I am hardly posting on my blog, for different reasons. One, work keeps me plenty busy. But I, also, am having a hard time balancing my advocacy, work and personal hobbies. That said, I will be sharing some news about a recent public event I participated in in Modesto, CA. It was the first time my film, “Benevolent Neglect”, was shown in a theatre!
With this post, I’d like to share some important personal news. After an intense amount of training this past year, I was able to finally receive my Black Belt in Aikido. I started training 14 years ago, around the time I first started trying to get help and treatment for my mom. Needless to say, dealing with my mom’s longterm medical crisis and housing insecurity derailed and delayed my training. I started training regularly again in 2019, but then the Pandemic hit! Well, I finally persevered and I know my mom would be very proud of me!
Here’s a video I made of my personal journey in Aikido. I incorporate the personal journey with my mom a little bit.
I’m doing what advocacy I can still, though it is very slow moving. Most recently, I contacted a couple of California State Representatives to let them know I’m available to provide testimony for legislation related to treating people with severe mental illness (SMI). Improving access to treatment and care for people with SMI is getting more attention these days, due to the homeless crisis here in CA. However, as was the case when my mom was alive and we’d try to get her help, politicians and their aides are showing little interest in helping or listening to me. One of the aides of State Representative Buffy Wicks (District 15) actually asked me what my credentials were, when talking to them on the phone! As a political scientist, that perplexed me. As a citizen and tax payer, that disgusted me. Politicians need to be more responsive to their constituents, regardless of status.
I’m “playing the game” for now. But I’m not above harassing them to get a meeting. Below is a copy of a letter I recently sent to Representative Miguel Santiago (District 53), as an example.
Dear Representative Santiago,
I am writing to you because I would like to give testimony for bills and proposals related to the treatment of people with severe mental illness (SMI). I understand that there is currently a bill, AB 1340, that you are sponsoring that is scheduled to be discussed in January. The bill, as I understand it, would amend/modify “Grave Disability” criteria that is a part of the 5150/LPS process. I am highly interested in providing testimony for that proposal, given that I have unique experience and invaluable knowledge in dealing with the 5150/LPS process.
A photo from 2009 of mom and I before we appeared in probate court. I was her conservator for a short time.
Professionally, I am a community college teacher and a Political Scientist. I have been teaching full-time at City College of San Francisco since 2005. I am, also, an advocate for people with SMI and a former caregiver of a family member with a SMI. My mother, a second generation Mexican-American, began exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness around 2002. I started to play a direct role in trying to get her help and treatment in 2007. By then, as a result of no treatment, she was having hallucinations and not taking care of her medical/physical needs, particularly her diabetes. Despite my family’s best efforts, my mother would spend the last 1/3rd of her life with an untreated SMI. In my experience with the mental healthcare system, as my mom’s advocate and caregiver, I largely blame the 5150/LPS process for her needless suffering and premature death.
I found out relatively quickly how difficult it was to get help for my mother, when I began advocating for her in 2007. Though my mother would be 5150ed various times, between 2007-2009, I was told by representatives in both San Francisco County’s and Fresno County’s Behavioral Health Department that it would be easier for them to take her in and treat her if she were homeless! “Really?!”, I thought. “How unconscionable!” I had to get both counties involved, since I was living in San Francisco and my mom was primarily in Fresno, at the time.
Starting in 2010, the unimaginable would happen. My mom would end up homeless, living in a car, due to multiple evictions from apartments. At times, when we could, my sister and I would try to have her 5150ed, out of desperation. She’d show up at our houses exhausted and sick from lack of sleep and rest, and failing to treat her diabetes. The police would show up and, each time, refuse to 5150 her. Though homeless and obviously ill, they would judge her to not be “gravely disabled.” They would essentially tell us, “She has to be lying naked in urine and feces on a railroad track” for her to meet “gravely disabled” criteria. In these experiences and more, what became clear to me is that her living in a car was considered “adequate shelter.” My mom barely having any clothes to wear, even in Winter, was still viewed as “adequate clothing.” Though she was diabetic, eating primarily high fat and high carb food was viewed as her being able to “adequately feed herself.” My mom having an official diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder did not matter to them. Each time, they would conclude she was “competent” and able to make decisions for herself.
To me and my family, this was an outright neglect of duty by these police officers. Eventually, in 2018, she would develop stage 4 kidney failure. A Modesto police officer took this institutionalized neglect and, really, cruelty, to a new level when he refused to 5150 my mother in January of 2018, when she stopped taking her medications for various serious physical conditions. My mom was in the midst of an acute psychotic episode and stopped taking her medications because “God told her they were poison.” Going on day four, she was unable to eat or drink anything. She did not have an appetite and would puke up anything she tried to drink. She was demonstrating organ failure. Despite this, the police officer determined she did not meet 5150 criteria. My arguments to the contrary and pleas for help fell on deaf ears. The police officer, like many before him, ruled my mom was “competent” and able to decide for herself if she wanted to go to the hospital. My mom could have died at the house. The police were willing to let her die. Fortunately, however, from the urging of other family members, my mom would agree to go to a hospital later in the day and be medically/physically stabilized.
