Thread by @HeadlessMami

[thread cw: drug abuse, family turmoil]

so less than 24 hours of our arrival in NJ things went completely insane and now that I’ve had some time to calm down and decompress it is once again time to yeet some feelings into the void

buckle up kiddos bc this is a bumpy ride y’all

We arrived at my aunt’s house pretty early in the morning after driving straight through the night. I didn’t sleep the whole way but took some naps here and there which was enough. Took some time to settle in, rest our legs and I took a much-needed shower before going to see Mom.

She was at her chemo infusion appt that day; she had tried to reschedule her appts bc of our trip but unfortunately wasn’t able to. We didn’t mind, and we planned to stay with her at the infusion suite for an hour or two and then take her grocery shopping later in the evening.

She was overjoyed to see us, to say the least. She hadn’t seen my husband and I since the summer, and it had been probably 7 or 8 years since she had seen my brother. She slowly stood up and there were hugs and kisses all around.

I had brought her a holiday teddy bear because I knew it would make her day. She’d collected teddy bears her entire life and her one tattoo is of a teddy bear.

She absolutely loved it, of course.

The four of us sat and chatted for a while and we noticed she was a little groggy, which she attributed to her having had a difficult time sleeping the night before. Plus she often said the chemo meds tended to make her a little snoozy and forgetful, so I didn’t worry at first.

But as time went on she got a bit worse- she kept forgetting what she was saying in the middle of a sentence, she would slump over and nod off for a few seconds before snapping back to reality. And I knew what those signs meant all too well from when I was growing up. 💊💊

Her nurse came over a few times to check her oxygen/blood pressure, both of which were a bit low. Asked her if she had taken any medicine today.

“Well, I took some Dilaudid this morning before I came.”

Nurse just kind of sighs with this “not this shit again” look on her face.

Even if she had taken that at 8:30 in the morning, by 1pm she shouldn’t have been as loopy as she was.

She’d gone to the bathroom twice while we were there and both times insisted on taking her purse with her.

I had a hunch there was something more going on in that bathroom.

The nurse comes back to hook up another bag of meds and lets her know it’ll be another 2 or 3 hrs till she’s done, probably 5:00 or so. We decide to head back and she says she’ll call us when the taxi brings her home so we can take her shopping.

5:00 comes and goes, no word.

Finally sometime after 6 she calls and says the taxi will take an hour to get there and can we just pick her up instead? I say of course and hubs and I start driving over.

She calls two more times making sure we’re coming which annoys me. I hear nurses yelling in the background.

We pull up and a nurse is outside waiting for me like I’m some kind of celebrity. Tells me to hurry inside and that husband should probably come in too (he was going to stay in the warm car and keep it running).

I’m so confused.

And then I step into a complete war zone.

IMMEDIATELY upon stepping back into the infusion suite three nurses surround me to tell me that since we left-

a) mom’s O2 level dropped to something like 47

b) her legs are swollen to the point where they want to give her an ultrasound to rule out a blood clot—

— and

c) she absolutely needs to be admitted to the ER but she’s refusing and insisting that she just wants to go home

She’s screaming at the nurses that they’re exaggerating and “poisoning [my] mind” so that I’ll agree with them and not take her with me.

Jesus take the wheel.

I wish I could end this story here by simply saying “I told them to admit her and we turned around and went home, the end”, but things are never that cut and dry in my world.

I couldn’t be THAT callous, not even when she was being that much of a belligerent asshole.

The other pertinent details of the situation are that she basically had a room reserved at the ER should she choose to be admitted, bypassing hours of wait time.

Also if she refused, her oncologist told the nurses she wasn’t getting chemo till she got that handled.

So she’s still screaming at the nurses and then she asks me if I’m ready to go. Says she wants to go home and sleep and then do the ER tomorrow.

I try explaining to her that if she does that she loses that guaranteed fast pass and reserved room. She loses her shit.

“I see why they wanted me to call you now…because you’re the weakest link.”

I reach my breaking point.

I run towards the hallway, husband follows me, I end up in the bathroom. Hand him my phone, dial my grandmother, send him out and lock myself in.

Panic attack ensues.

My emergency clonazepam has crumbled to dust in my wallet.

F U C K.

Welp, time to ride this out.

Realize I can’t text husband bc he still has my phone.

Realize I can still text husband bc I’m wearing my Apple Watch.

He can’t get ahold of my grandmother.

I heave a couple more sobs on the floor of this bathroom, collect my spoons and emerge.

One of the nurses asks me once more if I consent to take her home. I reply “absolutely not”.

Mom looks at me, betrayed but resigned. “You’re really going to let them do this to me?”

“Yeah.”

The nurses waste no time whisking her towards the ER.

As I frantically try to keep up while pushing her walker, another nurse comes up behind me. The “not this shit again”-looking nurse from earlier.

She leans into my shoulder, whispers in my ear.

“You guys need to get her purse away from her as soon as she’s not looking.”

