9b. A Non-Comprehensive List of Things I Tried, Part Two
Thing I Tried: Getting my mother medical attention
Report: The most important item on my agenda was getting my mother back on the medication for her Multiple Sclerosis. She agreed—she really wanted to be less dizzy and more mobile. Yet she stalled at every turn.
And there were so many turns. I thought it would be straightforward: we’d go to her primary doctor, and he’d write a new prescription for the same medication she’d been taking since the late 1980s. But no. At her first appointment, her blood pressure was very high, and the doctor wanted her to take some blood tests first.
She scheduled and postponed the tests a few times. Meanwhile, every day she went without her medication, her disease progressed further. She wasn’t feeling well enough to go, she whined while cancelling on me yet again.
Me (yelling): You’re not going to start feeling better until you go take those tests!
Finally, I get her to the testing lab. Then the visit to the doctor for the results: my mother was indeed unwell. Would he write her a prescription for her long-time medication, then? He would not. He would write a referral to a neurologist.
More stalling, more whining. Imaginary obstacles—“The gas company is coming that day.” “I have to sort some things out with the bank first.” Most of this obfuscation came from Husband Five, who diligently yanked her strings, trying to keep her unmedicated and estranged from me. When she and I were alone, she repeatedly told me how badly she needed her meds, and how she never should have gone off them.
I called the neurologist ahead of my mother’s appointment so I could give her the necessary context: My mom had MS, but that wasn’t all. She was mentally ill and displaying symptoms of memory loss. She was in an abusive folie a deux with her fifth husband, who was keeping her from her medication. The doctor told me she’d take that into consideration and agreed not to tell my mother that we’d spoken.
We walked into the waiting room that day, announced by my mother’s odor. The receptionist got the doctor, who came out to see the problem, then announced that she wanted to be paid in cash before the appointment began.
I harped on this before, I know, but I can’t let it go—me, running down some street in Scarsdale desperate for an ATM, head swiveling like a coke fiend’s as I stuff wads of cash into my bag, nearly getting lost on the way back to the doctor’s office. Arriving back at her waiting room with a stack of twenties, watching the doctor count them, and the way she licked her thumb a little while doing so, which right there should have disqualified her from practicing medicine.
Months, now, had gone by. Could my mother get the prescription she desperately needed yet? Nay! First, we had to schedule a brain scan at the local hospital. Three weeks lost there. She got the MRI. Another two weeks passed. Then we’re back at the neurologist for the results.
The neurologist agreed that my mother needed medication. However, she wanted my mother to take a different drug, one that was injected weekly instead of monthly. My mother balked at the extra needles (reasonably, in my view), and the neurologist abruptly fired her as a patient and told us to get out of her office.
Me: Wait! Never mind, she’ll take the weekly shots! Please, just write us a prescription for something…
Her: No, and you need to leave now.
Upshot: My mother’s brain lesions worsened as she remained untreated. By the time of her death, she was barely mobile.