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July 13, 2002-11:26 a.m. My mom is still in the hospital and we anticipate that she will be there until at least Sunday. Thanks for all of your kind thoughts. My mom woke up in the middle of the night Tuesday of last week and was throwing up for hours. She was very weak the next day and spent a good deal of her time in bed. We thought that at that time she had the stomach bug that has been making the rounds. She spent most of her time in bed over the 4th of July holiday. Daddy was not happy. It was his opinion that she needed to be getting up out of the bed and moving around and that sometimes you just have to suck it up and go on whether you feel like it or not. He said some very unkind things to her. For instance, he told her on Sunday after he had done the grocery shopping that if she was waiting to die because she was afraid that he wouldn�t be able to do the shopping and would go hungry, she could go ahead and go because he had that handled. He complained and nagged her while I wasn�t there; telling her she wasn�t trying to get well, she needed to eat and get up more. He mentioned the first day she was sick that she had lost control of her bladder once that day and I assumed it was an isolated incident. I came home from work on Tuesday evening after she had been sick for a week and she was wearing Depends (she hadn�t had any problems like that before) and her bed was wet. Instead of changing the bed, my dad had just been giving her towels. She told me that she had asked Daddy to change the bed and he told her to do it herself. I stripped the bed and put everything in the wash while dinner was being cooked. During dinner, my mom dropped her fork twice because she just couldn�t hold onto it. I put the clothes in the dryer and got Mom back on the bed to rest while they dried. Daddy needed some help with something on the computer so we came over here and I got that figured out for him and then went back over and made the bed. My dad made some rude comments to my mom that I can�t remember exactly but resulted in me yelling at him that I hope he got that shit next. I was really worried about my mom and trying to decide whether to stay home from work the next day and take her to the doctor. I called my brother and sister-in-law trying to decide if I should ask her if she could take them to the doctor in the morning. I was really upset by now and once I described my mom�s condition, it was decided that Mom should go to the hospital without delay. I asked my brother if he would come over because I didn�t really want to deal with Daddy and convincing him that this was the plan of action we needed to take. I hid in my house until Bubba got here. When Bubba told Daddy that he was there to take Mom to the hospital, he got furious. It took a little talking for my sister-in-law to persuade Mom to go but she wasn�t taking no for an answer. Bubba spent this time staying between Daddy and me. Daddy�s yelling at me, �Why didn�t you just say something to me?� I�m crying and yell back �I didn�t think you would listen.� Somehow it finally dawned on Daddy that it wasn�t about him right now and once Sheila and I got my mom dressed, we put her in Daddy�s car and he took her to the hospital. I rode with Bubba and Sheila. Once we got to the hospital, it was decided that I would go back with Mom and Daddy would get her checked in. They figured out pretty quickly from her white count that she had some kind of infection. She was also dehydrated and told the nurse and I that she had been drinking fluids when she could get Daddy to bring her a drink. They admitted her to the hospital and once she was settled at about 3am we came home. On the ride home Daddy again says he wishes that I would just have talked to him instead of calling my brother. He also said that he asked Mom if she wanted to go to the doctor and she kept telling him no. He wanted to know how he was supposed to know she was that sick. I somehow keep from rolling my eyes and tell him to look at how far she had deteriorated in such a short amount of time�the day before she got sick, she was up and active and in complete control of all of her faculties. He then goes off on this tangent about how he was raised to believe that sickness was a weakness and something you should just shake off and go on. I�m forced to tell him that is a crock of shit and that no one would lie in bed wetting themselves in an effort to get sympathy or at least my mom wouldn�t. I also tell him that all of his mean and tacky remarks are not helping. He says that�s just his way of encouraging her to get better. I say that whether that is indeed the case or not they come off as cold and uncaring. He says that�s my opinion. I maintain this is also the opinion of my mom. �That�s not true. She knows I love her. If I didn�t love her, I wouldn�t have let them do that open heart surgery 12 years ago.� I didn�t tell him, even though I would have liked to, that decision wasn�t his alone; there were five children there who would have made sure the correct decision was made no matter what he had wanted to do. He then tells me that he tried to take her to the doctor three different times and she said she didn�t think she needed to go�what was he supposed to do. I tell him that is when he would just have to say to her that he thinks she needs to go and he�s concerned and they�re going. We weren�t yelling at each other but we were quite curt. I'll finish this story later. **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
