I had such a lovely Sunday at the fair. Nobody bought the school, though several people came close and I didn’t make money but I did cover my costs and Rita and I went the pretty way because the map reader was busy gasbagging and we got lost in Wolverhampton twice, again. This time we stopped at a garage and two customers argued over which way to send us, in the end I believed the lady; as it turned out, she was right, we had gone too far round the ring road. We found it in the end and then went a different way back, quite by accident.
And all the good the lovely day out had done was undone the following morning by my mother who rang to say I was callous little bitch who hadn’t rung her since a week past Tuesday even though I had my mother-in-law to stay every weekend. After ten more minutes of this sort of stuff including having: LIAR! endlessly shouted down the phone, I had to tell her I was hanging up and did so.
I’ve been searching for advice on websites. Recorded cases of carers having mental and physical breakdowns are rife. Apparently in instances where the relationship of the caree and the carer has previously been abusive, it is only likely to become more so. I checked with the agency carer at the house but nobody has complained that they are getting any abuse, it’s all being levelled at me. No matter how loopy the demented, you would think that some sort of residual self preservation mechanism would stop them being abusive to the person who has the ability to lock them up, wouldn’t you? But in the same way that many felons are unable to restrain their urges to give expression to their opinion of the law, to a judge, whilst in the dock, apparently your local looney would like to give their caregiver a bit of what-for too in the earnest belief that it will make the care giver more kindly disposed towards them.
It doesn’t.
I am determined to keep my mother in her own home if I can but there has to be a cut- off point. I read on one website of the incidence of heart attacks among carers being abused, it’s a significant number. I thought, when I thought I might be having heart attack symptoms whilst being harangued in the middle of last week, that I was possibly over egging it. But, in the light of current research, possibly not.
Fortunately we are taking her to the hospital doctor on Wednesday. If she will go. At present she is paranoid and refusing to leave me alone with the doctor but somehow I will have to find a way of asking if there is any help for me. I have asked the care agency to leave the care worker in the house in case we need help getting her to the hospital. My husband refuses point blank to manhandle her in any way, which sensible decision I fully support, so we might need the carer to talk her into the car and out into the clinic. How long you can continue to take a demented person out of the house for appointments I don’t know, I suppose the end point will be whenever she becomes a danger to have on the streets.
Meanwhile I have wasted another day of my life being depressed after being abused. It’s difficult not to be. After I’d cooked dinner for my husband and son I went shopping; I just had to get out of the house. On the way back I was considering suicide as an option because I’ve just got to the point where I want the abuse to stop. To have to be reasonable and quiet to someone who is being so abusive, when no one at all seems to be reasonable and quiet to me, is just too much. I cannot bear the thought that she will be either ringing me two or three times a day to be abusive for the rest of her life or I’ll be there while she does it in person. But I have to. I am the primary carer.
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Here I am the following morning, suddenly having a brainwave. My mother has been refusing to allow me to speak to the doctor alone and now she won’t even have me in the room while she speaks to the doctor. While I was looking in my file to find the email address of the bank I came across the doctor’s secretary’s number, so I was able to phone and express my concerns. The secretary listened beautifully and afterwards I felt much better. Later my mother insisted that the doctor had written to her privately and changed the appointment to Friday, so I should come then. I rang the secretary back, the doctor had, of course, done no such thing.
That’s the problem being around people who are abusing you for half an hour at a go three times a day, after a while you lose the ability to think for yourself. Once again my file came to my rescue. I still haven’t found the address for the bank, what I’m looking for is the title deed to the house, so I can re-mortgage it to pay for continuing care but I do have addresses of several people who can help me look for it or know what to do if it doesn’t turn up.
So, advice this time, if you aren’t sick of it (and if you are, ignore me, I wish my mother would) is to not only get your support group in place, such as the doctor’s secretary and the other professionals you encounter but to support yourself. Early on, while you are all still reeling from the diagnosis, is when people will give you business cards, leaflets and bits of paper with helpful addresses on them. Being me I wouldn’t put the information on any electronic device such as a laptop, Ipad or anything with a battery, without having it some other way too. I cannot tell you what relief it was to find that number this morning and know I could ring someone for help. So, if being an unvolunteering carer happens to you, write it all down, save it and have it where you can find it always, because on the morning when you wake up with chest pains and your heart filled with dread, you can be the cavalry coming over the hill for yourself.
Be warned, no one else in the family will care, theirs is not the responsibility. If you’re the carer, you’re it.
If you’re in the Aegean Stables and someone hands you a shovel, with the right information you can be your own Hercules and work your way through the whatsit with the best of them. There is one person in the world who will always help you and back you up and be there to save your skin and you only have to look in a mirror to find them.
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JaneLaverick.com – presence of body, absence of mind, fairly close to a chocolate bar.