1044 Frustrations #3 and 4

Friday, December 29, 2006

I have been told that I tend to get too emotionally involved in other people's problems. There are people who have lots of friends, and they listen to their friends' problems, and then they walk away, remembering, but not feeling? I don't know. I don't know how other people do it. I always feel like it's my problem too, like somehow I have to fix things, make it all better. Of course over the years I've learned that people don't really appreciate efforts to fix, so I just listen and sympathize and offer advice if it's requested, in a "Well, I think.... What I might do is...." (the young lady in the previous entry is a special case) way.

But then I walk away all frustrated, because I still want to fix it, make the problem go away. I think about it and fuss until I know everything is ok, and I get frustrated when I can't fix it. I may expend almost as much energy on it as the owner of the problem. This may be why I have few close friends. I withdraw in self-protection. I am reluctant to get too involved with people, because maybe then I'd have to take care of them, and there are just too many of them? So I pull away.

Maybe it's because when I was growing up, and until psychotherapy in my 30s, I was made to feel that everything that went wrong was all my fault. Everything, always. Either something I did or something I didn't do. Dr. K. laughed that I had feelings of omnipotence, but it wasn't funny. Maybe I still have that lingering feeling that somehow it's my fault when something goes wrong for someone else (not logical, but feelings are not logical, by definition).

So, ok. Another worry follows.

About the same time I was posting about The Hellhole, the nursing facility Jay was in for two months, where they did their best to kill him, a good friend's elderly mother was falling. The downstairs neighbors heard the crash, and went upstairs to check, but my friend's father wouldn't open the door. They had to get the super, and when they went in they found her unconscious in a pool of blood.

My friend lives here. His elderly parents live about 200 or more miles away. He worries about them. His father is pretty much out of it, lately has been sleeping almost all the time. His mother has a collection of metabolic problems, and has recently been... um ...forgetful. Given that both parents have a lot of medicines, several months ago after both had been individually hospitalized, in rapid succession (they've been in and out several times in the past two years - he goes in, and within a few weeks of his coming home, she gets sick - his last week in the hospital was in early December, so I was expecting a problem with her along about now), their medical plan approved a daytime aide for several days a week, but not full time.

The mother, of course, is not at all happy about this. She doesn't think they need help, and doesn't like someone hanging around their small apartment all the time.

On one level, my friend knows he has a serious problem. On the other hand, he's in serious denial. While his mother is in the hospital (she doesn't recall falling, still thinks she's just fine, not a problem), his father requires 24-hour care. The whole family is of the opinion that a nursing home is where you go to die. There's an assisted living place near where his parents live, where they could have their own apartment with kitchen and all, and some of their old friends live there now, but his mother seems to think that "when it's necessary", they can just waltz right in. I told him that by the time his mother would consider it, she wouldn't be capable of rational thought anyway, and by then, they probably wouldn't accept them. So if you're looking at in-home care, you'd better start looking hard at it now. An obvious solution would be to move them closer to here, but his mother won't consider moving away from the area they've lived for more than 85 years - even though she doesn't get out much anymore, and all their old friends are gone.

Getting the insurance to approve 24-hour care may not be easy. His mother can be very convincing. We went through that with Jay's father. He'd forget who we were, or fall asleep in a chair and then think it was morning, even though it was dark out, or get lost trying to find the bathroom in the house he'd lived in for 50 years. But take him to the doctor, or bring a nurse in, and he would be sharp and clear and in-the-moment, and could carry on perfectly rational and topical conversations. He managed to make us look foolish, trying to rip off the insurance company or something.

His parents have a one-bedroom apartment. 24-hour care will be awkward.

So, 'tis a puzzlement. I know what I'd do, but ....

The last frustration concerns someone who has a physical problem, and the doctors seem to be patting her on the head and telling her no big deal because they can't figure out what's wrong. Hey, we KNOW our own bodies! We KNOW when something's not right. It IS a big deal! In my opinion, the doctors aren't looking beyond other physical problems they already know about. They're not looking elsewhere. They're not looking! It's like I know my roof is bad, so the water on the floor in the basement must obviously be because of the leaking roof. Missing entirely the leaking water pipe. Other things do exist, and do break.

Frustration #1 may be relaxing a bit. I called the club back, and talked with a manager. Yes, the wait list is 10 tables long, but they require that reservations be confirmed by Saturday night. Right now, 35 of the reservations remain unconfirmed. On Saturday evening they will start giving away the unconfirmed slots, so there's a very good chance that as #11 on the wait list, we could get in, especially since many on the wait list would have made other plans. So, we're on the list. Ta-rah!
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