her will to go to PT and rehab might vanish since she's in a "safe environment." So it's pretty critical I get her from hospital to PT to rehab with as little time between them as possible. She's out of her environment and vulnerable right now, and it's the best time to get her to do something. Once she feels like she's in control of where she's at, she's going to start having her own ideas about she should do.

Which is why becoming her legal medical representative is important, since it obligates them to listen and gives you authority in this matter.

As far as the rehab centers go, I spoke to them about this. Every one in town is a voluntary treatment center. I.e me being declared her medical representative has no bearing on whether or not she can leave. Her name must be on the admission papers, and it's 100% her choice to be there. Sucks, but I understand why it is that way. The line between treatment center and psych hospital is the ability to self-discharge. If they have to keep people involuntarily, they need staff able to keep them there. And that's more ugly than a lot of these places want to be. They're treatment centers, not crisis centers.

I also need her cooperation for PoA or medical rep as well, according to an elder lawyer I called. (She absolutely needs to get a living will though, she could have easily died in this episode.) So I basically can do nothing at this point until she is through detox and ready to get discharged. And to be honest, I'm less and less sure I will need either PoA or medical rep authority. She's coming back to her old self pretty well and I think cognitively at least she'll still be able to manage her own affairs. Emotionally and psychologically though.....time will tell on those. We still haven't talked at length or in depth about anything that has happened. We're still in 100% compassion and caring mode right now, no hard questions.

When she's discharged though I'm going to need to have a real talk about all this with her, starting from the top. She's not going to tell me anything I don't already know, but it's important she tries to explain it directly to me. She's said she's sorry to have put us through this and embarrassed by it all and all that....but it's not the same as looking your kids in the face and explaining how you felt and what drove you.

[nenjin]

They discharged mom from the hospital today, straight into a physical rehab program which came and picked her up. Unfortunately, it's at a retirement home. It's a good program and all, place has good reviews, but I feel a little bad taking her from a depressing ass hospital stay to a depressing ass retirement home. But it was this place, or another one ~20 or 25 minutes outside of town. The other ~7 places were booked at least until tomorrow and most much longer, and everyone was in agreement we should not let her go home for any period of time. Even her. So she opted for this since it would be closest to me. If she really hates it we can move her, but I suspect even if she did, she wouldn't let on.

She seems in good spirits though, all things considered. Still a little teary now and then but we've all had wet eyes these last few days. And my aunt made the point that maybe this place will scare her ass but good and make her experience where you end up when you lose the ability to take care of yourself. They'll keep her for 1 to 2 weeks probably, just to get her strong again. She can just about walk unsupported and isn't super shaky and trembling anymore. But she has zero stamina. Once she's got some of that back she's going into a drug and alcohol treatment program for a long stretch. Right now I can visit her pretty much whenever I want, she can smoke, get outside food and goods if she wants, enjoy media. During treatment though....we'll pretty much be cut off from her entirely and she will get to take next to nothing with her.

So I thought I could dial the stress and, frankly, draining daily effort of playing catch up to this crisis back a couple notches from where I've been this week, now that her health is stabilized and she's in managed care for a good duration. Between getting up early, going to the hospital, going to my mom's house, cleaning her house for several hours, going back to the hospital and then trying to hang out with my brother and his wife with the few hours we had left each night....I'm kinda pooped. I haven't really been alone for any significant amount of time except being in my car and the couple of hours at the end of each night I'm staying up when I should be sleeping. So I was kinda like 'yay, progress and maybe my life can adjust back to a bit of normalcy.'

But then the neighbor across the street we've known for years came up to me while I was working on the house, and told me she'd seen the house listed on one of those local channels that displays properties with unpaid tax liens that are available to purchase.

Turns out my mom hadn't paid the previous year's property taxes and this year's are 4 months delinquent. Someone has already purchased the lien on it. Essentially: she is two missed payments away from someone legally being able to seize her house. That was another surprise I didn't really need.

I started looking around finding more unpaid bills, some showing up in today's (now restarted) mail service. Lawn care, her tax preparer's fees, just to name two I'm aware of. So I have to start going through all her mail and verifying her accounts are current, verified she's paid down her credit cards. There's Medicare forms that need to be signed and turned in, stuff from her financial advisor she needs to sign and turn in......Oi. Financial shit like this terrifies me. I've kept my life pretty simple, just a handful of bills I have to remember each month, a retirement account. Never owned a home. I only got a personal credit card because I needed it for travel, the other one is provided by work so I don't think anything about managing it, I just collect receipts. I'm not useless and I'll eventually figure it out but....godamnit. I hate money matters and hate being forced to dive into it and understand it.

