I saw my psychiatrist today - without Mom. Yet we spent most of the time talking about her. How the Seroquel and Haldol seemed to help her anxiety for a day or two and then stopped. How miserable she is. How she has been getting up around 4:00 every morning lately, barging into my doorway saying, "Marcia, get up! Get up and take care of me!" Nohemi, Mom's companion, gets up and takes her away from my door, and after awhile, I get back to sleep. If Nohemi is lucky, Mom conks out again after awhile, so Nohemi gets some more sleep, too.
I told him how I gave her an extra Seroquel at 4:30 Monday morning when Nohemi wasn't here and I was reeling, and it put her back to sleep for just long enough that I was exhausted but not staggering until Nohemi arrived from her day and a half off. (Then I took a mini-dose of Seroquel and went back to sleep.) He said to go ahead and give her the regular morning dose of Seroquel early if she wakes up extra early.
I told him we had discovered Mom has a urinary tract infection. For some reason these infections can make people with Alzheimer's go downhill rapidly. Our primary care doctor gave her a sulfa drug for ten days; then the repeat urinalysis showed the infection was no longer responding to that medication so now she has to take Amox-Clav for ten days. Will her mental state improve when the infection is cleared up? Oh, I hope so ... but I'm not going to count on it.
We did also talk about me. I told him that I had finally gotten outside to do some planting over the weekend. On Saturday, as I finished putting in the fourth plant, I suddenly realized - I was happy. It was a glorious moment, yet poignant, too, because it brought home to me how long it had been since the last time I had felt happiness.
I told him that the mail and bills are still piling up, though I did pay some bills Sunday evening and surprise! nothing was late ... this time. I told him how I hadn't called the exterminators for regular maintenance (due in February), or to have our air conditioners' yearly checkup. Or done my laundry. Or washed my hair.
We talked about what will happen when Mom dies. I told him that the estate will be divided equally between me and my two brothers. This house that my parents bought in 1961 will almost certainly have to be sold. That's sad, especially because in the area where we live all the older, smaller homes are being torn down, and great honking mansions with no yards are being put up in their places. All my gardens will vanish.
He asked what I want to do after she dies. I told him I want a smallish house, like a vacation home, with one huge room that can be a library, an office, a living room, a den, a music room. I want that room to be open to the kitchen. I want a lot big enough to plant lots of gardens. He said I need to think about this, to plan, to be ready. I didn't tell him that ideally I'd like to live beside a lake, and not in some crowded development area, but isolated from other houses. I won't be able to afford that anyway. Maybe I can't even afford a big lot. But that's my dream ...
I told him how angry I get with Mom, even though I know she can't help the way she is. How I yell at her - knowing that in five minutes she will have forgotten it anyway. I told him how I'm still living on Frappucino, coffee, Cheez-Its and cigarettes, and my only real meal is dinner. That I think part of the reason is that I want to get sick - so sick that I lose weight, so sick that somebody has to take care of me.
And he said, Absolutely! That I need to spend a week at a spa, being taken care of. His last words to me were, "Think spa!"
Often it seems that after I unburden myself at the psychiatrist's office, I can do some of the things I've been putting off. When I got home, I made three phone calls - to the exterminators, to the air conditioning people, and to our lawyer, because I've realized I need to get financial power of attorney for Mom. One more way I have to be my mother's parent.
I don't know about "thinking spa." In some ways it's appealing, but I'd miss my waterbed and they probably wouldn't let me smoke. But I do realize the wisdom of his advice to plan now for the next phase of my life. It will make it much easier for me when the time comes to move forward, and keep me, perhaps, from dwelling so much in the harshness of the moment.
