I need to be twins

I should have divided when I was newly in my mother's womb. I should have split into two identical twins. My parents are both very old and very sick. This week, they've both been in the hospital, Dad in Reidsville and Mom in Greensboro. I need to be a twin to be in two towns at once. My dad destroyed our family for another woman 41 years ago. He couldn't even be bothered to come to my high school graduation, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. In any contest for my help or my loyalty, Mom wins. She was always there for me. But now that they have both been in the hospital, this only child has needed to be twins just to keep up with the things that must be done for each of them.

In June, my father fell and hurt himself badly at the assisted living center in Reidsville where he has lived for several years. He was as sick and weak as if he had been beaten by a gang of hooligans. He was incontinent and out of his head. He spent four days in the hospital and was then transferred to a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center. The plan was that he would have daily physical therapy, occupational therapy, and grow strong enough to return to his assisted living center.

But his mind never snapped back into place. He had mild dementia before the fall, but was much worse after the fall. The doctors say they checked him out neurologically and that nothing had happened before or during the fall. He stayed six weeks in rehab, and then last Thursday, August 11, I took him, walking with his new walker, and his things back to assisted living. He immediately sat down in his rocker-recliner. But he did not rock. That is not normal for a Walker. People in my family all rock. But Dad sat still and watched me put his underwear and socks in the chest of drawers and hang his pants and shirts in his closet, put his toiletries in the bathroom. As I worked, many residents came into his room to welcome him back and to tell him how much they had missed him. He looked at these people as if he had never seen them before in his life.

Then he asked me, "Can we go now?"

"Go where?" I questioned.

"Home," he answered.

"We are home," I explained. "This is where you have lived for five years. You love it here. This IS your home. Isn't it wonderful to be back?"

And then he stood up to leave. He went with his walker to the nearest exit and stopped and just stood there. He waited a long time. Finally, he shouted my name.

"Vicki!" he said angrily. "Come open this door."

I had to tell him I could not do that for him, that he could not leave, that he had to stay. By now it was clear to me that he was not going to make it in assisted living. He reached out with one hand and opened the door himself and started to go through it, out into the hot August air. He was going to leave that place on his own.  I called for help. I took him by the arm to stop him, and then I thought he was going to hit me or knock me down - to shake me off of him so that he could continue to leave. He was very angry.

Again I asked him where he wanted to go. "Home," he said. "To the place in the country." We haven't had a place in the country since 1968, back when my parents were still married.

"I'm confused," he said. "And I want to leave this place."

The top two people were still out to lunch, in more ways than one, but the woman in charge came running to help. She got Dad back inside his room and told me they could handle him and for me to leave because my presence seemed to agitate him even more. He asked me, "What are you doing to me?" It was the worst I've ever felt in my entire life. I told Gayle, the acting director, that I needed a nerve pill and to get out of there.

I was so upset that I had trouble backing out of my parking space and drove up on the ALC's lawn. To an observer, I must have looked quite strange. Finally, I was out and headed south for Greensboro. But I couldn't just go home, get that nerve pill, and sit down and cry. I couldn't because my mom was in the hospital here in Greensboro and I had had to leave her all alone in order to move Dad in the first place. I had no siblings to help me. I needed to be twins.

Everyone thinks that Dad thought I was taking him home with me, and the home he associates with me is my house in the country in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Boone, NC, a house I decided to sell when I became disabled and my income went down. It was a large, beautiful place, and Dad loved it. He came to visit often, sometimes bringing Gabby, his German Shepherd. I have to say that if I had left Avante thinking I was going back to that home in Boone, but ended up being taken to Highgrove ALC, I'd have been angry, too.