All of this is to say nothing of other times the 5150 process and various authority figures and officials failed my mother. I detail this some in a documentary film I made in 2020 titled “Benevolent Neglect.” It is available for viewing on YouTube. (A film trailer is available for viewing here: https://youtu.be/ta08Lo3ULqo ) With this letter, I have focused on the problems my family has faced with how “Grave Disability” is interpreted and applied. It is too NARROW. Dr. Julea McGhee, who is the emergency room psychiatrist in my film, told me this. She said the problem is insurance companies determine what constitutes “Grave Disability” and that they intentionally define it narrowly. In her opinion, many more people should fit the criteria for “Grave Disability” than actually do. I understand that AB 1340 would amend “Grave Disability” to include “medical self-neglect.” I strongly support including “medical self-neglect,” as my mother’s frequent hospitalizations and deteriorating health were undoubtedly the result of her severe mental illness. As I think I demonstrated, I can speak on this with considerable knowledge and authority. I have much more I could say and contribute in this discussion and debate. Thank you.
As a former caretaker, The Joker movie hit me in a raw way. I think the movie accurately portrays how society mistreats the poor and people with serious mental illness (SMI). I saw this, firsthand, in trying to help and take care of my mom, who struggled with schizoaffective disorder.
My mom wasn’t able to take care of herself adequately. She, in fact, had been suffering mightily and deteriorating for years. I couldn’t take it anymore. She deserved to live with a semblance of dignity.
When I started taking care of her full-time, we didn’t have a lot of family around and I didn’t have a lot of money saved up from my teaching job. So, my mom and I were pretty isolated socially and very reliant on the government for her healthcare and welfare needs.
I was able to stabilize her medically (physically) enough and keep her safe for two years, but society made it exceedingly difficult, in every respect, for me to do so. As it was, it never provided us with sufficient help and respect, since the onset of her SMI. My mom needlessly suffered for more than a decade. She would never be treated for her SMI and stabilized. She was discarded. We were discarded.
“They don’t care about people like you, Arthur.”
Arthur Fleck doing his best to survive.
Those were the words spoken to Arthur Fleck by his government social worker (SW). She was referring to the policy makers (officials) who decided to close her office and, thus, cut Arthur off from his psychiatric meds. But as was clear in their interactions, even the SW didn’t seem to care all that much about Arthur’s struggle. As Arthur stated moments before she told him the news, “You never really listen to me.” He’s of course saying she doesn’t really care about him.
This was all too common an experience in trying to access MH services for my mom. For example, there was the time when an intake worker/clinician at a county Behavioral Health Department, in flagrant violation of county policy and state law, outright denied my mom MH services, because my mom, like many people with SMI, denied having a SMI!
The worker was cold and impersonal from the minute we met. I remember saying, angrily, on my way out of the interview/assessment, “I’m waiting outside, mama. All she’s doing at this point is filling out information so they can get their money for seeing you from Medi-Cal.”
There was the time when a hospital nurse and supervisor unsafely discharged my mom against my wishes. My mom was clearly in a psychotic state and unable to make a competent decision about her own care. My mom didn’t even believe she was in a hospital.
Despite this and her physical condition being fragile (She would be treated for sepsis and was just two days removed from a ventilator.), hospital staff would wheel her to a cab. They couldn’t even be bothered to do a psychiatric evaluation to see if she fit involuntary hold criteria.
My mom didn’t like hospitals. I can’t blame her.
This incident was an extreme example, but our experiences with various hospitals taught me they don’t give a shit about people with SMI. Whenever my mom started to become non-compliant, due to her psychosis, staff would become less attentive and they’d begin preparing her for discharge, even if she wasn’t medically stable.
And this is what they were willing to do regularly in front of me. I can only imagine what they did all those times I wasn’t with her before she lived with me!
“Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?”
That’s what Arthur asked his social worker during one of their sessions. She responded by saying, “It’s tough times. People are struggling with no work.”
Her comment is a reference to the larger political and economic situation the movie is based in. It’s a pretty subtle backdrop, but the movie itself starts with a radio report of a pitched labor battle, a garbage strike, to help make that very point.
It lasts weeks and leads to increasing piles of garbage on city and neighborhood streets. Tensions build and, eventually, protests breakout at what’s clearly deep frustration with economic inequality and uncertainty, and government mistreatment and negligence.
Arthur’s access to his meds and social worker getting cutoff epitomizes how poor people with disabilities are some of the biggest victims of these conditions. Social scientists actually have a name for such government practices. They’re called “austerity politics.”
