My mother is in the hospital

This is likely gonna be trigger so if you not in a good place, you might wanna move along now. Self care is a good thing

This would probably go better in the acoa forum, but I'm most comfortable here so here I post.

So my mom is 77, I am 41. I don't think she has been sober for more than 5 years of my life. I lived with her for three of those years (13-16) and in that time she found jesus and apparently he told her to discipline me, so yeah, not like those three years were good ones either.

In my younger years she did cocaine, then ran out of money and did crack. The whole time she kept the booze party up and running. I wonder sometimes if she did coke and crack just to be able to stay up and drink longer. She was awful when she was messed up. The best times of my early life are the times she'd vanish for days at a time. My dad was just gone, but they never did divorce.

Anyway, she was throwing up blood yesterday. It started at something like 1am and m dad finally took her to the er at 2pm yesterday afternoon. My dad was surprised when they diagnosed her with cirrhosis. He said he was anyway. He knows she drinks more money a month than he pays for their house...who is he kidding... meh.

She has those veins (esophageal varices), and um the mood disturbances (hepatic encephalopathy), and the stomach bulge (ascites), sh has all kinds of symptoms of cirrhosis. A few months ago she had a nasty fall and her doc put her on all these pain meds and yeah, symptoms went from bad to worse.

I don't think she's gonna make it to the end of the year. I might be wrong. I've been wondering for the last five years or so how she is still alive with all that's been going wrong with her.

Anyway, I'm not sad. I'm not shook up about it. I'm not really numb or anything like that. I had a moment where I wondered if I was a bad person for thinking how I wouldn't much care if she died. But really, what would I be missing. And isn't that why people mourn? Because of what they will miss, who they will lose? What am I losing? Someone who made my early years hell and someone I avoid like the plague as an adult? And then I think again, "Quit it you *****. People don't talk about their mothers like that!). But I do.

I don't hate her. I understand why she did what she did and why she does what she does. Her life sucked as a kid, to say the least. Dysfunction can breed dysfunction. I get it. I don't like what I lived, but I get why she did it.

I forgave her. I didn't tell her that. If you say something like that to her she will tell you about how you ruined her life or something. But the important part is I said it to me. I'm not holding a grudge. I also give myself room to get angry when I get that way. It helps me keep appropriate boundaries and keeps me moving in the right direction if I can remember to channel it that way anyhow. Heh. It's a work in progress. Yep. But I think I am gonna try to get out to see her tomorrow. I'm not much worried about it, she's not with it anyhow. In part that is for her, in part for me. I made a promise to myself that if I could, I would try to be there when she was dying. In my mother's entire life, her own mother never once told her that she loved her. Even when she was dying, my grandma never said that to my mother. I told myself I wouldn't pull a grandma on my mom. She gave me life. I can give her that.

So yeah, sorry this is so long. It''s been a weird couple of days. If you read this mini novel, I thank you.

Hi there L.P. It sounds like your accepting the reality of the situation as it is. It is what it is. You feel whatever it is that you feel.
Sometimes I wonder if when I go through this myself the very hardest part will be dealing with other people who think I should feel ______ more than what I do. Within myself I know that whatever feelings different parts bring forth with them will be the "right" feelings for them to have about their perspective on the situation.

However it goes for you, take really good care of yourself through all of this.

I’m sorry for this moment in time that you have to endure, stay strong sweety. It seems that you are taking it well and with it all well thought out and in perspective....this is very important for one’s stability and sanity. Very grown up indeed.

Liver death is not a slow one...but for what ever reason, we reap what we sow. It’s a shame that she couldn’t have received help in her younger days...but truth is that her addiction sounds much like ours. As a group we can’t stop drinking even though the drugs are no more. Thanks for posting this...it may have help more then what one thinks.

If you have a hard time we are here for you. I hope that you are receiving counseling. Please keep us posted.

((((L.P.)))) I'm sorry all of this has happened to you and your mother. It seems like you've already accepted the reality of the situation. Don't feel guilty about your feelings. You can't really control them too much and it's understandable you'd feel that way after everything you went through. I wish you the best of luck.

take care of yourself.

(((hugs))))

Your post came to me yesterday and you’ve been on my mind and heart today.

My dad died around 8 years ago, I think, and when he died I cried for 3 days. I was crying but I didn’t know why I was crying. We had no close relationship and there were so many unanswered questions and shame.

After I cried for 3 days, my emotions for that shut off. There was nothing there. I don’t know if there was anything there while the tears came. The best I can gather up is that I was crying for what I didn’t have. I was crying for the relationship that was not offered to me by him.

My mom is in her 80s and has health issues. She has been in ICU in a very bad place, health wise.

That was about a year ago and I remember sitting by her bed, in ICU, doing my duty as her daughter with no emotional connection to her. I felt like a horrible person because I felt that way and had no emotion for what was going on.

I’ve tried to use the excuse that hurt people hurt people. I remember thinking that, sitting in ICU looking at her and wondering what was wrong with me.

My counselor has invited me to look at radical acceptance. It’s accepting things for what they are without judgement for your feelings towards them or yourself, basically an “it is what it is” or “it’s not good nor is it bad, it is what it is” kind of thing.

For some reason it changes the perspective in some way.

My mother and father both grew up in terrible hardship, which they passed down to me in the form of unnecessarily hard discipline and other things that wounded me in many ways.

I’m torn between wanting to yell are her and feeling deep compassion for her and my dads hardship.

