tailspin

mum's behavior yesterday went into a tailspin… and i was at the receiving end of her tantrums throughout the day. thankfully, the day ended ok. here's what happened.

i was at the clinic doing my medical review when she called in. she was clearly very upset and was almost shouting away once i picked the call. accordingly, she said a group of nurses came in to the ward in the wee hours of the morning, woke her up from her sleep and without telling her what they were doing, they forced a series of injections onto her. she said these nurses were new student nurses and were not qualified to administer injections. and becos they were not qualified, they caused her pain that lasted till now. and she went on and on and on non-stop about how unqualified they were, how they forced themselves on her, how they deliberately hurt her, and insinuated that they were out to harm her.

i assured her that everything should be ok and that she should trust the hospital staff. but nothing could get into her head. and she continued shouting and screaming out all the allegations. i knew i couldn't convince her of anything and thus asked her to talk the the doctor. we hung up and a while later, she called me again and repeated everything that she said. apparently she had told the doctor of the "ill-treatment" but the doctor didn't respond to her other than smile and walked off (i seriously doubt the doctor would do this). i tried to explain to her again and she refused to listen. and so i raised my voice and told her to not behave as such, that she should talk to the nurses and doctors calmly if she wanted them to explain to her what happened. again she refused to and continued with her bad behavior.

i decided against talking to her and asked her to pass her handphone to the nurse-in-charge. i asked why the injections and why was it that mum was so upset. from the nurse, i came to understand the whole situation. there were in fact no injections. apparently, mum did not pass any urine the day before despite having had her daily intake of fluids. and her inability to urinate continued through the night. by morning, fearing that there would be complications, the ward nurses requested for assistance from their team members and administered the catheter to allow urine to be drained. after the whole explanation, it made sense to me. mum had mistaken the catheter to be injections and that her claims of new nurses were becos she couldn't recognize the nurses that administered the catheter. also, the process could cause a little discomfort or trauma especially if the urethra is dry and thus the painful sensation. 

i explained the process to mum and assured her that it was something necessary to be done. with that understanding, she changed her lines and continued screaming that they should not have come in the morning and disturb her sleep, that they should have explained the whole process to her, that she was not at fault and that all the fault was theirs etc etc etc… well, she has a point about explaining the procedure to her. i knew it was not possible to calm her down regardless of what i said or explain. in the end, i left her alone. 

mum's bad mood continued throughout the day. it didn't help that i had send in my car for repair and couldn't visit her in the afternoon. added to that my brother was tired and my eldest sis told her she was busy… what it meant was that no one could visit her during lunch time. this further aggravated her and she went on to dump all her frustrations onto me throughout the day. it was clear she was very upset. by evening, when i visited her, her face was totally black and she refused to talk to me. sighs… i smsed my siblings and suggested for them to call her and talk to her. 

interestingly, when she spoke with them she sounded ok, said she was alright and insisted there was no need to visit her. but once she hung up, she would complain about their absence. from her self-talk, it was clear she was extremely unhappily with eldest sis. apparently, eldest sis said she couldn't visit her due to tons of housework, but when she called her in the afternoon, my brother-in-law told her she was taking her afternoon nap. she went onto her self-pity mode and lamented how bad a life she had, that she went through so much hardship to bring up my eldest sis only to end up with my eldest sis not wanting to visit her now that she is in the hospital. 

second sis was with me when this happened and was kinda shock to see it. she didn't seemed too convinced previously when i told her about it. thus, i was glad it happened when she was there for the experience hit her how different the two sides of mum was like. and for that moment, she understood what i went through. thankfully, after a long while of cajoling, mum kinda got herself composed.

what a stressful saturday for me…

glad it ended ok.