My mother in law has been in the hospital for going on 10 weeks now. She's been in a transitional nursing home situation twice, only to end up back in critical care. She lives almost two hours from our house. Nonetheless, my husband, who already has an almost hour commute the other direction every day, has driven out to see her several times a week through all of this. He calls and checks in daily with either her or father in law. He also checks in with his sister, a nurse, who lives many hundreds of miles away, to make sure she's getting to same information that he is. He has been the listening post/venting board for his mother, who gets so upset with the doctors and with FIL... he has also listened to hours of rants from FIL, and has heard his share from his sister and his brother through all of this. He's been keeping it together about as well as anyone can be expected in the circumstances, while still doing his job, his Navy stuff, the lion's share of the cooking and being the primary parent in charge until I get home at 6 p.m. each night.
So right now, my father in law leaving a long rambling message on our answering machine about how "nice" it would be if Bullshark had a chance to go out and visit her "sometime...", even though he was there on Monday, is just chafing my ass.
OMG! GRRR!!! (I am still liveblogging this very lengthy phone message...)
Just because she gets mad and yells at you, FIL, does not mean she has dementia! You keep asking the doctors. They keep telling you that between the meds and the dialysis and the loss of orientation that comes with lengthy hospital stays, a little confusion is normal. So stop telling everyone she has dementia! I don't know what you hope to gain by that.
ARGH. Now he's using his patronizing voice to say what a "good girl" she was when she ate all her lunch today. No wonder she gets furious with him.
The digital recorder on my answering machine actually cut him off. It apparently had reached its limit as well.
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This has been an uncensored rant about my in-laws. You may now return to your regularly scheduled blog reading.
We all need those rants. They happen to save us from doing something we will later regret to in-law's ;)!
ReplyDeleteOh, man. 10 weeks? No wonder she's out of it and annoyed at her husband patronizing her!
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry Bullshark (and you guys) are having to go through this right now. Hope things start looking up! (And that Bullshark gets a break.)