Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Ina Townsend Young

April 7, 2007

I Really Do Know I'm Blessed

Ina Townsend Young

I am so blessed to have both of my parents still living.  I’m also blessed to be in a position of being able to work part time so I can help care for them.  I’m blessed that they can still live on their own.  I’m blessed that I have a sense of humor to keep me from banging my head on a wall or ripping my hair out by the roots after every visit with them.

My mother is 83, from Eastern Europe, opinionated and stubborn. My father did everything in his power to spoil her and lavish her with a lifestyle of leisure and anything she could possibly want.  She never worked or learned how to drive a car.  He created a monster. 

My father lost his eyesight a couple of years ago to macular degeneration.  Since Mom refused to learn to drive, oh so many years ago, this left them in quite a pickle.  Being a nurse, I took over managing their healthcare needs.  I drive 40 miles one way, several times a week to take them to doctor’s appointments, the grocery store, the drug store and whatever other places they need to get themselves to.  My mother is quite angry about all of the doctor’s appointments and medications they both need.  She’s accused me of being in some kind of conspiracy with the doctors because she is sure they get some kind of monetary gain when she or Dad has to take medications.  It took a long time for me to convince her that I had nothing to gain by making sure they got to the doctor and took their meds.  She still remains upset that Dad takes medications that she doesn’t.  Why should he have high blood pressure when she doesn’t?  Why is he on a blood thinner when she doesn’t need one?  Why can’t he just control these things like she does?  When she was finally diagnosed with high blood pressure last year, I thought this problem was over.  No such luck.  Now she’s upset that she has to take three meds, twice a day, to control her problem.  Shouldn’t Dad be taking the same things?  Why does he get away with only taking one pill in the morning?  God help me, she even started making med adjustments for both of them to reflect what she thought they both needed.  If she thought Dad didn’t need his antidepressant, by God it was gone.  Since his hypertension med worked for him, she figured he didn’t need it anymore and took it herself.  This behavior finally came to an end last summer.

Mom developed some severe respiratory problems.  She ended up hospitalized with a lot of tests run on her.  Not very pleasant tests, either.  The bottom line ended up being, if she had taken the meds that were ordered for her, when they were ordered for her, all of that hospital unpleasantness could have been avoided.  When I confronted her with this piece of knowledge, she started yelling at me and said “We can’t afford all of those pills!  It’s putting us in the poor house!”  Believe me, my parents are anything but poor.  I told her I knew about their finances; she’d made certain I was aware of everything in case something happened.  I also pointed out that the meds were a lot cheaper than her co-pay for the hospital visit and tests.  Reluctantly, she agreed to let me manage their medications; filling pill minders, getting refills and the like. 

 You’d think that was the end of this type of problem, now wouldn’t you?  No such luck. We’re talking about two parents, here.  Two parents who feed off of each other.   I have much to vent about.  Please remember, I know I’m blessed.  I’m blessed.  I’m blessed.  I’m blessed….

Yes, I am truly blessed with two living parents.  I don’t care how much work they are for me.  They spent years on me; I can give them whatever time of mine that they need for whatever time they have left.  But still…

Mom has always been very health conscious.  When she gets on a new health kick, watch out.  When cholesterol issues first came to light some years ago, she took her and Dad’s diet to the nth degree.  Never again would either of them be allowed to eat an egg.  Oatmeal with every meal.  Red meat became totally taboo.  Fat was not allowed anywhere near either of their diets.  No more ice cream.  No more cookies.  Candy was outlawed.  They were allowed chicken, fish that wouldn’t smell up her kitchen and salads with fat free dressing.  Oh, yeah.  And lite fruit cups were sometimes allowed with the oatmeal.  Of course, as a result of this, their cholesterol came down.  So did their weight.   I began threatening to make Mom drink Boost.  We’re talking skinny.  Her doctor told her if she lost any more weight, she could end up getting a tube feeding.  Mom couldn’t understand this issue.  I tried to explain to her that if she didn’t have a little meat on her bones, she wouldn’t be able to fight off infection or illness when they happened.  That still didn’t make sense to her.  I finally hit her where I knew it would hurt.  I got her smack, dab in the middle of her vanity.  I told her she no longer looked fifteen years younger than her age, but ten years older.  There was no fat to fill in the wrinkles.  She was robbing her body of necessary calcium and would get a widow’s hump.  That, coupled with her doctor and I telling her she really needed to eat a cheeseburger and drink a beer, finally pushed her over the edge.  Her diet is a little better, now.

Part of her obsession with diet started to affect Dad.  He’s not diabetic, but began to have episodes of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.  She was certain it had to do with his heart, as he has a cardiac history.  She’d seen him break out in a sweat with the cardiac episodes prior to his bypass surgery, so the fact that he would get weak and break out in a sweat was certainly due to the return of cardiac difficulties.  Or, so said Mom.  She insisted he be seen by his cardiologist again.  He went through a barrage of tests, once again.  Once he was cleared, cardiac wise, she was finally able to listen to me.  I’d talked to her about this before, but she didn’t want to listen.  Now, she could hear me.  I told her, once again, how I suffered from the same thing on occasion.  Some orange juice was always helpful.  I encouraged her to keep cans of mandarin oranges around for these episodes.  She was amazed at how they helped him.  I explained that we all needed a little sugar in our diets to maintain health.  Begrudgingly, she began to allow him to have sherbet in the evenings, again.  She glared at me when I gave him a Hershey bar.  Begrudgingly again, she actually ate a couple squares herself.  Dad complains about how obsessive she gets about these issues and says that if she ever finds religion, he’s divorcing her.

 Yes, I’m blessed.  I truly know this.  Wait until you read about what my daddy did, though.

Ina Townsend Young

mimisuzy127@yahoo.com