Home Again, Exhaustedly.

So, I drove over to my mother's (2 hours) went to her house, picked up the mail and a couple of odds and ends she needed, and went back to the hospital. Sat around there for a couple of hours. Saw her doctor. The results of the tests are in, we have a winner. The cause of this drama is...an ulcer.

I shouldn't laugh but I am laughing bitterly. Cousin C and I have been shaking our heads over how she was making herself sick getting all worked up over every damn thing, (junk mail, a wrong number, the supermarket being out of her favorite size package of something, any of it can trigger a really ugly, crazy meltdown) and telling her she had to calm down or she'd have a stroke or a heart attack, or at the least, an ulcer. She got the least.

Please don't bother telling me she would benefit from anti-anxiety meds. Of course she would. She is not compliant about medical orders, she reads those damn information sheets on every drug she gets and then refuses to take it. She fights with her doctor about blood pressure meds, he has written a script for Xanax but we both know she won't take it. Her doctor has treated her for years and totally has her number, he is a nice guy, but this isn't HIS mother, so he makes his recommendations and then runs like hell.

So her doctor wants her in assisted living directly after discharge, and she is fighting this tooth and nail, and I nearly had a freaking heart attack "discussing" this with her. The poor lady in the next bed - I felt for her. I'm swearing at my mother like a sailor, and then I walked past the other lady and she had a bible on her bedside table. Whoops, sorry.

My mother is hellbent on going home. She is convinced she can manage on her own. And so I got up and left, and came home to my house, my bed, my dog. The drive calmed me down a lot. Maybe she can manage for a little while longer. Or she will prove to herself that she can't manage. Either way, I am not going to worry about this. Tomorrow I will go put her on the wait list for an apartment at the place near me, and if she is determined to go home in the interim, fine, she can. I will not run back and forth, I can't run back and forth. I've put 500 miles on my car in the last 48 hours, and that would be great if I did it for a vacation, far, far away from here, but instead I'm burning all this gas Truckin' Over To Bumfuck.

She's supposed to be discharged in 48 hours. She's determined to go home. So I am going to let her. I can't fight this without losing my own mind. It's so bad, so crazy, so impossible a situation, one I saw coming for years and tried to prevent, and now all I can do is what I can do, and cross my fingers. Tomorrow I will go put her name on the wait list for the ALF near me, the one I wanted to sign her up for months ago. I told her it's no longer optional, it's a nice place, I'd live there myself, it's close to me so I can deal with shit like this without losing my job or ending up in the hospital myself. The wait isn't hideous, maybe 2-3 months, but it means that for that 2-3 months I will be Trucking Over To Bumfuck every weekend, cleaning out that house and getting this shit done. My own house isn't on the market yet, it'll have to wait until this Mama Drama is settled, but it's basically ready and the market is dead, so no great tragedy there.

Oh, and I'm waiting to see a job offer. Email this morning from the only employer that would keep me in FL (for now, at least) - an actual job offer is forthcoming. They meet my requirements: big international company, on everybody's list of "best employers in America," a good job, interesting work, etc. So, unless the offer is a joke, and I don't think it will be, I should be employed again very soon. I can't afford to pass it up, and I certainly will not pass it up for this insane Mama Drama. I would love to be unreservedly happy about this, but tonight it just feels like another straw on this camel's back. Which is hurting. I'm so stiff and sore after all these hours in the car plus the tension in my neck and shoulders, I am almost frozen.

I am going to unroll the yoga mat and stretch through Grey's Anatomy, and then fall into my own bed. Yay.