11/15/10-11/30/10
In the hospital. Out of the hospital. Manic as all hell. Crying.
We just keep going ‘round and ‘round.
My Thanksgiving plans were substantially different than my mother’s. I had my usual Thanksgiving dinner with my entire dad’s side of the family over in St. Petersburg, Florida. She went to her friend’s house somewhere in Miami where, apparently, her friend offered her wine, which made her freak out and declare the friendship over because “friends don’t pressure you to drink.” (To be fair, no one on anti-psychotics should be drinking - apparently her friend is also among that group and it alarmed my mother.)
She was depressed after Thanksgiving, calling me even more than usual because she somehow got her hands on a government issued cell phone. She called for advice (“should I switch doctors?” “Um, I have no idea.”), to tell me she was upset, to tell me hours later that she was doing so much better, and to start the whole process over again.
She’d been telling me that she missed the hospital. Justifying it rather logically, she explained that the people there were her friends and people she is used to seeing and that she misses them when she’s not there for a while. I commiserated and just urged her to do what she wanted. Ultimately, it’s not that big a deal whether she goes back in today, because she will be back soon.
I don’t know what sparked it specifically, but she’s back in the hospital again. I don’t think she’s at UM hospital (at least, the phone number she’s calling me from is not the one I am accustomed to seeing when she’s at UM), but she called me a few times in the last 24 hours to tell me, again, that things are looking up and that I don’t have to worry about her harming herself because she’s going to be okay.
I keep picking up her calls while I’m at work and I’m not sure whether this is a bad idea on my part. I’ve given my coworkers a glossed over version of the story (I mean, who wants the whole thing?) and explained, simply, that my mother suffers from mental illness. I don’t want to freak them out (or lead them to think I am exaggerating) by telling them that I have to pick up calls lest she thinks I’m ignoring her, or dead, or whatever.. And that I have to pick up calls lest my own guilt overwhelm me.
She still hasn’t gotten the bras from my aunt. Apparently she saw my cousin (my aunt’s grown son) last week and he wasn’t able to find the bras before he drove her to the bus stop. I have to assume she doesn’t need them that badly because if she had no bras (as she had led me to believe), she’d probably be desperate to put one on. I know I would be and my chest is not as substantial as hers.
She’s still having memory loss issues from the ECT and called, once, the other day, opening with a very loud, “When was I at Larkin [hospital]?!” to which I replied, “I don’t know?” Apparently she got a letter from them in the mail. The source of her anxiety was that she would not normally choose to go to Larkin and assumed that she must have been hurt or Baker Acted to wind up there. Thing is, I don’t really know what hospital she’s at in general. I know the number for UM Hospital and other than that I just know it’s her calling because she’s calling from some random 305 number. She claims not to remember an entire month of her life, but I think she’s overestimating.
I guess things are just drifting along right now, no big changes to note, but too many five minute long conversations to feel like logging them. There’s no end in sight.
11/10/10-11/15/10
So, lots of questions all week about ‘will they, won’t they,’ put her back into the state hospital or the START program in Pembroke Pines. The START program is similar to a state hospital.. you go to the facility and it’s an inpatient treatment program that lasts several months. Good behavior and progress gets you day passes out of the facility with family or friends. They watch movies (once, I saw the patients watching a bootlegged version of Sherlock Holmes the last time my mom was there, naughty naughty), do arts and crafts, and get therapy. I guess it’s sort of like rehab for mentally ill people.. The focus is on getting stability without the need to detox and get clean. Still some of the same underlying issues, I’d wager. The state hospital is much the same, except with the stigma of “MENTAL INSTITUTION” attached to it, which my mom is not so into. She’s been to both places more than once.
There’s not a whole lot to report. Every time she calls me, she says she’s doing better, isn’t crying as much, won’t hurt herself, and is dealing with the depression… But every time that we speak, she isn’t crying and she doesn’t actually sound that sad. And she calls every few hours, so I guess the crying breaks come in between the phone calls.
I’m not trying to joke about it or anything.. we’re just at a stand still at this point. When every phone call is comprised of literally the same few comments, they start to blend and I stop listening so closely as a defense mechanism to preserve my own sanity. Then I can’t come into this blog and start writing down the dialog because I don’t remember exactly what she said.
Yesterday, she called me eight times.
