My Mom Came Home From The Hospital and Squashed My Joy

It’s so hard being my mother’s daughter. Like, really, really hard.

For two glorious weeks, my mom was in the hospital and no longer living in my sitting room or kitchen as she’d done for the past nine months.

For 14 amazing days, I felt free. I streamed whatever the hell I wanted while I worked with no fear of censure. I removed all of my mother’s ice packs from my freezer and they filled up an entire reusable shopping bag.

I didn’t just have my apartment back to myself with my mother gone. I had my life back. And I’d forgotten just how much I missed it.

But after a few days of false starts, my mom finally returned to my place Friday evening. I felt guilty for her to see how much had changed without her here. When she was first admitted to the hospital, I was in the midst of reorganizing and redecorating my home. My daughter was also starting an all day preschool.

My mother returned to a much cleaner home and my newfound resolve to improve my life. It was deeper than the new rug and furniture.

And I’m pretty sure my mom felt the shift.

I’ve written before about how my mother has type 2 diabetes and severe cellulitis. She lived with me for 9 months and never saw a doctor, never checked her blood sugar. It wasn’t until I told her that she could give me and my daughter staph infections if she continued to ignore the wounds on her legs that she finally even checked into an urgent care clinic.

They took one look at her legs and sent her to the hospital.

What complicates my mother’s diabetes, cellulitis, and lymphedema is that she believes her health problems stem from government torture with radiation rather than her lifestyle choices and genetics.

She tucks ice packs into her clothes 24 hours a day, claiming the “torture” heats up her body. She travels with ice packs too.

Unfortunately, my mother didn’t give me approval to get information on her health while she was in the hospital, but I did get access to her electronic care summary afterward.

With it, I was able to confirm her current health issues: activity intolerance, diabetes, cellulitis, lymphedema, arthritis, congestive heart failure and c.diff. Despite my mom’s insistence to the contrary, there were no notes about her having an inexplicably high body temperature or a collapsed trachea at all.

Yet my mother maintains that the doctors were befuddled by the “heating” of her body and that they agreed she needs to use her ice packs.

The congestive heart failure is new but not exactly shocking for a diabetic in her late sixties who doesn’t try to manage her condition.

While she was in the hospital, my mother told me that she was getting help lined up to finally get herself moved into her apartment. She signed the lease back in August but hasn’t spent a night there because she has nothing moved in.

I was hopeful because my mom sounded like she really wanted to get her shit together. She finally admitted how much she needs her own space and how she can never allow herself to ignore her health again.

But she’s only been back in my home for three nights and I am already at my wit’s end. She has nothing lined up like she said. Nothing beyond a meeting with a social worker at her new apartment on Tuesday.

My mother can’t sleep at a completely unfurnished apartment, obviously. She could get a free bed from The Salvation Army but decided she doesn’t want that because it would include a metal bed frame. She says metal makes her torture worse.

Realizing she still has no plans for moving her stuff out of my apartment and into her own, I’ve felt my stress levels rise. Practically everything she does drives me crazy and I feel essentially done with all of the crazy. She’s in my fridge or freezer for new ice packs every hour. My utility bills go through the roof with her here.

My mom came back from the hospital and I lost every ounce of joy that I’d been feeling. Every bit of freedom. It’s a terrible thing to be 37 years old and afraid to upset your mother.

On top of her chronic lies or delusions about her health, I also have to deal with her conspiracy theories, speaking in tongues, and lectures about God and the devil. She’s also big on “prophetic dreams” and you know, that’s a whole lot of fun.

I can’t continue to live like this with my mother. Her constant tears, moans, and prayers to God are too much to manage day in and day out. So, I bit the bullet and hired Bellhops for $260 to come by and move her few belongings into her apartment on Tuesday morning.

I’ll have them take my couch over there too since she’s been sleeping on it and has completely destroyed the leather upholstery.

That means I’ve just got to get through one more night and my home will be mine again. I can practically taste the freedom, but it’s not without guilt. I feel guilty wanting my mother out of my house. And I feel guilty that she wound up renting one of the worst apartment buildings in town because she ran out of choices.

I feel bad but I also can’t understand her. My mother is in this situation because she never really took care of herself. She has never tried to work since I was born… not that I can verify anyway.

She was lucky to get on disability at all with such little work history. And as a single mom myself, it’s really hard to understand why she never even tried to improve our lives growing up.

It’s as if she’s been living in a dream world her entire life. For decades, my mom was a great sewist and baker, but she did those things for fun and was content to live on welfare or beg for help at the holidays. There were a few years where she sold baked goods, or, made my sister and I sell what she made. But she never actually took ownership of her life.

My mother complains about living in poverty and insists that everything comes easily to me when the reality is that I’ve been working since I was 14.

Over the years, I have taken 3 hour commutes, worked jobs I hated, and did whatever I had to just to remain gainfully employed. I never had family to fall back on, I only had myself.

Yet my mom complains that opportunities were just handed to me. And so, I bite my tongue to refrain from pointing out that she’s worked for nothing in her life at all.

I might have caught some lucky breaks lately, but at least my daughter will get to see me working hard to improve our life.

Just one more night and I’ll finally taste my freedom again.

I can do this.

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