The Trainwreck of Family

This is a post dedicated to grandma... Oh. My. Gosh.

Keep in mind that grandma and Mema are different people. Grandma has narcissistic personality disorder, or the evilest degree. She does things to spite people and really helped me through my Mental Health rotations because I got to diagnose her from the DSM-V, see all of the real-world manifestations of the symptoms, and now I get to watch legit crazy unfold before me without having to take care of it.

Grandma ended up falling out of bed while my grandpa's sister was in town. Now, this would probably not be a huge deal normally, but she's a few hundred pounds and barely able to walk when she feels better. Mostly she depends on places having wheel chairs and makes my grandpa (who is a cancer patient and on chemo) wheel her around and carry her bags. Are you fucking kidding me???!!!??? Let's shy away from that, though.

She fell out of bed and tried to get my uncle and grandpa to get her up. Well, they couldn't do it so my grandpa's sister called the fire department (against grandma's wishes because their house needs to be condemned). 4 firefighters couldn't get her up, so they slid her on a fancy air mattress (like what we use in the hospital to transport patients) and got her to the stairs. She ended up in the hospital via 9-1-1 a couple days later.

Dude, she almost got fired from being a patient for being so mean and combative!!! She was in restraints and everything! The doctor threatened to discharge her and let her figure out how to get home and how to care for herself. She ended up staying in there for a few more days, so we tried to get a better psych consult but they say we can't ask for that because we were not put as her POA (power of attorney). Couldn't you do it because she's already shown herself to be bat shit crazy in the first 2 seconds she was there? C'mon?!?

She ended up getting discharge home after about 4 days in the hospital. She was sent home with nobody to care for her, home oxygen, and meals on wheels. She's got CHF, COPD, morbid obesity, and she is less mobile than when she went to the hospital. I don't understand how they thought that would be okay. The hospitals in Home Town have consistently let us down when it comes to care and discharge of my grandparents and I'm getting more and more frustrated with the medical care that patients receive. I hate that in nursing school we are taught about all of the resources and help available to people, but there's nothing in the real world. NOTHING!

Grandpa was sent home after account after account of abuse and lack of people to be able to care for him. Grandpa was sent home with nothing. Grandma was sent home after it was proven that she can't survive at home! She needs equipment to get her up, help with the bathroom, assistance to shower, and tons of other help. She was sent home with nothing, even though she actually needs to be admitted to a nursing home.

What are ya gonna do? She has freewill and the right to deny nursing home care. The social workers are doing nothing to help grandpa minus a brief home visit 2 weeks after his discharge to prove that he was not able to go up the stairs to get to bed. That visit did nothing. She was also supposed to see that there is one working bathroom in the whole blessed house, human feces covering said bathroom, no working fridge/freezer, lack of driving abilities on grandma's part, and grandpa can't drive because of his seizure meds. None of this was assessed and we specifically laid out concerns point by point. It's enough to make you want to bang your head against a wall or walk on shoes of legos where all of the pointy edges dig into your feet with every step.

G-d is working everything out though. Do you remember how I told you that grandma stole grandpa's phone and routed all of his calls to her phone? Well, while she was in the hospital, grandpa went in and asked for his phone and credit cards back (she had also stolen his wallet). My aunt (my mom's sister) went into grandpa's phone and undid grandma's little move to forward his calls to her phone. Grandpa also expressed his need to get his will situated, look at his bank account, and started asking how much longer he has to live. All of these things were things he didn't want to do with grandma there because she has been known to steal from people, especially if they are fixin' to die or newly dead. My great grandpa stayed dead in his house for a couple of days before grandma (who found her dad dead) called 9-1-1 about finding him dead, so that she could go through his house and take what money and valuables she could find before her two siblings found out he had passed away.

You can't make this shit up.

We think she forwarded the calls from grandpa's phone to hers in order to screen his doctor calls and bank calls. We think she was also stealing his money, thus the taking his cards and forwarding his calls... As far as screening doctor calls, that's so that she can be in control of what we, as the family, get told. When grandpa was initially admitted into the hospital, she told us he was in the ICU and intubated and fixing to die. That was a huge ass lie. He was confused and slightly sedated at first, but it only lasted a night or two before he came around to being his normal, cute little self. I don't know why she lied like that, but she does it regularly. She doesn't even lie about big stuff every once in awhile, she lies every single time she opens her mouth. She lies about stuff that happened 10 minutes ago that I was witness to and know what actually happened. I'm talking bat-shit crazy, people!!!

This is legit family drama and it all happened over the course of this last week (except grandpa going into the hospital, that was a couple months ago). Since grandpa's hospitalization, grandma just gets worse and worse with her schemes and evil shenanigans.