I was in work and in class all day, and when I got home I went straight to the gym, so we didn’t actually talk until 6pm. Her voicemails weren’t especially upset or anything, so it’s not like she was disturbed that I wasn’t answering. Her voicemails essentially all said, “Hi, angel, it’s mom. I guess you’re really, really busy. I just wanted to say hi.”
And say hi, she did, once we spoke. Then she told me, again, that she’s doing okay and feeling better. She said she was declined for the START program and that her doctor might put her in the state hospital after all. She asked me to tell her “how things are” and what I learn in class and my pathetic offering of, “it’s just a regular lecture class about the law,” was enough to placate her desire to hear what I was thinking.
I hate how defensive I am, how closed off, how emotionally distant. I hate that, when I think about it, I realize that she doesn’t know much about who I am right now. Luckily, most of what she does know hasn’t changed (I still love The Simpsons and singing and playing guitar.. Though, I must say, I am over the jewelry at the pre-teen oriented store, Claire’s, in the mall). I hate when she actually stops her constant chatter for a moment to ask me something about my day and I can’t even get the words out. What’s the point of telling her about my administrative law class, or my internship, when she won’t understand and won’t remember? She’ll just say, “oh, okay,” and have no idea what I’m talking about and, after these ECT treatments, she won’t remember we talked, either. She acts like we haven’t spoken in a while for half the phone calls we have, when she calls me every couple of hours. I can’t stop myself from shutting down.
I do right by her in terms of my behavior, but my mind and heart are shut down. It’s hard for me to even say, “I love you too,” at the end of a conversation. Usually, I say, “love you too,” and even sometimes merely a “you too,” as though a technicality of muttering half or three quarters of the words can make the tension less painful. I do love her, and I know how powerful that feeling is thanks to her suicide attempt when I was in 10th grade that clearly and painfully let me know that I want her to stick around. But I feel like I can’t even begin to let her in, ever, because she’ll never be lucid long enough to participate in a real relationship.
She called an hour later, telling me that her doctor decided not to put her in the state hospital and, instead, was discharging her in the morning. Not sure I believe it and, anyway, where’s the value in being discharged if she’ll be back in the hospital three days later?
I wish I could shut off the part of me that cares so I could stop noticing how futile this shit is.
11/09/10
Yep, she’s back in the hospital already.
She called and said: ”The depression activated last night and I’m in the hospital.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.” She said, sounding ashamed.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“The landlady said, ‘It’s not a medical issue, just go to sleep,’ and I told her, ‘I know it’s not a medical issue,’ she was really hard on me. I don’t think I can stay there.. You’re not supposed to be hard on someone with a psychological problem.”
“That’s true.”
“In a couple of days I’ll be back to normal and I’ll keep doing the things unless the Dr. puts me in the state hospital. I don’t know what his plans are.”
“Yeah.”
“I think if he would’ve done that already, he would’ve done that already.”
“Yeah, probably.” Unless it’s a last resort that we’re getting close to.
“It’s, like, I’m battling the same thing all the time. It’s very, very frustrating.”
“I’m sure it is, but you’ve just got to keep trying.”
“Well, if you give up the fight, then you give up living, and you can’t give up living.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Well, I should hope not.
“I just tell myself that a lot of people have it worse and that I’m gonna be okay because my dad told me to be strong. Whatever started it, what makes me cry and everything, something will fix it. It isn’t the A.L.F., the A.L.F. is really, really nice. It’s clean, the food is decent… I don’t know what I want.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you do at your job?”
“Well… I’m an intern.”
“Where are you living now?”
“In Maryland.”
“Do you like it there?”
“Yeah, it’s all right. It’s getting cold out.”
“It’s getting cold out? Do you have a sweater on?”
“Yeah, but I’m inside right now.”
“Oh. Do you like the internship?”
“Yeah.”
We made small talk for a few more minutes until she said, “Okay, I’m gonna let you go, I’m going to go blow my nose. Want me to call you back?”
I replied, “Call me later tonight.”
“Okay,” She said. “I love you, bye.”
“You too. Bye.”
