Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

I'm not waxing very poetic tonight. Something's up with Mom. She's been having some bleeding so they took her to a gynecologist today. H `e didn't find anything wrong with her, so he referred her back to the urologist. (These two bat Mom back and forth like she's a badminton birdie.)

When the urologist heard Mom was having trouble, he wanted to see her right away. So she goes to see him on Wednesday. It's probably kidney stones again. Looking back over my journals, Mom gets kidney stones about twice a year. She's had one big one that seems to flare up now and then. I hope she isn't looking at surgery.

Mom was so cute on Sunday. She's got this HUGE sunburn! Saturday was "community day" at the nursing home and Mom didn't miss a minute of it. They gave her a sun visor, but I don't know how she wore it! She's got this big red band of sunburn at her hair line, a white line that starts halfway down her forehead and covers her eyes, then beet red on the rest of her face and hands. She refused sun screen saying the visor was enough. I chided her "Don't you know if you get sunburned now, you'll have wrinkles when you get old???" Ba dump bump.

Mom's emotions are still very friable. She cries at everything! Good and bad.

Please keep my mom in your thoughts and prayers. I'm worried.

OR... Lies my mother told me....

Before I begin, I want to stress that I'm not trying to paint my mother as a liar. My goal is to illustrate the disease process of an aging bi-polar.

We've talked about confabulation a lot on this blog. This is the tendency to fill in the missing memory items with assumptions of what the truth could be.

My siblings and I are pretty far apart in age. (I'm the menopause baby!) My older siblings have a history that I do not share. I remember when my grandmother (Mom's mom) turned 80, my sisters came to Pennsylvania to attend a luncheon in Grandma's honor. I live a couple of hours away from where Grandma lived and died, and where my brother and sisters were born and spent their formative years.

All the way to Grandma's house they pointed out landmarks and reminisced about people and places that I had never known or experienced. It struck me that our lives were completely different. Their foundation was one of family, extended family, the love of grandparents, life with cousins and aunts and uncles. This was something that I did not know.

I don't know my cousins, or even my aunts and uncles, really. Whenever we were around them, I always felt like "poor relations". Of course, that probably came as a result of the conversations my parents had in the car on the way.

Being the child of a bi-polar requires a meticulous attention to detail and a near photographic memory. The child must remember what sets off a tirade, where the keys are, phone numbers, what's in the fridge, who's coming to dinner, etc. etc. Even remembering all these things is no guarantee of peace. But it's a good hedge to the bet.

I say that to tell you that I remember my mother's history very well. I remember every job she had, from waitress to factory worker to fabric store clerk to Disney employee. I remember them well. And I remember dad's too.

My earliest memories of dad's career are of him being a mechanic of some sort with TWA. He was an airplane mechanic during the war and when the space program came along, they used airplane mechanics in the Apollo Space program. Dad's claim to fame in the space program was his run as a union shop steward.

Mom tells people that Dad was "Head of PR for NASA". And that prestigious position allowed him to "span the globe" in search of only the best titanium for her knee replacements. Total fabrication.

Family history tells that when Dad first came back from the war, he worked for Sylvania Electric as a research lab assistant. Dad's research team invented the process that allows you to see the color red on your color TV. I understand that the patent contains all the names of the people involved in this project.

When Mom's TV started making all the people look badly sunburned, she told everyone that this was the TV that my father used to single handedly invent the color red. I bought her the TV when she moved from my house to her own apartment about 10 years ago.

I went to Mom's room on Wednesday and found her wringing her hands over the Fannie May/Freddie Mac debacle. "When I owned a real estate firm, we had to deal with those crooks all the time." Folks, I can't even tie that to a thread of truth. Mom never had anything to do with real estate in my life time.

When my son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, my mom related how many autistic kids she'd worked with when she was a special needs teacher. Again, I have no idea where she got that.

Mom's always been an embellisher and it used to mortify me when she'd start spinning her yarns. Now it doesn't bother me so much. I am certain that you could hook my mother up to a polygraph, ask her questions about her new history and she'd pass with flying colors. This is now my mother's reality. Absolutely.

I wish her life had been so fulfilling and so exciting. I know that her life was a disappointment to her. She's always been one of the most self-loathing people I've ever encountered. I never understood that. My mom was funny, talented, brainy, and attractive, yet she genuinely hated herself. I think my sisters and I all struggle with that same tendancy. I know that we are all driven to do well in our lives. We all clammor for "the prize". What is "the prize"? It's our mother's approval.

Approval. Funny. Mom approves of whichever one of us is not in the room.

A couple of weeks ago the nursing home called me just before midnight. I don't know about you, but phone calls after 9:00 PM make me nervous. The nurse who called said, "Your mom lost her wallet." What??? You called me at midnight to talk about her WALLET??? That's CRAZY.

So I go see my mom last night. She tells me that she's been passing blood. I asked her if she knew from where and she said, "They think I've got another UTI (urinary tract infection)." That makes sense. She went on to tell me that the nurse examined her and ordered tests. She said she was concerned because they hadn't done the catheterization yet.

Not that I don't believe Mom, but she has been known to embellish and exaggerate. So tonight I called to see if they'd done the tests. The nurse on the phone was a little defensive and dismissive. She said "Your mother didn't complain of pain...." When I pressed her for details about the hemorrhaging, she expressed doubts about Mom's story. I suggested she check nurses notes for the night before and sure enough, there was an entry detailing finding Mom in distress about the amount of blood that was present.

Now I ask you, why wouldn't someone have picked up the phone and called me??? They'll wake me up for a wallet, but let my mother be found with a bed full of blood and no one thinks to call. Of course, I made that point loud and clear to the nurse on duty.

A UTI explains a lot of my mom's confusion lately. She's been asking what day it is, what month it is. Her piles of stuff are odder. I realized that Mom does really strange things with her stuff when she's confused.

You know what bothers me??? The nurse told me that it will probably Monday or TUESDAY before the lab results come back. Are you KIDDING me??? Who waits that many days to find out the results? I'll be keeping a very close eye on my mom in the next few days.

So how about that Sara Palin??? Now there's a feminist. :-)