But Lord knows what else is accruing interest or has been turned over to collections. It's not like she can't afford any of this stuff, she can. But I have to now chase all of it down.

Work is going to let me take more time off to deal with this and if I can get her financials sorted out this week I may yet go back still. Right now though I just want to sleep 14 or so hours and spend a day playing games and forgetting. But I can't let myself start getting apathetic about this now that the immediate crisis period is over. There's fixable problems I can still deal with now rather than later. (The house will be an on-going project for a few weeks.) I guess she has her work to do, and I have mine.

[nenjin]

Bills taken care of. That was a solid 8 hours of effort between going through 2 months of mail and calling about 10 businesses. Property taxes sorted, although there's a big ? on if some crappy LLC holding company out there owns a lien on my mom's house.

She's doing good in physical rehab. As much her old self as I remember her being. She's starting to get snippy (when a nurse who kept treating her like a fall risk was asking for a finger to run vitals on, mom gave her the middle one.......funny but totally inappropriate) but so far I'm still accepting that as a lack of sleep (her 85+ year old roommate was a terror and they moved her out of mom's room today. So she's had shit for sleep in the last two days or so.) Physical rehab isn't very intense and most signs are she will not be at the retirement home much longer.

I asked her about her cravings. She said she has none. Says she has absolutely zero desire to drink.

Part of me really wants to believe her. To believe she just got super depressed and got herself totally whacked out on booze and let her life fall apart. Not that that's good or anything. It's bad. But I'd like to believe that she's not really an alcoholic. That she can still enjoy alcohol and other intoxicants like an adult.

Truth is, I think I know better. Too many stories from her sister and dad about drinking, hiding drinking and all that over the years. Right now I think she's in denial mode. She'll go through treatment, talk about her issues with a councilor, yadda yadda....but I see in her possibility of believing she "doesn't have a problem." "She thinks she knows best" is a common criticism from her sister and something I know to be pretty true too. When her sister saw these signs today she knew mom was back...but is worried about what her old mentality will do to her chances at really changing her life for the better. Assuming she doesn't get herself tossed out of rehab for her attitude, I would not put it past my mom of going through all the motions, no matter how long they take, so she can return home, go back to business as usual (doing nothing except watching TV and neglecting the house work), get depressed and start hard drinking again. Right now she says it was "just boredom and depression" that led her to drink so much. And I highly doubt that. Her drinking has steadily increased for years now and I've watched it become a problem. She may have been bored and depressed but now that she's retired she has zero reasons to stop her from drinking, which is what changed her from a functional alcoholic to a non-functional one and made her alcoholism go full bloom.

I'm starting to think she's convinced herself this wasn't really a thing. A big embarrassment, a burden on me and the rest of her family, sure. But a major incident that almost killed her? Not so much. (She really hasn't acknowledged that her body got beat to shit from falling down so much, or that one of those could have resulted in fatal or at least life-altering head trauma.) Just her confidence right now tells me she's got a plan in mind and I'm not sure I like what it could be. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but there's an adage I learned a long time ago when I was doing my own experimentation with stuff as a teen and young adult: never turn your back on an addict.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In fairness, she may be being honest when she says she has no desire to, depending on what she subjectively thinks of as desire. Addiction is far more akin to an ingrained reflex than "I want to go get drunk until I can't see myself think". Subconscious and unvoiced until resisted; there's a reason people call them demons.

Not that it changes what you should do, but thinking of it in those terms could help prevent resentment should she prove less than eager to reform.

I suppose if boredom is the catalyst you know what you need to help her fix, not that I have even the slightest idea how one would go about establishing a social life from scratch for an older woman.

[nenjin]

An older woman who is also somewhat anti-social and introverted to begin with. I'm pretty much the same way. People tire me out. Social obligations exhaust me, and all I want to do is go be alone (to do the things I like to do.) I know what I'd be like at 65 if you tried to guide me around to different social venues like I'm a dog and you're getting me to meet other dogs. I'd tell you to go jump in a lake.