11/02/10-11/08/10
So, I got her some bras. I wound up in Burlington Coat Factory over the weekend, which immediately sucked me in for three hours with its ridiculously unorganized layout and its low prices. I started rummaging around in the lingerie section thinking about getting myself some cheapy bras (I’ve been losing weight and don’t have a lot of bras that fit right now), when it suddenly occurred to me that the store was pretty well stocked on my mom’s size too. Not to get too in depth here, but she’s sort of big (one of her medications, Zyprexa, makes appetite roar and weight stick) and bras in her size are pretty expensive. But I found a bunch (Izod,no less) for $6.99 a piece and I got her three. Last night we spoke on the phone and I was reminded of the purchase:
“I got you some bras! Should I just send them to Aunt Tina’s?” I was excited. I felt like a good daughter. And she’d been asking for them a whole bunch.
“Sure,” She replied. She sounded mildly confused, but pleased.
“You needed bras, right?” I asked. I know she was asking me to send her bras several times over the last week.
“Yeah, I need bras, I have no bras.” she confirmed.
It seemed like she thought I just happened to know that, like she wasn’t aware that she’d been repeatedly asking me to send her this stuff.
Anyway, she thanked me, I mailed it out today. Actually, I asked for regular mail and the same incompetent lady at the Union Station post office who once told me that DVDs don’t qualify for Media Mail (they do), charged me for Priority, which came out to $7.50 even though it was light as hell. Whatever. I mean, there’s absolutely no reason to send it priority - she’s not going to see my aunt for a few days and that’s where I’ve shipped it. So if it arrives early, that makes no difference. But what could I do at the point where she has already stuck on a “Priority Mail” sticker and asked me to pay twice as much?
I also included three pictures of me (a second set that I developed last time I sent her pictures of me, anticipating that I’d be sending her pictures again after she lost them), and a three cd set of Elvis that I bought at Borders last year for $9.99 (again, I bought it anticipating sending it to her next time she lost her Elvis cds). She is a huge Elvis fan and even got herself to Graceland, somehow, a few years ago. It is absolutely beyond me to guess how she was able to save up the money and get herself there and back safely, as planned. I guess she was doing a lot better than she is now. She held down a steady job at KFC for about a year, working part time. She used to volunteer at the hospital, as well. It’s odd to think of her saving up for a trip right now.
This week has been pretty calm. She sounds better. She sounds good, actually. And last night she admitted that the ECT was very helpful, in terms of her mania. It’s a bit unsettling to notice her short-term memory loss, but if that’s a side effect of getting her to some semblance of stability, then I guess it’s worth it.
She’s out of the hospital and says that she likes the assisted living facility that she’s in. A few days ago she said to me:
“For the first time, I really like it here. The food is good, my roommate is nice. No guys here are trying to get in my pants. It’s really, really good.”
I hope it keeps up. But, even if she thinks it’s the first time, she has said all this to me before. It would not surprise me in the least if she called me up back in the hospital in the next few days. Then again, maybe she won’t.
Guys trying to ‘get in her pants,’ is also a motif that comes up a lot with her (like saving someone’s life). I have to assume that this theme stays closer to the truth because, in the world of the A.L.F., my mom probably is a pretty good catch (and if she’s manic, she’s easy, to boot. Just sayin’). She likes having boyfriends and she likes the attention. I’m not sure that guys are gunning for her so hard wherever she goes that to come to a facility where no one is trying to get in her pants is sweet relief, but if she says that’s the case, then fine.
I’m glad she likes the place. I’m glad her roommate is nice. Hopefully she’s also clean and doesn’t steal.
After the last month or two, having a laid back week was really nice. Imagine if she could actually get it together enough to see me outside of the hospital when I come down in December… I really hope so.
11/01/10
We didn’t speak yesterday, but I missed a call from UM Hospital at 5:23pm, so I assume she wasn’t discharged yet.
In the voicemail she left me she said, all in one breath:
“Hey, angel, it’s mom. I’m just calling to say hi. I just wanted to talk to you. I miss you. I love you. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”
Good to know that my number is stuck back where it belongs in her brain.
10/23/10-10/31/10
Last week was a whole lot of nothing noteworthy.
The Tracy incident left me feeling deflated and tired of talking about my mom.
She called a lot between 10/23 and 10/25, but I don’t remember much of what was said apart from her continuing to ask me to send flowers, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, bras, clothing, and books. I don’t know what to think when she does this. Is she taking advantage of me? Does she actually need any of this stuff? Am I a jerk if I don’t want to spend $50 on flowers, or $30 on bras that she’ll lose a month from now? Since moving away, I’ve had a habit of spoiling her when I come into town. I’ll stock her up nicely on toiletries and buy her a couple of bras or a pair of jeans or a purse. I’ll take her to get her eyebrows waxed and color her hair if we have time. It feels like the right thing to do, to make our time together feel special and to take care of her needs when I can.