Last Saturday I had picked Mom up in Reidsville and brought her to my house. We had gone out for what we jokingly called her "last meal" because the next day, she would be on a clear liquid diet, culminating in that awful stuff you drink in preparation for a colonoscopy, which Mom has scheduled for first thing Monday morning. Mom's doctor had found that for the first time in decades her blood work did not look good. She was extremely anemic and iron deficient, so much so that the doctor was convinced that she was losing blood somewhere internally. He prescribed a colonoscopy. Mom chose to have it done by a member of one of the best practices in this part of the country, here in Greensboro. Dr. Gessner told her that if he didn't find an answer to the question of the cause of her blood loss during that procedure, he wanted to do an endoscopy while she was still asleep to check out her stomach. And he noticed a horrible red, splotch, swollen patch on her left calf that her own family doctor had inititially declined to even look at. She left with instructions, a copy of which were sent to her primary care doctor, to follow up with him on the leg infection, but when she tried to, he was out of town.

Mom came through both procedures just fine. She had many polyps in her colon and her stomach. I didn't even know you could get polyps in the stomach. All were removed and turned out to be benign. But several of the stomach polyps had been very large and bloody, and Dr. Gessner believes he has found the source of her blood loss.

After the procedure, Dr. Gessner noted that the leg infection looked even worse than it had at the office visit the week before. He stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. He diagnosed cellulitis and admitted her on the spot. This is still Monday. I spent as much time as I could at the hospital with her the rest of the week until Thursday, when I had to leave her to go move Dad back to assisted living.

On Friday morning, I received a call from Dad's ALC, letting me know that he had calmed down, had eaten dinner and breakfast, and slept peacefully. You know they say if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. That's the thought I had when they claimed Dad was doing so well. I didn't buy it.

Friday was the day that Mom might be released. She had two doctors, an infectious disease specialist treating her for a treatment-resistant staph infection, and her Gastroenterologist. Doctor #1 wanted to keep her in the hospital on an antibiotic drip until Saturday, but doctor #2 favored Friday. Doctor #2 was the admitting physician, so he would have the final say on discharge, and he was leaning toward Friday. I went to the hospital Friday morning to fulfill an appointment I had made with mom's social worker who was trying to get her some financial help with the medicine they were going to prescribe for her after her release. The medicine was over $100.00 per pill, and she would need two daily for seven days to make $1400.00 plus. Addison was a very caring, very sweet woman, but she could not help Mom because Mom had Part D Medicare prescription insurance. It's the plan endorsed by AARP with United Health Care. We would see later that day that her plan, the plan that disqualified her for assistance, would not pay one penny toward the cost of this medication, yet it stopped her from getting help. Mom had to pay it all out of pocket.

Mom's admitting doctor and his PA came by and told us they'd be sending her home as soon as the paperwork was finished. She is to see the infectious disease specialist in his office on August 22 and do labwork that day. She will see the GI specialist on August 26, and she is to stay with me and be taken care of as long as I can persuade her to stay.

As I finished up my meeting the doctor and the PA, who thought United was going to pay 2/3 of the cost, my cell phone began singing "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," by U2, my anthem and ring tone. It was Dad's ALC informing me that he had gone wandering into another patient's room without his walker and had fallen, and they had sent him back to the hospital ER. I had to tell them that they would have to handle it, that I was in my mom's hospital room and that she was in the process of being discharged. There was no way I could get to the hospital in Reidsville. He'd have to go it alone. I called my cousin Van, spoke with his wife, and told her the situation. Van went to the ER and was very upset to see the van from the ALC coming to pick Dad up to take him back there. "He can't do assisted living," said Van. I told him I had already realized that and was already trying to get him back into Avante, the nursing and rehab center but that the only bed available to him for that night was at the assisted living center. You think I'm going to bring him into my home when my mom is already here and subject her to his presence after all he did to her?  This time when Dad goes to Avante he wouldn't be going in for rehab to go back to assisted living. This time it would be permanent. His bed was taken as soon as he checked out. There was no opening, but Debbie, the director of admissions, told me she had to work part of Saturday and that she would call me around 10:00 am.

