the wedding that is'nt

Today is either the start of the wedding or maybe it is nearly over - anyhow, the nurse and I had to bask in the afterglow - mom sparkled like a dew drop the entire day - after all the years of being ignored by dad's family, every single one of his nine younger brothers and sisters had apparently turned up for the wedding - she finally went to bed, exhausted by her imaginary exertions in getting the events to run smoothly, but smug in her conviction that the turnout was certainly a testament to her popularity as the self-appointed family matriarch

Getting her to eat was the big thing today - she greeted each meal with an astonished insistence that she had just finished the big wedding supper, and how on earth was she supposed to eat more? However, her self-preserving instincts feebly flicker on, and when I insist that she cannot have her meds without eating something, she agrees solemnly, declaring "i do have to keep my engines running, what with everyone here"

In writing about my mom I will only use the generic drug names over specific manufacturer names, since I usually end up finally googling with the generic drug name to get global info and user comments.

Mom was on Imipramine for a month after we returned from the hospital- to stop her bed flooding each dawn - doing the whole replace bottom sheet, then the protective plastic sheet, then the draw sheet, and finally the underpad, each morning, proved to be a massive drain on our already caffeine-bereft early morning energies. My dad figured that telling her strictly to inform us when she wanted to pee would do the trick, but two days of her insisting that she had not yet peed, while a pale yellow stain bloomed gently under her was enough to get him to agree to raise the issue with the doctors. So Imipramine it was. The bed-wetting miraculously stopped, and dry sheets greeted us each morning.

No one told us that a possible side effect of Imipramine - a powerful pre-SSRI era antidepressant - is mania and hypomania - so when she spent the last two weeks weakly shouting cusses like a foul-mouthed drunken sailor at my dad and the nurse, we really did not connect it to the morning dry sheets - Blessedly, the doctors finally made the connection and she is off Imipramine.

Her current meds are Sodium Valproate 500mg tabs 1-0-1; Mirtazapine 7.5mg 0-0-1; and Olanzapine 5mg 0-0-1 along with vitamins - and - calcium - which she takes both nasally and as tabs - her bones being as brittle as a potato chip..

Finally, a start

Started the blog few years back - back when I had just returned after taking care of my sick mom for a few months - I thought this would be a place to vent and wail and wallow - turned out it was too tiresome to actually put all that neural venting and wailing into words...

Fast forward five years and here I am again... my charming, vivacious, narcissistic ( is that how you spell the damn word?), insecure, clever mother is slowly going crazy, and I am watching it like it's a movie - no venting and wailing - just a Celexa calm that impresses everyone around me.

The blog should really be titled - Mothers Fathers and Daughters - because my dad will probably feature big as well - an insecure, brilliant, funny, tense, needy, reedy man who may or may not have driven her crazy, and now clings to me like lint.


Today, mom decided that she has had enough of this new place, and needed to return back to her own apartment - never mind that she cannot get out of bed on her own, and this is the apartment she fought tooth and nail for six months with the architect to design. She clutched at her favorite handbag (the one always under her pillow now, stuffed with any jewelry that she believes may be stolen from her, and bits of paper that I dare not explore), the handbag straps slung tightly across her chest, looking like a frail 79 year-old messenger boy in a back-open gown, and sat at the edge of the bed looking expectantly at the door for most of the day - any time any of us walked into the room, she announced that she was ready to finally start the packing - I tiptoed around the statement every single time. But dad was so grateful that she did not accuse him of anything yet, interestedly queried, "What packing?" while the nurse and I glared at him. He scurried out as she launched into an hour-long anxious rant on how she was sick of being the one who did everything, while he just sat around watching the same headlines on CNN all day long.