In the last year I’ve also gotten into the habit of occasionally sending care packages. I like to send her shampoo, soaps, conditioner, deodorant… and maybe a book of inspirational quotes, or some sugar-free Reeses. Care packages always made me feel really good when I got them as a freshman in college (they sort of stopped coming after that), and she was so sad that I had moved away that I wanted to cheer her up and make her feel special, even though it actually takes me less time to fly home from law school than it did to drive home from undergrad.
So, our conversations weren’t particularly interesting or heartening, but in the name of taking care of someone who I have the ability to help, I shipped 3 bottles each of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash to my aunt’s house with the instruction to give them to my mother one at a time (she tends to leave her toiletries at her assisted living facility when she goes back into the hospital and, once she is gone, others take the toiletries).
At her requests for flowers, I politely declined. She told me that she is not allowed to get flowers in a vase while in the psych ward and, 100% honestly, the cheapest flowers in a basket were $40, plus shipping. I promised to buy her some when I see her in person. She never stops asking for, and wanting, flowers. While I can always do my part by shipping some toiletries and other essentials down, if I succumbed to her every flowery whim, I’d run out of money.
Once, this week, she called and said:
“Honey, I’m in the hospital,” as though it were news.
“I know,” I said.
“Oh. How long have I been in here?”
I told her, “I’m not sure, a week or two?”
“Oh, okay.”
I guess the ECT did have some effect on her memory.
Then, she didn’t call for a few days. I checked with my aunt and neither of us had spoken to her in three or four days. I started feeling guilty about not giving her a call, but that emotion usually popped up at times where I couldn’t call (underground on the metro, at the grocery store, in class, etc) and I’d forget during my freer moments.
Yesterday, she finally called again.
“Hello?”
“I found you!” She said by way of greeting.
“Hi,” I replied.
“I couldn’t remember your phone number. But then I started playing around with numbers and I got you!”
She sounded so happy. My number has been the same since I was in the 9th grade. I felt like a shit for not realizing that the ECT could lead her to forget the one phone number she never forgets, and that she might not be calling because she’d forgotten my number.
“Weren’t you worried about me?”
Generally, yes.
“I don’t know, a little?”
“A little? We haven’t spoken in, what, a month?! I thought I lost you forever!”
“No,” I corrected, “It’s only been about three days.”
“Oh, three days, that’s it? Okay.” She just accepted this huge disparity in our perception with no argument. I reflected on how a normal person would probably need more convincing if they honestly believed they hadn’t spoken to someone in a month and that someone insisted they had spoken just days before. Then I wondered if she was giving me an underhanded guilt trip and knew darn well that we’d spoken more recently. I don’t think so.
“I should be leaving the hospital tomorrow!” She continued, sounding happy.
“Why don’t you write my number down?” I asked. I would have absolutely no idea how to get in touch with her if she left the hospital and forgot my number.
“Okay.” She put me on hold for five minutes, presumably to get a pen and paper. She took down my number as well as my aunt’s and my grandpa’s. I’ve given her all these numbers probably ten or more times in the last month.
When she got back she started going off about how I’m a “good daughter,” and I felt this weird combination of pride and guilt. I could be better, I know. I could call her more. I could send her the damn flowers. But if she thinks of me as a good daughter to her, that makes me feel like what I do is, at least, adequate.
I wondered if they had continued giving her ECT treatments. I didn’t ask. I felt sad that she obviously had no idea it was Halloween, not that I was really doing much to celebrate it myself. She spoke for a few more minutes and told me she would let me go.
She called back an hour later and asked me to tell my aunt to call her.
I really hope she doesn’t forget my number again.
10/22/10 - Reemergence.
Phone calls with mom were standard. She sounded calmer after ECT and just kept asking me to buy her things (bras, clothes, toiletries, books, etc).
BUT, something else happened:
When I was about 9 years old until I was 13 or so, my mom moved to Kentucky to live with her friend Tracy. Tracy and my mom had been friends since high school and my mom lived with her several times. I didn’t have much of a relationship with Tracy. This was kind of a hard period in my life because it was when my dad was first getting sober, so I don’t really remember the details of her moving away.