I Swear, I'm Gonna Drop Kick Somebody

Fiance went back to work a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, instead of traveling a couple states away, he was able to stay in our same state, just drive a couple hours to the new site he was assigned to. Since he is so close, I went up to visit him over the weekend. In talking while I was there, I started crying. I couldn't really explain to him why between sobs, and also because my mind was just drawing a blank. I can't put into words the feelings I get sometimes, I just knew that I was sad and angry and for some reason the tears started pouring while I was there with him. So, he hugged me until the tears stopped, then we went out for lunch.

A couple days after that, once I was back home, he was texting me but I was asleep and my phone was on silent. He texted once, then texted again an hour later. A few hours after that, he asked if I was okay because I wasn't responding.  A short while after that text, I woke up and looked at my phone. 5 texts! Only three were from him, one from roomie, and another from Dad. Anyway, fiance and I started talking and I told him I had just been asleep. However, we started talking about how I was doing, why I was mad and sad (because of ExBF). He asked me to go back to counseling.

When I first started counseling, he told me he thought it was a waste of time. I agreed because after three sessions, I had gotten nowhere in the sexual assault area of my life and I was sick of wasting time and money driving from Hometown down to College town (an hour to an hour and a half of driving). So, I cancelled my appointments and stopped going. Four months later, my flashbacks are not so bad and I'm not having so many nightmares anymore. Despite these things, my depression is the darkest it's ever been.

Before going into the relationship with fiance, I told him I have depression and bipolar. He told me that he doesn't believe in those and that I should just get over being sad. He also asked if I've ever been clinically diagnosed by a doctor, to which I replied I have not. Why do I need to go get a doctor diagnose me when I have the DSM-V book with all symptoms and I know that there is a family history of bipolar and undiagnosed bipolar that is being treated as depression? Logically, I don't feel I need an official diagnosis because that just puts a label on me that I don't want. Then meds will be prescribed to me that I don't want to be on and I will have a whole host of other problems that I do not want or need to deal with.

Now, he is probably the 5th person that has asked me to go back to counseling but nobody listens to me to know why I refuse to go back or to listen to the problems that I have at whatever time they ask. They think that counseling is a "fix" for my "temporary" problem. That's ridiculous. If you've read my earlier posts, you can see that this problem will never go away. Seeing as I had depression before the whole ExBF thing, that just means that my base-line depression is worse than it was before. I'll survive and learn to deal. I'm not going back to counseling, that was bullsh!t.

So, I tell my friends nothing, they are now starting to worry. That's bullsh!t too because they don't want to hear what I have to say but they feel like they need to know what's going on in my life. Oh my gosh people, pick a freakin' side! If you want to know, then deal with what I tell you. You don't have to live with it, I do. You'll survive (not you, my friends). If you tell me you don't want to know what's happening in my life and in my head, then don't frickin' ask! I have no way of winning with anyone because they don't understand that they are asking for contradictions to happen.

If one more person asks me, I'm just going to flat out tell them that the last time they asked what was going on, they tried to tell me what to do and then asked me to stop telling them things. Then they started pulling away and not being around me anymore. So, I stop telling them things, and then they want to start digging in my business again. I'm going to tell them that I can't handle learning to depend on people and then get ditched by them because they can't handle my sh!t. So, I am choosing to deal with it on my own the way I have my whole life. I will tell them that I will listen to their good and bad news, their struggles, and what they are excited about. But I am going to ask them/tell them not to be offended when I don't open up to them because I tried that and it obviously didn't work at all.

And if one more person tells me to go to counseling, sit in a chair, and start babbling on about random crap that pops into my head, I will drop kick them. I know they mean well, but I need to be able to feel like I am making decisions in my own life. They might be bad ones, but I'm learning. I can't do what everyone tells me to do because everyone tells me to do something completely different with my life and none of them have lived in my shoes. I also need to have some illusion that I have some control over what happens to me from now on.

Being sexually assaulted takes away any semblance of maybe having control over what happens to your own body, so I need to not feel out of control anymore. Honestly, everyone tries to take away what little power I have over my life and my healing by telling me what to do because they don't think I can make my own decision. That tells me that they believe it is my fault that I got into the situation I got into. They don't know how I fought, how scared I was, how my brain shut off, and I pretty much blacked out. These are all coping mechanisms and completely normal psychological responses to trauma. Hindsight, I wish I could have changed a lot of things and completely prevented it in the first place. Alas, that is not possible and right now I hate my life because of it. Don't take away my last chance of feeling like I might be able to make it through this without completely shutting down and not leaving my bed for food or water. I'm one step away from not having the strength or energy to take another breath, don't take that away from me.

I love you all (yes you, those who read my incessant babbling). I know you all mean well and want to help me. Mostly, it helps that you read this, or don't. This blog is pretty much my diary. I appreciate that I have somewhere to vent about everything, and anything that is going on in my life.