Real medical need or bid for attention?
I care for my 87 year old mother. I’m in my mid 50’s and we live in a metro area and the hospitals are full of covid patients. They have restricted surgeries to only medically necessary/emergency cases. When the outbreak first started I had a very blunt conversation with my mother about her being hospitalized or medical emergencies. My mom does not have dementia or Alzheimer’s, she has been screened for both. She does get what I call “locked in” when she’s facing any problem. Her solution (sometimes dangerous) that first pops in her head is the only solution. Any conversation about any other solution will be ignored and you either help or she becomes furious and charges full steam ahead, consequences be damned. The most recent example has me baffled and I can not tell if this was a legit medical need or bid for attention.
About two weeks ago she developed a sore that would not stop bleeding. She has to have surgery to fix the problem. A few days ago she called me in a panic and needed to go to the ER. She had started bleeding again and it would not stop. I told her that because I was at work it could take me longer to get there and I asked if she needed to call an ambulance. Her reply “should I just drive myself and you meet me there” I recognized the tone of her being “locked in” So I said “My point is that you might faint before I can get there, don’t drive yourself. I’m on my way” So I get there and knock on the door. No answer, I open the door with my key I hear her scream “I’m in the bathroom”. I walk in and stand in her front room I ask “are you ready”, “I’m dressing I took a shower before you got here”. So I stand there and I wait at least 10 minutes. She comes out. Not pale, looking okay, shaken but not panicked and fully dressed. I ask her “do you have everything you need, ID, house keys, medical directive, etc. in case they admit you?” her reply “Are you ready to take me the ER and anywhere else they might send me”. So we get in the car and start toward the hospital which is about 6 minutes away. Her cell phone rings and it’s a neighbor. She has a tense short convo and hangs up. She then explains that she had defrosted meat that morning to cook for her lunch and she called the neighbor to come get it because “she didn’t want it to rot and she had no idea where we would end up” I just keep driving. After 1.5 hours at the ER they get her bleeding stopped and discharge her and tell her to follow up with the surgeon. She gets in the car and I get a sermon all the way back to her place. She is furious with me, everyone at the hospital, her Doctor and generally everything and everyone. She ends with “Well that was a complete waste of my time, the next time you have to take me to an ER you aren’t taking me to that one”. I get her home and she has been stable since. I have been grinding off and on about this since it happened. I’m confused did she expect to be admitted and wheeled into emergency surgery? Or was this an ill planned bid for attention. Given her behavior I’m uncertain. I would appreciate any input.
4 Answers
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My mother did this ALL the time. She has some legitimate health problems (no dementia like your mom), and also gets "locked in" where she is absolutely convinced that her first thought or opinion on something must be what it is. I hear you and it's hard when you're the one who has to deal with it.
I've had to draw the line with my mother and her outrageousness. I refuse to run her all over the place to every doctor on earth anymore because she convinces herself that she has some disease. I often think the only real happiness my mother will ever know is if she actually gets a disease named after her. Like some obscure illness that only three or four people in the world have had a known case of. She will miss important follow-up appointments if I can't take her telling me that she'll die if she can't get to the doctor, even though other family members have offered to take her.
I'm at the point now where I tell her to make your peace with God then and let that be the end of it. When she can't get me to go along with that particular variety of drama, she'll work herself up into a panic and anxiety attack and completely flip out. She's done this my entire life since I was a little kid. I don't play along anymore. I'll bring her pills she takes to help with it and then I walk away. When this performance fails to get the attention she wants, she will instigate a fight. I walk away from that too.
I am my mom's caregiver. Not a slave to wait on her hand and foot or an entertainer who will be a supporting actor in whatever medical drama she wants to star in. She got the point when I gave her the first five seasons of ER on DVD and told her to watch medical drama instead of trying to cause it.
I help my mom every day and will always be here for her when something is real. I will not play along in an attention-seeking drama she causes to get attention though.
I would recommend you have a talk with your mom the same way I did. You will help her, but will not play along in the dramas.
Seems to me that whatever it is, it’s a significant cry for help. A “bid for attention” can certainly be a “cry for help” at the same time.
Did she have access to a significantly higher level of activity before the lockdowns? Missing contact with friends and social activities?
For Pete’s Sake, I’d give my pension for an hour or two strolling the through my cherished Walmart.
I wonder if this might be partly related to “cognitive decline? Maybe not outright
dementia, but early problems with decision making, benefit vs. cost, asking for help and determining the need for it?
I’m younger than she is, and after a few weeks of Covid infection, I really get where she’s coming from. Losing a year of normal life feels a lot worse after you’ve lived several decades than it does when you’re younger, I think.
A solution? Beats me. What’s WORKING for me is practicing my tuba, before Covid, every single day. Now, I’m trying to get back to where I was playing before my 2 1/2 week “vacation”.
Not a solution for every one, but is there ANY relatively solitary activity that she might enjoy returning to, even something from many years ago?
I would like to tell you that it was a neglected, non-healing leg ulcer that went into cellulitis that then went septic that took my brother's life last May.
I think that your Mother should rely now on ambulance transit when she decides that she will have to go to ER. They will take her to the nearest ER; there will be no choice, and her complaints can go to them instead of you.
Wishing you good luck.