She moved back, eventually, and has since maintained that Tracy opened a line of credit under her name, stole a bunch of her money, ruined her credit, and then kicked her out.
I always take my mom’s stories with a grain of salt, but this story she has maintained for the last 10 years.
Last night, Tracy managed to get in touch with me by sending me a message on Facebook. She wanted to get in touch with my mom. I asked her to switch to email correspondence, and this is what happened:
10/21/10-10/22/10
At 1:15pm on October 21st, she called and I answered:
“Hello?”
“Can you call Dr. 20years for me and tell him I want to be transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital?”
As usual, I deflected instead of telling her I would do something without knowing the details. “Why do you want to be transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital?”
“Because I don’t feel comfortable here anymore. Jackson Memorial has counseling for rape victims and I was almost raped here. I don’t want to be at University of Miami Hospital anymore. I want to fire Dr. 20years.” She sounded like she was about to cry.
Mom has sort of a fixation on rape, attacks, and other unwanted sexual advances. She’s also pretty promiscuous when she’s manic. Through the years she has insisted that she was raped and I used to unquestioningly believe that she was. Based on her fixation, I still think it’s entirely possible that it happened to her at some point in her life. But I don’t think that she’s been attacked every time she says she has.
“Well, I can call him to talk to him, but I don’t feel comfortable giving him an order,” I replied. “You should tell him how you feel.”
“Okay,” she said, calming down.
“Just tell him in a rational, calm conversation. Don’t get all worked up because then he’ll think he needs to treat you and that you’re not okay. If you calmly tell him how you feel, he’ll listen.” I wasn’t entirely sure calm is really an option for her, but I figured may as well give the best advice I can.
“Okay, I’ll do that,” she said.
“What happened, with the ECT?”
“Oh,” she said, sounding as though she’d forgotten all about it when I had thought it was scheduled for that morning. “They’re doing it on Monday.”
“Monday?” I repeated.
“Or Friday.”
“Okay.” I said, beginning to doubt her ECT story a little bit based on the fuzzy details. We said our goodbyes and hung up.
This morning, I woke up to a few voicemails from her. I deleted them after listening because they bothered me. I didn’t want to listen again.
Each of the four voicemails were her asking me to somehow use my resources to get down there and stop the ECT which, according to these calls, was now scheduled for 8am on Friday (aka 3 hours ago as I write this).
The first voicemail begged me to ask my grandma to fly me down there, saying she’d signed the papers but didn’t want to do it anymore. She was crying.
The second voicemail asked if my dad’s brother and sister lived in South Florida and, if so, to get them to the hospital to stop it.
The third voicemail again implored me to ask my grandma to fly me down.
The fourth voicemail asked me to call her sister and brother and get them to come down to the hospital before 8am (this choice actually makes the most sense).
It made me feel sad, guilty, and almost defensive that she was so upset, but she is the only one who has the power to revoke consent. I also doubt that my grandma could or would fly me down to Miami between the 10:40pm phone call and the 8am appointment.
I listened to the voicemails after 8am, so there was nothing I can do, even if any of those suggestions had been reasonable.
Thing is, I’m sure her doc could talk her right back into the procedure and make her forget her worries. She doesn’t sleep because she’s so manic and she just stays up stressing herself out. I hate waking up to voicemails hearing her like that, but there’s nothing I can do.
This morning she did have her first round of ECT and she called me at 11:45am to talk about it.
“I didn’t like it,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked. She sounded more subdued.
“I felt nauseous and I had a headache and I was hungry. But I ate and now I feel better.”
“Maybe you were just hungry. Do you feel calmer?”
“Oh, yeah, much calmer.”
“That’s good. You were probably just nauseous because you were hungry. Are you glad you did it?”
“Yeah, I am.” Fickle, fickle.
That covered the ECT topic and then she asked me to send her money to buy some new bras and to send her a get well card.
She told me it was time for her lunch and hung up.
Evening, 10/20/10
After speaking with my mom and hearing that she had decided to go through with the ECT, I felt angry, confused, and upset because - knowing her fickleness - I wasn’t sure whether it was morally appropriate, or legally correct, for her doctor to talk her into the procedure.
