My Mother

My mom got injured at work a year ago. She hurt her right arm, and despite surgery, injections, eight hundred different pills, MRI, CAT scans, steroids, physical therapy, and electrocution it’s still hurt. It’s nothing stabbing, it doesn’t hurt just sitting there, it’s not the “take your breath away” kind of pain, it’s dull, constant, and never ending. Understanding this, and understanding that her doctors told her that she is permanently disabled and that there is nothing they can do for her beside give her pain pills to make her sleep 16 hours a day, I can see where she’d be in the mindframe that she is in. She will never be able to work for the rest of her life, and for a woman who has been working since she was fourteen years old, that’s a bitter pill to swallow.
She cries all day long, from the time she wakes up until the time she goes to sleep. She’s bored, because she can’t do anything she loves doing like gardening, walking the dog, swimming, or even cleaning the house. She calls me crying and tells me that she wants to die, on a daily basis.
I don’t think a daughter should be subjected to this sort of thing.
Supposedly she told her doctors about her depression and her suicidal thoughts, and they put her on antidepressants for about six weeks before she started having a reaction to them and they took her off them. Since then, they haven’t given her anything to replace them. Now either she’s not telling them how depressed she is, or they are idiots, it’s a 50/50 shot because I’ve met her doctors before.
I have this feeling like something is building, I’ve had it for the past six months. All my senses gear toward her leaving my father but I believe I am biased in the fact that them splitting up is one of my biggest fears in life, as weird as that sounds. She’s always been depressed and an alcoholic and had an eating disorder and been generally fucked up in the head, but it’s gotten to a point recently. So lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s something more, maybe she’s going to kill herself in an attempt to get rid of the pain.
I’ve been thinking that I’m going to maybe go home and visit her earlier than I was planning, maybe I will go at the end of April and march her to the doctors office and demand that they give her some sort medication to help her ward these demons off. I’m not an advocate of pill therapy, I’m a firm believer in the fact that you need to decide to be mentally healthy yourself to really do it, but if anything can help her even a small amount, I’m for it.
You think that I would be used to being the parent with her, as I’ve been doing it since I was a small child, but it is still hard, it’s a big reason I moved away, because I didn’t want to do it anymore, I couldn’t do it anymore. Watching someone you love and admire destroy themselves everyday for 19 years really takes it’s toll.
It’s all been building, and the whole time I’ve just been thinking hold on, just hold on.