Babysitting Blues

This was us…. my siblings and I at the beginning of 2025…

Fresh start, new year! We were discussing renting a house together during the summer. We had convinced our mom to consider retiring since she started to receive social security.

My adult kids are always out or doing their own thing in their room. Around March, I was starting to feel stir-crazy and erroneously said out loud that “I’m kind of bored”. Ideas of going back to school or looking for a new job crossed my mind. I decided that I need a new challenge…..

For the love of God, do not say that you are bored out loud (do not even think it!) Also, do not mention you need a challenge. The Universe is always listening….

Soon after having that thought, my daughter’s senior year stuff exploded. We were spending money like crazy. Five days before graduation, my son informs me he needs help being moved out of his dorm that weekend.

Then, I injured myself and couldn’t walk.

My sister found out she needs a hip replacement.

In June, my baby sister had a different type of medical scare…

Meanwhile, our brother has a perpetual flow of weekly disasters that we assist in solving.

In July, my mom went from working full time and taking the train daily downtown …to a forced retirement at age 70. Her retirement was due to some medical issues and vision impairment from macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Somehow we got through the medical issues. We revamped her diet, got her on a meal, hydration & medication schedule etc. Unfortunately, we were very clueless on how to handle the sudden vision loss. This was a HUGE adjustment for her and for us.

She lost her independence overnight. All of her favorite things involve seeing.

We felt terrible for mom, but also frustrated because both eye conditions are exacerbated by untreated hypertension and diabetes. Mom took her medication on her terms, not the doctors. She watched her sugar intake but not carbohydrates. She put her job first. She couldn’t remember the last time she had an eye exam. Then states “it was before Covid.”

Therefore, both conditions were not managed. She developed something called metabolic encephalopathy. It caused her to talk incessantly, even in the bathroom alone. There was no filter.

My mom knows her way around her apartment well and claimed she could see certain things. It appeared to us that she could, but then she would do strange things; like pick up a diaper off the ground and ask “is this a hat?”

Some days she would get ready herself and look adorable, other days she would sleep all day and looked homeless when we arrived. Sometimes she would decide to go shopping alone without telling anyone. During one of her solo shopping excursions at CVS, she purchased a foundation that was 17 shades darker than her skin tone because it was on sale.

Mom decided to try this new foundation out at her great-granddaughters christening. She got a ride there from her grandson. When she walked into church, my sisters and I nearly knocked people over trying to get to her because we thought she fell and bruised her face…ummm no, it was just an excessive amount of burnt orange foundation.

Thankfully, people with babies have baby wipes so we scrubbed mom’s face, hands and neck clean in the tiny, church bathroom.

Crisis averted.

A few weeks later, Mom accompanied the grandkids to the pumpkin patch. Things were going along smoothly until my mom witnessed an dark-skinned toddler on a leash and innocently states “I didn’t know you could bring dogs here?”

The parent of the child on a leash overheard and went ballistic on my mom and then my baby sister. Thankfully, mom cannot hear so well either so she didn’t know what was going on.

At this point, we worked really hard at finding a caregiver during the day for my mom.

One evening in late October, my sister arrived at my mom’s and mom answered the door without a top on & wearing two different slippers. This is abnormal behavior for mom so she took her to the hospital.

Mom was sleeping but her enzyme levels were going up, indicating she was having a heart attack. They also discovered from her MRI that she had a stroke, called an embolic shower.

This caused a hilarious case of hospital delirium. She did not believe she was in the hospital. She would become furious when hospital staff reminded her she was in the hospital.

Mom would state, “I swear, if one more person tells me I’m in the hospital, I’m gonna knock them out. I’ll kill em!” 🤣 (she’s a 110lb tiny lady)

The places she believed she was in varied like a funeral home, her boyfriend’s basement that was decorated scary for Halloween, and camping.

We felt guilty for laughing, but what else can you do at this point? Cry and feel hopeless!?

So we decided to have fun with these hallucinations and roll with it. My brother asked her who she was going camping with?

Mom replied, “Oh ya know, the usual crew.”

Mom states: “I have never gone camping so I should go but I don’t want to.”

Mom then thought there was a little girl in her room dressed up in a Doritos costume and offered her some juice.

While she believed she was at the funeral home, she called me at 5am stating “I am really underdressed for this wake, can you pick me up. I am in New Lenox.”

Instead of reorienting her, I replied “so who died mom?”

Mom replies: “I don’t know, but I am trying to figure it out, I’m watching the slideshow now.”

She had to have a EEG and MRI. Whatever meds they gave mom, I want some. 🤣 She thought she was at a destination wedding in the Maui and was telling us how beautiful it was.

Mom gradually shifted from the delirium to mania. This was exacerbated by caffeinated coffee. She would talk non-stop, so it would take her two hours to finish a meal.

Her 80 year-old boyfriend came to visit her and he was met with mood fluctuations of euphoria and anger. She began yelling at him for watching the Jayne Mansfield documentary without her, then threw her blanket over her head and hid under there for a hour.

After ten days, she was discharged to a rehab center.

This is when we discovered mom was now incontinent of her bowels.

While she was in her gown, she got up from bed and “boop” low and behold some poop just fell out of her tiny butt.

She would say “I didn’t even know I had to go!”

This clearly was not her fault and it was due to the stroke and lack of exercise since July.

I arrived the first morning to bring her clothes and my mom was whispering “this place is horrible and my roommate is a man! He’s huge with this deep voice.” He would not shut up last night.”

Then I meet her roommate who is of course, a female, dressed in many layers because goes out to smoke frequently. She informs us that mom is her 27th roommate and she’s seen it all.

I don’t know lady, you haven’t met my mom yet. She is little but she is fierce. Especially if you turn the light on while she’s sleeping.

She was fairly cooperative at the rehab center except mom states “the staff think I’m a troublemaker.” She debated about exercising and she was enraged when they interrupted her while watching The Drew Barrymore show.

She asked them everyday when she can go home.

She was discharged home after two weeks. Becoming her caregiver did feel like babysitting at times for us. The regression of your parents and the role reversal that is experienced is not something you can ever be prepared for until you go through it yourself. We would end the evening family group text with “moms all tucked in wearing her pull-up, Jammie’s and slippers.”

Mom became more herself at home, except now she wanted to go back to her old habits. Not eating often enough, then eating too much, wanting to hydrate with coffee and Diet Coke. The debating and arguing began, about her wanting cereal, pasta and beef.

She still would sneak off on her own to Calabria Imports even though one sister meal prepped weekly food. We only found out because she left the receipt on the table. When confronted, mom states “Oh here comes the detective, investigating what I’m doing!.”

This is where we went bezerk on mom.

Mom would reply:

My sisters and I on the phone:

We found two caregivers, one from the state and one we pay out-of-pocket. She was rude to them too, but they weren’t her daughters so they didn’t take it personally and just laughed at her. After meeting with the kidney doctor, the fear of going to dialysis or losing a limb got mom to surrender.

Mom is grateful now for her caregivers and her family who is helping her. I think now, she has accepted her normal age limitations and changes. Mom finally believes she is loved.

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