If I know she’s fickle, I’m sure he does too. It doesn’t take much prodding or effort to get her to agree to something. And she doesn’t peg you as manipulating her, either. She doesn’t resentfully go, “Okay, fine” the way that I might when someone is trying to convince me to do something I’m not okay with. You can literally convince her it’s a good idea and she will be 100% on board. Then, if you wanted to play a cruel game, you could talk her out of it just as quickly and watch her become 100% committed to her original stance all over again. I found myself wishing that she had a guardian or some other representative working on behalf of her interests, since she cannot represent them herself.
I called my dad, wanting to get his opinion, and it felt like I was sharing this with him so much later than I could have. I hadn’t had a real conversation with him in more than a week.
He could tell I was upset (I suppose it wasn’t too difficult to tell), and said something like:
“Coming at the doctor in an adversarial way is probably not a good idea. We should assume that he has your mom’s best interests at heart… If he wants to do this, there’s probably a good reason.”
“But,” I protested, “I don’t think she wants to do this.. And there are long-term risks associated with it… And it’s not right if she hasn’t consented.”
“She doesn’t want to?”
“No, she called me this morning crying… But then she called me again half an hour ago and just said she was doing it. I don’t understand.”
“So she digested it, worked through it, and decided to do it.” He countered. “She called you and was working through it.. She took a few hours and decided she wants to try it. Then she put it on the back burner.”
“But what if her doctor just talked her into it? It’s so easy to talk her into anything.”
“It’s not that big a deal.” He said. “It’s not like the movies. I know a few people around the rooms” (he’s in A.A.) “who have had it done, and they’re fine. More people get this than you think. It may be just what the doctor ordered for your mom, literally.”
I started arguing again, but he continued, “I’d be more concerned if they started messing with her medication and put her on something totally new.”
Not only is my dad a mental health professional (he teaches psychology at a college down in Miami and also counsels), but he’s someone who’s unfailingly honest. His devotion to his 12 step program has made his honesty beyond trustworthy - it’s sometimes unbearable. I know that what he’s saying is the truth as he sees it. I also know that he may know more about ECT and treatment of mental illness than I do.
I started crying a little bit as I walked to the metro, talking on the phone with him. All the emotion about my mom had all built up in me for a long time and I found myself no longer talking about the ECT situation but, instead, straight out venting at my dad.
“I’m just so tired of this. I can’t even have a normal conversation with her anymore. I feel like no one is there to represent her and she’s not capable of acting for her own interests.”
I don’t cry about this often. I’m not sure when the last time this situation has provoked a tear. My mom attempted suicide when I was 15 and I know that did it, but I can’t think of a time since then. It’s not like things have been so much worse now than ever before. It’s cyclical. She’ll do poorly for months at a time and then get better. I think, to some extent, this blog has tapped into feelings that I usually ignore. I also think that this blog has immersed me in these conversations that I normally push away as soon as they’re done. I suppose it’s natural that I’m feeling more emotional.
My dad started talking the way he does when he’s trying to make me feel better. He told me how I’m a good person who is open-hearted, who doesn’t see mental illness or physical handicap, but just sees people. He told me he’s proud of me. It was sweet of him to say, though not especially relevant, and it made me feel sadder for some reason.
We hung up and I headed home, feeling sullen.
Luckily, when I got home, I had to cook dinner, go grocery shopping, and then bake a chocolate cake from scratch for my roommate’s birthday. I started feeling better without even thinking about it. I guess his assurance that ECT is not all it’s made out to be in the movies did make me feel better. I just needed time to digest the idea that it was not that big a deal, sort of like my mom did when deciding to do ECT.
Maybe. Unless the doctor just talked her into it because she’s as malleable as Play Doh. But what can I do? She said it was scheduled for the next morning which is, as I write this, right now.
The best I can hope for is that it helps, I guess.
Morning, 10/20/10
Today at 9:03am she called and sounded pretty upset.
“I need you to tell your dad to call me. I need his help.”
I was immediately concerned with how to divert that plan into me helping her instead because I know that, with relatively good reason, my dad does not want to talk to her. Like I said before, they went on two dates and never had a relationship. He considers her a sick but well-intentioned woman who happened to give him a great gift (that’d be me), whereas she considers him to be the great, and continuing, love of her life. When I was in high school, he blocked her number from our house (so weird to think she had one number all the time back then, now she’s always calling me from different places). She called my cell phone, once I had once, and that was that. I’ve seen them in a room together once that I can remember in the last 10 years (my high school graduation). While he’s exceptionally qualified to talk to her (her influence in our lives led him to go back to school and get a masters in psychology), he prefers not to, because her delusion so dominates how she approaches him.
