Update on me - and Happy New Year!

[Guest guest]

I'm glad this year is almost over!

As some of you know, I found it necessary to move in with my 89-yr-old mother

about a year ago, back in California. She has been very ill, emaciated,

neglected, and abused by a ratty cousin for the last 5 years, unbeknownst to me.

In addition to mother's very long-time OCD and mental health issues, she had (a

year ago) undiagnosed bowel cancer whose symptoms were ignored for years, and a

slowly-progressing degree of of dementia (not the Alzheimer's type). She had

basically not gotten out of bed for 3 years or seen a doc in most of that time,

was on a horrendous array of over-prescribed meds, and worse.

Mother decided about 20 yrs ago, with her mental illness, that she did not want

to see my sister or I ever again, and kept that promise despite our years of

trying to stay in touch.

That is how cousin got involved - she saw an opportunity for an inheritance and

decided to " help " mother.

Cousin basically got mother to sign papers giving cousin conservatorship and

financial control over everything.Now that mother has been formally declared

" demented " , mother can make no changes in what she signed over.

When mother realized what was going on a year ago, she finally screamed for help

to my sister and me. That began one of the toughest years of my life - huge

amounts spent on attys and living expenses for mother, while we tried to get

enough money from mother's estate for her to LIVE on, eat well, and meet her

needs.

It has been truly horrible for my sister and I - but we have gotten mother

medically stable, doing vERY well, mental health and OCD issues under reasonable

control, bowel cancer diagnosed/resected, and hopefully GONE, and although the

dementia is a mess, mother has mostly good days now and is enjoying life. With

her dementia, she is (sadly) now much more pleasant than she has even been. What

an emotional ride THAT has been!

Mother is stable enough now that I'm even traveling a bit for my photography

again - and have won a couple fairly big international Nature Photo awards this

year.

We have gotten close to 25# on mother in a year, and she is no longer emaciated,

anemic, or, frankly, dying. She is walking independently again, up all day,

reading voraciously, enjoying food, and going out with us to bingo (Lord, I HATE

bingo..), shopping, and dinner occasionally. She has a LIFE again, even if with

dementia.

Unfortunately, all the stress and readily-available calories have gotten to ME

too, and I am up about 22# in the last year and have gotten NO help from the

Band.

I have known I had a port leak for at least the last year, but no time to do

anything about it since overseeing mother's care has been 24/7 +. We have

excellent caregivers at home, but they are unskilled and need a LOT of direction

and supervision. I Case Managed complicated elderly patients for most of the 25+

yrs of my public health RN career - never, in a million years, did I ever think

I'd need to be Case Managing my own mother. aacckk.

However, Now that mother is stable and I can breathe, I have an excellent Band

doc in San who will gladly see Band patients of Mexican surgeons. I have a

fluoro scheduled in about 10 days, and the (likely) port repair asap after that.

So wish me luck!

Back on the Band wagon and about to get some long-overdue HELP from my Band

again!

I'm very optimistic about the New Year, and catching up on my own needs. I'm

taking an update class on my old Endangered Wildlife Rescue certification, and

am debating accepting a very Part-time RN position at a local Free Clinic for

the Homeless, targeting mothers and kids. I have a couple 10-day US photo

workshops scheduled already for 2011, and maybe one international one later in

the year. I made it through the year!

I wish all of you a healthy and happy New Year, full of good things (and the

resiliance and strength to get thru the inevitable tough times)

Blessings to all of you!

I'd love to see some updates on what others are doing too -

Sandy r