Reboot

OK, so I haven't posted here since November. That was when I got my new therapist and I guess I just didn't feel the need to rant here online. Well, it's time to reboot the blog.

The past 6 months have been good and bad. First the good: We finally hit a combination of medications that works. I have been mostly stable and I have even had energy to do projects, exercise, play in the garden, and be somewhat social. It has been amazing.

Second the bad: My mother fell several times, once gashing open her leg and once jamming up her ankle. Her ankle was bad enough that she had ankle replacement surgery at the end of December. She was in a rehab center for 6 weeks, came home, and then went back a week later because she was not able to get around like she should and I wasn't able to handle her while my dad was at work. She came home again a few weeks later and we found out that the reason she was having so much trouble with balance was Parkinson's disease. A week after she got home, we had to call the paramedics at 5 a.m. because she couldn't get out of bed. She had pneumonia and sepsis and was in the hospital 3 days. A week later I had to call the paramedics for the same reason, only this time it was a drug OD. She was feeling sick from the antibiotics and hadn't been eating or drinking. She got severely dehydrated and it caused her medications - including morphine - to build up in her system. She was in the hospital 3 more days and they slashed the amount of medications she was on. (She claimed that she had wanted to do that for months but the doctors wouldn't let her, but that is total bullshit. She had just 2 weeks before switched pain specialists because the one she had wanted to decrease her morphine).

I had been doing well enough that I was actually able to handle all of this. Yes, I had a panic attack in the ER when I was sitting there with my mom, but I bounced back fairly quickly.

The the unthinkable happened. My mom went in for a surgical followup appointment. She was supposed to get the walking boot off her ankle and be able to go without any support. Instead the doctor found that the ligaments he had stabilized had come loose. They absolutely had to be reattached or it would undo the ankle replacement. I felt like I had been hit by a wrecking ball. The previous 5 months had been hell with my mother and my anxiety told me we were basically resetting the whole thing. I felt completely numb for about 3 days, then I was angry and just devastated. 

The surgeon scheduled the new surgery and told her to keep the boot on and only put half weight on her foot to keep anything more from coming loose. The week leading up to surgery has been trying, to say the least. My mom kept walking around without her walker, even carrying things without it. I ended up being the nag and kept telling her what the doctor had said, but she just didn't seem to care.

Right this moment she is in surgery, and all I can do is wait. I am anxious and depressed. I am worried. There is no way to tell my anxiety that everything will be fine. I just have to wait it out and see how it goes. She will be in the hospital 3 days and then she will go back to the rehabilitation center. I know they will take good care of her, but I worry that she won't take care of herself. She has a history of acting like she just doesn't care and then ending up sick or injured or just too exhausted to do anything.

And, of course, the stress and anxiety are taking its toll. I still have some energy and I'm doing OK, but the depression is getting out of control again. It doesn't help that the weather is acting like it's February, not May. I am getting very tired of the cold and wet. I want my sunshine and my 90-degree heat.

So that is the past 6 months. I will try to keep this blog going. I am going to say I will post every week and I will try. Hugs to anyone who has actually read all of this.