So, no.
Instead, I asked, “Why, what’s wrong?”
“The doctor says he’s going to give me ECT,” she said, and sounded like she was crying, “And I don’t want him to.”
“ECT?” I asked, because I couldn’t hear her.
“Electroshock therapy.” (Now known as electroconvulsive, or, ECT.)
“When?”
“He scheduled it for tomorrow.”
“Don’t you have to consent?” I asked.
“No, the doctor can consent for me,” she said. I started to wonder whether I should go do some legal research about this.
“And you don’t want to do it.” I repeated, more for my own benefit.
“I don’t really want to do it.” She said again. “He said it’s either ECT or the state hospital. I’m not hearing voices or anything, I don’t know why he’s doing this.”
She’s been to the state hospital before, and it’s helped in the past.
“If those are your only two options, then maybe you should go to the state hospital if you’re not comfortable with ECT.”
The idea of her back in the state hospital is comforting and I felt sad remembering how well she did when she was there, because she’s doing so terribly now. They get her stable, safe, and lucid. She hates not being able to wander and take buses across half of Miami-Dade county. She feels like a kid, or a prisoner, when she’s there. But she does so much better during and, usually, for a while after. (To clarify, it’s not as though she never leaves. They do lots of field trips and, if she’s getting healthy, they’ll issue day passes so that my aunt, or a friend, can come pick her up and hang out with her. I’m sure it feels crappy that someone has to check her in and out for that, but on her own she’s wound up everywhere from wandering around Miami at 3am convinced someone is following her to sleazy pay-by-the-hour motels with a random man she met on the street. I think it’s a good idea for her to be monitored to some degree.)
“You think I should tell him I’ll go to the state hospital?”
“If those are your only options, then yes.” I said.
I don’t actually know what the deal is with her doctor consenting for her, and I will speak with him if I have to. I am not sure she’s at the level where she should have someone making decisions for her. Then again, she’s been doing awfully for several months. I don’t really know how consent with the mentally ill works.
I also don’t know the risks for her, individually, getting ECT. I don’t know if it has any chance of really helping. My dad’s ex-fiancee, who is a mental health professional, once told me that it might help. It sounds scary and makes me think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My gut is against it, especially hearing her get so upset, but I also don’t know all the facts.
“Okay,” she said, and she sounded less upset. “I’ll tell him.”
I know she hates the state hospital, but it’s really so good for her. She doesn’t understand how often she puts her safety in jeopardy when she’s unstable. And I miss her being stable. I miss feeling like a story I tell her will stick and she’ll listen, or like I can ask her for the events of her day without questioning everything she says.
“Call me back and let me know what happens.” I told her.
“Okay. Bye.” She said, and hung up without even an ‘I love you.’
——
Edit to add:
Wikipedia says, ”Involuntary treatment is uncommon in the United States and is typically only used in cases of great extremity, and only when all other treatment options have been exhausted and the use of ECT is believed to be a potentially life saving treatment.”
Is it possible her doctor is just using this as a bargaining chip to get her back into the state hospital?
Is it possible that she made it up?
Is it possible that her doctor could proceed without her informed consent even though it’s not to the level of “great extremity”?
I hate not knowing what’s actually happening.
Further research has shown me that, in Florida, a doctor cannot administer electroconvulsive therapy without the informed consent of the patient or, if the patient is deemed incompetent to consent, then the patient’s guardian. As far as I know, my mom does not have a guardian appointed. Currently looking up the factors in determining competence of a mentally ill patient.
Still, I hate this feeling that I’m not even sure if the story is true. But if it is, I want to be prepared to read the statute to her doctor over the phone and tell him to think again if he wants to proceed with a procedure that my mother is opposed to.
At 4:55pm I talked to her again and now she says she’s proceeding. I tried to get her to tell me whether she gave informed consent. I’m not sure whether she did. My boyfriend points out to me that I can’t even be sure this is true. I asked her to give me the name/number of the doctor recommending it, but she didn’t know it offhand. She said she’d call me back with that info. I also asked her to tell her doctor to call me, but I am not sure if she’ll do that. This is messing with me. But apparently it’s not her Doctor of 20 years, so I don’t even know where to begin on looking for this person myself.
