Ugh, what a week.

[mme_hardy]

My 88-year-old mother has mild dementia. She is in a progressive assisted living community that starts with an independent duplex, steps down to independent apartment, steps down to "assisted living" apartments where you don't cook any more, and further steps down, if necessary, to actual dementia wards. She was placed in the highest dementia ward in March when she was having hallucinations. It turned out she wasn't eating and not taking her medications. This was fixed. She is now not demented enough for a dementia ward; her memory is unreliable, but she's able to hold a coherent conversation, dress herself, bathe herself, and so on.

Here's the catch. Everybody, including the nursing home management, wants her to move to the most unrestricted apartment for demented people, "assisted living". She'd have her own two rooms, her own furniture, be able to come and go as she pleased. The limitation would be that she'd be eating in the dining hall, not cooking, and that people would be keeping an eye to make sure she took her meds and didn't wander off the premises.

She's refusing to go. She won't go anywhere but to her own house. She is too demented for her own house, period end. She will not move to a more comfortable situation, because she won't get what she wants. She wants to live alone, drive her car (God, no), and do what she pleases. So she sits in the dementia ward, and all her friends wonder why, and until I came this week, many of her friends didn't realize that it was, weirdly, her own choice.

The nursing home has a contract with Mom from when she and my dad bought the house. It says explicitly that the nursing home has the right to tell residents that they have to move to the next step in assisted living. They have invoked that right. She has to move out of the house she and Dad bought in the '90s. (I'm grateful to them for doing this.)


In the last two weeks I have made three different detailed plans on how to clean out the house, move the contents, and make it ready for sale. One of them depended on the one single night she had agreed to move to an apartment. The next day she denied any such plan. When I pressed her and said I had her email, she replied "I was drunk." She's in a dementia ward. She is allowed one half-beer (tiny bottles) per day. If she was drunk, I am the Dalai Lama. The day after that, she insisted to my brother that no such plan was made. I made my final plan, which was to kick the whole sorting problem down the road, have movers clean out the house, and move all the contents to storage.

So. Two weeks ago I planned to fly out to Indiana to clear out Mom's house, which stands unoccupied but not empty. I arrived late Thursday night and went to sleep. Friday-Sunday I had a vile medication-resistant migraine. This was painful, it made my mother worry, and it used up three valuable days of packing.

Monday morning, when I was frantically packing personal items and throwing away junk, the movers called and asked if they could start work that same day, instead of the Wednesday they were scheduled for. They said they were worried that they couldn't pack the entire house. I said yes; what else could I do? So I was frantically telling them what moved and what didn't move, at the same time as I was frantically sorting papers, personal items, and things my brother and I wanted now. I also moved all my dad's clothes out of the closet and on to the floor to be donated. That hurt. I remembered him wearing so many of the outfits.

Then I got a call from the nursing home. Mom's cardiologist !!!!!!?!??!omgwtf had told Mother she was perfectly well, there was nothing wrong with her, and called her lawyer right then and there, while Mom was present, to say that her Power of Attorney should be revoked.

He didn't do any dementia tests. This is wildly wildly outside of his scope of practice. My mom's attorney asked him for a written statement about Mom's condition and he fucking *said* he couldn't because it was outside his scope of practice. And now Mom had a doctor -- a cardiologist, mind -- who told her she was perfectly okay and shouldn't be incarcerated. Swell. We have a neurologist, a psychiatrist, and two GPs who did actual cognition tests, but they don't count; she explained why. She's just fine and thus can move back to her house, which I was frantically packing. The nursing home management had another difficult conversation with Mom, in which they explicitly told her that her house is being sold and she cannot move back, and she would be happier in an assisted apartment. She slammed a book on to the floor at one point. After a while, she icily said, "I think we're done here", and strolled back to the dementia ward.


Tuesday I packed, still frantically. My mother has lost tens of pounds in the last few years (20 since her previous cardio visit), and she's been wearing pants reduced at the waistline by multiple safety pins. She refuses to buy new. My mother's close friend came over and we ransacked Mom's closet for clothing she could still wear; my mother's heroic friend then took 2/3 of Mom's clothes to a domestic-abuse shelter. I took Mom out to lunch; we mutually agreed not to talk about her "incarceration". I took her shopping, to pick up medication (she bought two liters of boxed wine at the drugstore, and I didn't catch her in time.) I took her to the cheapest new-clothes store in town, TJ Maxx, and cajoled her to try on one pair of pants that fit, which she reluctantly bought for a whopping $16.99. Then I pleaded exhaustion (true) and we went our separate ways. I continued to pack. I also complained to the movers about boxes that had been very poorly taped, and that could not possibly be shipped. (Our family's treasured collection of Oz books, including many rarities.) I put fluorescent paper labels on all the boxes and objects that should not be packed.

Wednesday the movers came again. I pointed out the bad boxes; they repacked them properly. I continued frantically packing fragile objects and objects Mother would want, with the movers stepping around me. The donation people came to pick up Dad's clothes. Pack pack pack. Mom called to find out why I hadn't taken her to breakfast. I pled exhaustion. I took a break, with the movers still in the house, to take Mom to lunch. We had an extremely unpleasant conversation where Mom said she was going to move home, wasn't sick, I'm a good daughter BUT, dot dot dot. I talked about the other doctors and stuff she'd forgotten to do. We wound up at an impasse. She looked at me and said, "What do we do next?" I said "I think you call your lawyer." Then I returned her to the dementia ward and went back to packing, frantically.


Mom then sent mail to my brother and husband saying she was worrying about me. *I* was worrying about me. Pack pack pack. Mid-afternoon I discovered I had lost the key to the god-damned rental. I ransacked the house multiple times. Nope. It has to have been packed. I ripped open the boxes I had packed. Mom called three times to see if I'd found the keys yet. Nope. It turned out the movers had moved one box with fluorescent tape; it contains her jewelry. I called to get it back.

While I was glumly scanning Doordash to see what restaurants delivered, my mom's angel best friend sent me a text saying "I know u prob feel like you'd have to rally to die. Can I take u to supper?" She did. It was lovely.

Now it's Thursday morning. It's raining. I have a migraine. I can't drive my rental; I need to call the rental company and tell them the keys are perma-lost. My mom's Goddess best friend has insisted on driving me to the airport in Indianapolis Friday. She is getting so many roses sent. ALL the roses.

I'm going to get up, brush my hair, and have a taxi to take me to the BMV, where I hope to transfer my mother and father's joint title to myself, so that I can finally, after a struggle beginning last July, persuade the California DMV to accept the title and transfer it to my son. Then I will return to the house, repack the stuff I packed yesterday and the day before, finish, hopefully, packing, and damn well collapse.

The movers are coming back Friday, because they had filled the moving truck on Wednesday. "Your mom and dad sure had a lot of stuff." Yes. Yes, they do.

I fly home Saturday. Fuck, with utmost sincerity, my life.

Comments

[mme_hardy]

BASED SOLELY ON CONVERSATION. I mean, my mom has two master's degrees, and it is amply documented that people with a lot of education progress through dementia differently than people with less conversation. But he knew because of his knowings....