In Time of Need

My mother is doing much better. She was able to leave the hospital, which by-the-way, was the worst experience of medical practice, I’ve ever been through. The nurses, a few of the RN’s, were terrible. I felt that they cared more for their pay check rather then the patients. At one point we had to tell at least 5 different nurses, who all proclaimed they would write this down, that my mother was allergic to latex, tomatoes, bananas, and aspirin! What’s worse, the nutritionist came in once and asked, just-in-case, if she was indeed allergic to tomatoes and bananas, which we then affirmed like 3 times to him!

Not only that, but when we would tell that something was just not right with my mother on how she was feeling, the nurses would just come up with, “well that’s normal after surgery.” This came from when my mother said she was feeling wheezy and short of breath. Now my mother has asthma, always have, and I would like to think she knows the difference from one feeling to another, so when we told the nurse this, she didn’t believe us and just gave us that line above. It took us two more tries, one finding my mother’s inhaler to prove she did have one, and two to get her doctors “confirmation” that she indeed had asthma and had her inhaler for this reason. The nurse then came back to apologize saying how it wasn’t in her paperwork. So, I guess because it’s not in the paper work, lets act like the patient is crazy and doesn’t know what he or she is talking about?

I know you RN’s go to school for this, but seriously, listen to the patients once in a while. I think after about 50 years of knowing yourself and how your body works…you should know when you have this feeling or can’t take this one drug or the other. Just don’t assume because you have schooling for what, 2-4 years, that you’re the only one who knows what’s wrong and right! (this totally doesn’t go to all RN’s out there, only the few who pissed me and my family off on the 7th floor at ORLANDO REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER!)

Onto happier thoughts, my mother is currently in a rehabilitation center until she knows that she can come back home and have the strength to do so. She is doing much better then when she was in the hospital. She can do pretty much everything on her own, except for changing clothes and bathing herself, since she isn’t supposed to move or use her arms too much due to the incision and broken sternum she has because of the surgery.

There are nights where she feels a lot of pain due to the broken sternum and her back (she also had back surgery a few years back), but she is usually unwilling to take an extra dose of pain medication, because she doesn’t want to feel drowsy and incoherent. I don’t blame her, since they always had her doped up in the hospital, yet they wanted her to walk around and attend classes before she left…I just didn’t see the point.

All I know now, is that for the next couple of months, my mother will be needing a lot of extra care and help to get through all of this. The sad part about it, is that I’m the only one here to do all of this. My aunt, from MA, is currently staying with us, but will be leaving next month. A few family members who do live here in FL, are about an hour away and usually don’t communicate or visit that often, so its as if we’re the only family we got, just the two of us.

I’ll be starting school in the Spring and hope to find a job soon. With all this in mind, I feel like it’ll be a lot of stress for me to handle. To be honest, I’ve been “watching” over her since I was 13 when she had a major stroke. I’m 21, so you can imagine all that I’ve been through throughout the years. We came to live here in FL when I was 15, so between 13 to 15 I had some help from my family when we still lived in MA. After that, it was just us. My sister did come to live here about a year or two later, but she never stayed long, and has already moved back to MA.

I’ve always been there for my mother, taking care of her when she would cry out in pain at 3 AM. When she wanted and needed to go to the hospital and we’d be there for literally 10-12 hours in the ER, before they would decide to admit her, I’d be there, wide awake throughout the whole night, to make sure she was feeling OK and that when doctors and nurses came in to ask questions or find out information, I would be awake and ready (she would already be passed out from the many medicines they would give her). When she needs someone to go pick up her prescriptions at her doctors office, which is a 30 minute drive to the place, who is the one to do it, me.

For 8 years, it has only been me who has been there for her. As many times as I’ve said that I’ll be leaving or moving out, I can’t. Not only because I don’t have the money (I’ve been paying bills here since I was 16), but because if I left, I know she wouldn’t have anyone to take care of her, and sadly, I know she wouldn’t make it on her own.

You’re probably thinking, well why doesn’t she just go back to MA where all our family is, so that they can be there for her? Well, she doesn’t want to go back…I don’t blame her though. I can understand why she wouldn’t, but for now, it seems like the only thing she can do. Sooner or later, I want to live on my own…go to school in NY and start my life. I’m 21 years of age! I don’t want to start my life late and feel like I’ll never accomplish anything if I keep getting held back. That’s right, that’s how I feel. It may sound terrible to others and maybe not, but it’s how I feel sometimes and I wish I could just have a little bit of help and understanding from some people.

I didn’t want complain or rant too much in this blog post, but the feelings just washed over me and poured into my fingers typing on this keyboard.

All I can say is I hope that one day, all this stress will be free from us and that we can both live happily ever after…if only for a few months at least.