By the time we got Mom out of the hospital and picked up the $1400 antibiotics, it was going on 6 pm Friday evening. We came in, had a small snack, and both of us collapsed and rested. I needed to go see about Dad but I couldn't leave Mom alone. She has some dementia too, and wasn't totally back to her old smart self, plus the infection on her leg makes it hard to walk safely and here her bedroom is upstairs. She needs watching and to be waited on. I need to be twins. An only child can't handle this. There needs to be another me.

Sure enough, right at 10 o'clock Saturday morning, Debbie called me and told me she had a bed for Dad and did I want it? DID I WANT IT? Of course I grabbed it. She said I did not need to leave my mother, that the ALC would pack up Dad's clothes and transport him back to Avante. I wouldn't have to be there. God bless the staffs at Highgrove and Avante for the work they did on Saturday morning for my father. By 11:30 he was settled back in a new room at Avante.

In mid-afternoon, I received a call from Avante saying that they had found Dad in the floor near his bed. He had tried to walk without his walker again and had gone down beside his bed. I couldn't go to Reidsville to check on him because I was helping Mom with her leg and with walking. I need to be twins. I was so glad that Avante hadn't over-reacted and sent him to the ER again. They checked him over, put alcohol and a bandaid on a scratch, and gave him a good talking to. "What are we going to do with him?" I had asked when the woman told me he had fallen again. This type of incident is extremely rare for Avante. They have alarms on the bed and on the wheelchairs that go off if the person gets up and the weight is gone. I don't expect any more trouble with falling at Avante. And they are staffed well enough that someone is always able to come when you need them. They do a great job. It's just a depressing place by its very nature, but they do it as well as it could be done.

Now, I have to go to Reidsville ASAP for a couple of reasons. One is that I have to sign the re-admission form for Dad at Avante. The second is I have to move all of Dad's personal belongings from his room at the Assisted Living Center. There's his rocker-recliner, an end table, a lamp, pictures on the wall, and antique school chair, a reproduction antique radio I got Dad when I lived in Kentucky,  teddy bear. He had a large L-shaped room with an area for sleeping and a sitting area with his chair and other chairs for guests. At Avante he would have to share a room the size of a hospital room and there is no room for any of the personal effects I just mentioned. And I can't carry them on my back. And I have no place to carry them. I need to be twins and one of us needs a basement. And we need a brother with a truck.

Mother and I just rested and read and napped on Saturday, knowing that Dad was being taken care of, and I tried not to think about the maddening confusion he must be experiencing from all this moving around.

So this only child will have to make arrangements for Mother on Monday, August 15. I will have to go to Reidsville and carry out duties for the other parent. And I have to be back in Greensboro by 3 pm for an appointment with my therapist, one I assure you I cannot afford to miss.

Dad smartly bought long term care insurance many years ago, so we can afford to have him in these centers. Mom did not. She didn't realize that everyone she knew was buying it. No agent tried to sell it to her. She just didn't understand. So it falls to me or to whatever she can pay for out of pocket to provide long term care for her. So when there's a choice between which one I'll be with, she wins, all things being equal.

I feel like my life ended this week. I see the rest of my 60's taken up, long days cleaning up Dad's messes, providing care for Mom. I think they will outlive me. Even if they don't, in 8 years, I will be 70 years old. I will start being sick at some point, and not only do I not have twins, I was never able to have children of my own. My family is crazy. I wanted the craziness to stop with me. I tell people I loved my children enough not to have them, although I wanted desperately to be a mother and babies and small children still make me want to cry. There will be no one to take care of me.

Well, it's Sunday afternoon. Mom is napping in the living room. I've been looking at real estate on the internet for a house big enough for the two of us to live together. We both have small houses, ok to have guests, but Mom wouldn't be able to bring a thing with her if she came here. I wish I had a twin. I wish she lived in Florida. I wish Mom could spend the winters with her and the summers with me. Ah, but I may as well be wishing for the moon. Mom had a miscarriage in 1961. I would have had a younger brother. Dad never acknowledged the reality of the pregnancy, never grieved the son he lost.

Life's just hard sometimes, you know?