It's not that my mom is unpleasant, she just has a finite amount of patience for people. And it's not that she has never had friends, she just picks them very selectively and they've all gone away. I know she's still interested in men going by her reading habits and taste in movies. The last one was pretty shit though. So yeah, I dunno. Trying to make her meet people isn't going to work out, she needs to do that on her own terms or it will just aggravate and depress her. And if I'm anything like her, once she manages to get herself out there she'll form bonds. It's just a matter of momentum at this point I think. She came to a grinding halt after retirement and everything stopped. She just needs to get herself moving again. I essentially had the same problem after graduating college and going "Fuck, what now?" Just sans the blinding drunkenness and falling down.

Meanwhile, I have to move back to her place to take care of the animals, so I don't have to spend an extra hour to two hours each day driving back across town four times. I currently live 6 minutes from work. >< And I have never been happier or better adjusted since getting out of that house. It's the last place in my life I want to return to right now. Oh well. In truth the worst I have to do is lug my massive fucking tower and accessories over there, and find out how I'm going to get it real internet. Still. I'M BACK AT MY GODDAMN MOTHER'S HOUSE. AGAIN! Ugh. It's like fate won't let me get away from this place.

[Ghills]

Yes, being an adult in your parents' house is truly maddening. But hey, at least it's not because of anything you did? Always look on tthe bright side?

You've handled this as well as humanly possible. Really. This was a total crisis, the kind that breaks people, and you got yourself and everyone through it. Congratulations and condolences. And good luck going forward.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I know what I'd be like at 65 if you tried to guide me around to different social venues like I'm a dog and you're getting me to meet other dogs. I'd tell you to go jump in a lake.

Which is what I meant by "help her fix". Some people are enablers of horrid addiction despite not providing any additive substances themselves; you can seek to become the light-side version of this and "enable" her to restore her social life on her own. I'm sure she already knows what she'd rather be doing than nothing and crippling alcohol addiction; you just gotta find the right push so she'll decide to put the effort in.

[TheBiggerFish]

...I'm here for moral support.

[nenjin]

Took her into the treatment center yesterday. She'll be doing a cool month there.

Honestly, her recovery has been pretty good. No static, no flak. She's stayed pretty positive throughout this ordeal.

For the most part my responsibilities are just limited to her house now. (Which is an on-going battle of cleaning and dealing with her animals that seem to like to piss everywhere to express their discontent.) Gotta say though, this house looks more presentable than it has in 10 years probably.

So we're back in wait and see mode. I get a little break from visiting her every day, which I need. Taking care of her life for her has been draining on me. (One of the cats, technically my cat, now needs $1700 worth of dental work because she ignored a problem she was told about almost 3 years ago. He's going to lose virtually all his teeth.) I've yet to go to an Alanon meeting.

It's hard to say where we're at. Mom is saying stuff like she wants to volunteer at the retirement home she spent two weeks at, she liked all the people there so much. I suspect she'll say the same thing about that place when she's out of there too.

And I don't really know what to think. Sure, it's a good sign. Plans for activity are a good thing for a retired alcoholic. But I don't know if it's self-deception or not. Reaching out to the first tree limb you can grab, that sort of thing. The real test is when she's finally released under her own recognizance, will she be able to set a routine for herself that keeps her busy, not depressed and not thinking about drinking. I hope she gets the therapy and counseling she needs to help put her life back together. She's fine when she's got a schedule to keep and things are expected of her. Which is why I think she's been so positive, because she's essentially had someone telling her what to do for weeks now. But when there's no one steering her anymore? She's gotten on anti-depressants which I guess is a step in the right direction. I'm not a fan of drugs like that to manage your problems but in her case I think it's warranted.

We're going to have a family counseling session sometime in the next month. Me, her, my brother and her sister. It'll be the first time since this has all happened that we've really talked about it.

I need to start focusing on the other side of this thing though, and that's how to deal with her when she's out. How does one deal with an alcoholic after the crisis period has passed? Is it inevitable that everyone falls off the wagon at least once? How do you react to that? With love and support and "just try harder next time?" Do you scold them? Throw them immediately back into treatment? This is far from over but at least it's reached a point where it's a dull roar now instead of a full on crisis-storm.

[TheBiggerFish]

It depends on how you're calculating a relapse.  Past alcoholics can drink without having relapsed (contrary to what AA will shove at you), but for instance, bingeing, that's bad, and probably merits at the very least a talk of some kind (depending on her reaction to it).  If she's asking for support, support her, if she needs to be told, tell her.  That's probably really vague, but it is a very touchy and circumstantial thing to deal with.