Monday, October 10, 2005

grumpiness follows

what a weekend. first, the Buckeyes lose. then the Eagles. what the hell was that? and I missed the end of the Eagles "game" because we got a phone call from my stepdad at about 7:15 saying that my mother had gone out for cigarettes and dinner from Dairy Queen and had been gone for almost two hours.

understandably, he was panicked, even though last time this happened she had gone to the grocery store and Wal-mart and just didn't tell him where she was going. this is exactly why we bought her a cell phone, so we could find her when she was out. but of course she didn't have the cell phone with her, because she "can't remember how to use it." in quotation marks because I really don't believe that. she gets quite belligerent and defensive when anyone implies that she can't take care of herself. which is ridiculous because she couldn't/wouldn't take care of herself even before she got sick.

my brother was already out looking for her, following the route she should have taken. we were checking the grocery stores to see if she had stopped anywhere else. as we were driving around, I got a call from my brother saying that she got lost trying to drive to the grocery store and ended up about 20 miles west of our town. in her defense, the intersection she was trying to use is very confusing, it was getting dark and she can't really drive at night, and once she missed her exit, there wasn't another one for about 20 miles.

apparently, she stopped at the first house she came to and used the telephone there to call my stepdad. he talked to the man who lived there and told him that my mother was sick and quite forgetful. he agreed to let her follow him in his truck until they were back on the right road, pointing towards our town. how lucky we are that he was a decent, kind person.

there really wasn't much more for us to do so we went home to wait for word that she was home and safe. I called my stepdad, who was on the verge of tears, and told him to call us as soon as she made it home. we knew she was about 30 minutes away, but after almost an hour, we still hadn't heard anything. I called him back and she still wasn't home so we decided to check the stores again and then head out of town in the direction she would have come from, in case she had run out of gas or something. I don't know.

we checked the stores and then tried to call my stepdad before we left town. there was no answer at the house. I called the cell phone and he answered. apparently, she was now about 25 miles east of our town, having missed the three exits she could have taken to get back home. she was at a Shell gas station (no, he didn't know exactly which one), waiting for someone to come out there to help get her home. he had called my other sister to drive him over to where she was so he could ride home with her and give her directions. did I mention that he is totally blind in one eye and legally blind in the other? *insert cliche here*

she wasn't at the Shell that he thought she was at but they did eventually find her. they called us at almost 11:00 to say that they were home. by my calculations, that was about six hours after she left.

the situation is getting worse and worse. and she still doesn't even have a fucking diagnosis other than "probably not Alzheimer's." she's not working, which is probably a good thing, but that means they don't have any insurance. which means that she won't be going to the doctor to get any more tests done.

neither of them will talk about what's going on or more accurately, what's not going on. I really think we're going to need to hold a pseudo-intervention with them before they get serious about taking care of whatever the hell is going on. I'm so tired of this whole thing.