We should not be the pice that is paid for their hurt. We should not have to be the ones who are the buckets that keep passing it down.

I made a different choice. Like you, it stops here! The choices that I’ve made with my boys are healing my heart. It’s filling the bucket with better stuff to pass forward. I’m thankful for the undoing that I had 5 years ago. It opened the door for that.

I look back and want to have feelings for them, my parents, and I pray that healing comes. I pray that it does for you too!

I hope this wasn’t too much to put here. You have been with me all day today.

I’ll be thinking of you.

Trail.

Thank you all so much. Seriously, you guys are the nicest group of people here. I appreciate all of you. I'd like to take time to respond individually. I find myself a lil too short on time to do you all right in that way though.

I've been trying to keep myself busy in the day and give myself room to process and 'just be' at night. But then come 8pm I'm so freakin exhausted, I just pass out and get up at 5am and start all over again. Heh. My groggy self has not yet mastered the fine art of effective communication at 5am. I need about half a pot of coffee in me before that happens.

I guess I just wanted to drop an update here. Right now, I have managed to get up to see her once. I don't have a car, but my youngest daughter wanted to go see her so I rode with her on the one day my dad said my mother was ok enough to see her. Dextox has not been easy on her. My dad is hoping today will be the last of it for her. She was mostly out of it when we were there, but she wasn't trying to crawl out of her skin or anything, so it wasn't really bad the day we were there. That day was the easiest for her, today is day five, I think. I dunno, maybe six. The days blur on me.

Right now she still has to get through detox before they can figure things out... is their brain damage from this, and if so, how much... has the internal bleeding really stopped or is it slowly building up? She's just not there yet. More questions than answers, but at least blood is not showing up right now. That's a good thing. No one can say either, if she will choose to be sober once she leaves or choose to drink herself to death. That's on her.

At this point, my dad is rejecting the idea of putting her in an assisted living facility, which is what the doctors have said he should do. They don't even know if she will be able to eat on her own with the thickening stuff added to food at this point. She's been struggling with choking when she does eat. Anyway... He's younger than her by almost ten years, but he has MS so he can't do a lot for her on his own. In home, hired help is going to be a reality, how much in home help is anyone's guess at this point.

I don't know how my dad is holding up right now. He's not much for talking about emotional things. He did get rid of all the booze in the house except the beer he rationed out for himself for what he figures will be the duration of her hospital stay. I forget sometimes he's a drinker himself... his alcohol consumption always has paled in comparison to my mothers...

As for me, now and then I get angry, then back to nothing. It's not setting me off too much, I'm not getting triggered all over the place. Still me everyday, all day. I'm not spacing out or having times where I feel like I'm 'walking through saline'... I'm counting that all as a win. But it does remind me of little bits and pieces of being a kid and hating what she does and how she lives. It's also a brutal reminder that no matter what, my mother just cannot seem to love anyone or anything more than she loves her damn booze. Addict mentality, you know. And while my dad is busy reminding himself not to get mad at her and take it personal, it's her sickness... I do get mad and cannot seem to get myself to be all like, oh yeah, don't be mad at her, be mad at the addiction. No. I'm mad at her. I know she doesn't love herself, my dad, or me enough to quit. That I accepted years ago.

Now I might have to accept she doesn't love my one daughter enough and her great grandson enough to quit for them. My oldest daughter doesn't like her grandmother, my mom. My youngest though, she and grandma have been close over the last five/ten years or so. Back when she was a tween she would call grandma to talk and get advice and since they moved back closer to our town, my daughter has driven out to visit with them on a weekly basis for years now. She's 21 now and her son loves grandma and grandpa. He's 4. How do you explain this crap to a four year old. That's some heavy sh** right there that he can't comprehend and my daughter has just been crying off and on over the last week.

And I have no hope in me that she will choose to stop drinking even now and no hope my dad will choose to not go buy her more wine when she starts in screaming at him and falling all over the house trying to find some booze that isn't there. I've lived that crap one too many times with her on the times she would quit for a day or three or even a week. The junkie mad scramble to find some hidden booze somewhere before going out to get some and spiraling out of control on some relief/guilt binge. I mean, the choice to drink or not hasn't even been made by her and here I am looking into my imaginary crystal ball of doom knowing she will make the self destruct choice. I do that a lot... live life bracing for impact. This whole experience has helped me understand how very much I do that. That's a positive, I guess. Insight is a good thing.

Oh. I talked longer than I wanted to. I'm supposed to go swimming today with my daughter and grandson. Lil man is excited about the pool and yesterday he was here hanging out and we picked out his lil swim trunks and everything. Lol. He's freakin adorable. But yeah, I don't have friends or people I talk to or confide in in my day to day life. To say I keep people at an arms length is an understatement. I think I needed to talk and I appreciate all of you and being able to do so here. Thank you that.

((((L.P.)))) Thank you for the update. I hope everything will be ok for your family.

L.P. I understand what you are going through. Both my parents were alcoholics, and both drank until they passed. My mom was only 69, my dad was 75. It seams like my mom was a hateful person. I tried all of my life while she was alive to get her to love me, accept me, ect… I think the only reason she had anything to do with me was so she could get things she wanted. 2 years before she passed, we had a argument, we never spoke, or seen each other again. Before my dad passed, my siblings talked me into seeing him. My Husband, and I went. We stayed a couple hours. my dad apoligised to me, then we left. My dad passed a few days later. I may have cried the day that each passed, but I know I cried for my self, not them, if that makes any sense to you?

((((katydid777))))