Said purse is cradled firmly in her lap at the moment. This is going to be fun.

We arrive at her reserved room, and somehow through several sleights of hands and shuffles I manage to obscure her purse under my jacket while they move her onto her bed, then under my chair.

We all sit in mostly silence for a while. It’s awkward. She’s angry. I’m angry.

Then sometimes she nods off. Then she wakes up. Her noddings don’t afford me enough time to get the purse outside the room.

But the big break comes thanks to some techs that need to undress her.

They ask us to leave for a moment so she can have privacy and I make a big deal of “oh sure, I’ll step outside and take a vape break for a few minutes”. I gather up an armful of jacket and purse and abscond with them outside the door.

Call the nurse at the infusion suite back.

“I’ve got her purse…what now?”

“Keep it away from her! Or at least go in it and if there’s any pills inside take them out so she can’t get to them.”

After being reassured that I am not in fact committing a crime, we root through her purse. In a zipper pocket we hit paydirt.

A prescription bottle, dated only 7 days ago, for 120 Dilaudid.

ONE HUNDRED FUCKING TWENTY.

For context, she’s only supposed to be given 3-5 days’ worth at a time due to her history. I read the sig, do some quick math, determine this is ~20 days’ supply if taken as directed.

I immediately begin thinking about how I’m probably going to get thrown out of this hospital once I find the doctor that wrote this script and give him a piece of my mind.

Anyway.

We give the ER nurse the pills and she has them locked up.

We come back inside from our “vape break”. More people come in for more tests. She has x-rays, a CT scan, an ultrasound. And she still seems to think she might go home that night.

She still thinks the nurses were lying to her. Exaggerating her condition.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. Altered mental state or not, I’m going off.

“What do they get out of lying to you? Tell me. What do they gain if they go home saying to themselves ‘oh haha we sent her to the ER when she didn’t need to go teehee’?”

“...well idk but”

“Look. Best case scenario, which I know is ‘worst case’ to you right now, is that this swelling isn’t a blood clot, it’s something else, you tell me ‘see I was right I could have gone home to sleep’.

If I’m wrong, you can curse me to your grave and I don’t care.

Worst case scenario, if it is a blood clot, that shit travels from here *points to leg* up to here *points to head* and you’re dead before you can blink.

Given the little amount of information and the short amount of time to make this decision? I don’t regret it.”

Because fuck, I get it. I understand that deep down she’s hurting physically and mentally and just sick to death of the fucking hospital because it’s been her life for 5 fucking years now. I get it.

I told her that.

She didn’t really get it.

There were more things said but tbh I can’t really remember exactly how I put them bc my brain is kind of fried. But it was a lot of things about just putting faith in the doctors even if you don’t understand why at the moment.

It sounded a LOT like a preacher giving a sermon.

Anyway after a while it was pretty evident that she probably wasn’t going to be released. We talked to the ER nurse to see if we should just go home and find things out later and she said yeah, that’s the best course of action.

Oh btw, she said, the ultrasound was back at least.

It wasn’t a blood clot. So that was good.

But her O2 was dropping every time they took her off the oxygen so they were going to monitor her to find out why. Said it might have something to do with her OD earlier.

“wait, her what?”

“yeah, they had to give her Narcan earlier.”

I lost my shit and broke down sobbing at the ER desk.

I drove EIGHT HOURS just for my mother to secretly shove Dilaudid down her face and slowly OD in front of our very eyes and then beg me to go home so she could probably do more.

Fuck. Me.

If I hadn’t stood my ground, if I’d have gone alone and let her bully me into taking her back home she very likely would have fucking died last night.

I’ve inherited a lot of things from my mother.

Her facial features; her striking blue-green eyes; her love of cooking; apparently her skill with hair.

I thankfully never inherited her tendency towards addiction.

But last night I am VERY thankful I inherited her stubbornness.

We came to see her today. Clear-headed and rested.

The first thing she says when we walk in-

“You saved my life last night.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I don’t know how the next few days will go. I don’t know how things will go once we’re gone.

I’d love to think that maybe seeing us hurt by this will change things, but I don’t hold a lot of faith. All I can do is just keep going like I’ve been going, one day at a time.

I’ve been having to look at my tattoos a LOT lately, that’s all I can say.

Guys, if you have good relations with your parents and they’re close by or will be soon, hug the shit out of them and cherish that. Don’t take that shit for granted.

And if you -don’t- have good relations with yours, because god knows too many of my friends have shitty ones, hug your favorite family members instead, be it blood or chosen family.

And of course for those whose great parents are sadly no longer with us, I offer hugs and the healing energy to make it through the season.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks. I sincerely mean it. Thanks for being a sorely needed e-ear in the twitterverse. 💜

(Also I guess I should add as a prologue since I got distracted- she’s definitely doing a lot better and she’s very grateful that I didn’t listen to her when she was well, not herself last night. The visit today was definitely a good one and not as terse as that sounded lmao)