In a basic sense, we have been living under an era of “austerity politics” for decades. Since the 70s, governments, at every level, have been cutting costs and services (i.e. downsizing), in the name of “fiscal responsibility” and in order to foster a better “business environment.” It’s a process, a project really, that started as a result of a sluggish economy, increased foreign competition and lower corporate profits. The movie is set in the early 80s, the decade when the process accelerates. (My mom would actually lose her job with the State of California in the late 90s, due to layoffs.)
An abandoned psychiatric hospital
Mental health services have not gone untouched. People like to blame the Republicans and Ronald Reagan for the closing of state psychiatric hospitals. But today, even in “Liberal” San Francisco, we have a local government severely neglecting the needs of its own SMI population. So much so, we have local MH workers themselves speaking out against the inadequate conditions and publicly protesting. In fact, former Chief Psychiatrist of SF General Hospital, Robert Okin, describes the situation as a “war on the mentally ill.”
Arthur’s social worker’s full comment actually was “They don’t care about people like you, Arthur. They don’t care about people like me either.” I’ve had my issues with regular staff and frontline workers. In fact, a friend my mom and I made at her dialysis center even told me, in a private conversation, that her coworkers don’t care about the patients. They only care about the money.
This regime we are living under of austerity leaves me with no doubt, however, that high level administrators and public officials are the biggest culprits of all. They make it too difficult, if not impossible, for even the best and most empathetic workers to do their jobs.
“Society decides what’s fun-ny.”
Arthur says this after embracing his homicidal, violent urges and becoming The Joker. It’s the beginning of a strident public criticism he makes, while appearing on a late-night talk show, to explain his rage and motives. His criticism really is the first time he says something so politically cohesive in the movie.
In a basic sense, he says society made the rules and the rules were made to keep him marginalized and an outcast. He worked hard and honestly, but he lost his job cause of a dishonest coworker and cold-hearted boss. He wanted to get better, but he was cut off from his meds. He cared for his ill mother the best he could, but in the end, she was his biggest betrayer and abuser.
My life experience hasn’t been so bleak. In fact, there were many people, workers, clinicians and strangers that were nice to me and my mom, and did try to help in some way. And my mama knew I loved her and I know she loved me, even though her SMI strained our relationship.
But I damn well know there are too many people who have it worse, like Arthur. And some of them, unfortunately, do lash out with violence. As it is, I’ll never forget what was done to me and my family. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive. Society will try to focus on individual motives or psychological reasons for behavior it doesn’t like, but the fact of the matter is society, is too often, the monster.
A selfie with mom, a few months before I moved her in with me.
My mom’s birthday just passed. She would have been a young 68 years old. Like last year, I went to the cemetery to take her flowers. Visiting her grave on special occasions is a kind of ritual for me now, and I don’t expect that to really ever change. It’s part of my healing, and my healing is going to be a long road, I’ve realized.
Sure, the grief is lessening, but other issues remain. Or I should say, have revealed themselves, like my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Now, I knew I had anxiety. I’ve wrestled with that for some time. In fact, I mentioned that to my mom her last week with us, while she was in hospice, as a way to try and make some atonement for losing my temper with her at times. I apologized to her and said my anxiety can make me irritable.
Just weeks after my mom passed, though, I began to notice some persistent changes and problems with my mind and body. Things I hadn’t really noticed before. As I researched and learned through counseling, they were definite signs of PTSD. Before I explain my experience, here’s what the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) says about it:
“Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event… Nearly everyone will experience a range of reactions after trauma, yet most people recover from initial symptoms naturally. Those who continue to experience problems may be diagnosed with PTSD.”
It’s well-known that PTSD is something experienced by many combat vets. Experiencing the death of a loved one, however, is also traumatic and can lead to PTSD in survivors, especially when the suffering is prolonged.
Mental health advocates have a name for this. It’s called “traumatic loss.” Two researchers define it the following way:
“A death is considered traumatic if it occurs without warning; if it is untimely; if it involves violence; if there is damage to the loved one’s body; if it was caused by a perpetrator with the intent to harm; if the survivor regards the death as preventable; if the survivor believes that the loved one suffered; or if the survivor regards the death, or manner of death, as unfair and unjust.”
Restraints my mama was put in at a hospital.
My experience with my mom meets most of these “check boxes.” Over the course of many years, I lost my mom twice, once to her mental illness, the second time physically. In her last two years, the time she lived with me, her kidney disease would gradually take over. I witnessed her lose her physical strength and increasingly pre-age. And the violence? I saw, firsthand, how my mom was the victim of institutional discrimination, abuse and neglect. My heart broke over and over again, in many ways, in this whole ten year plus ordeal.
The sadness and guilt were as intense as I figured they would be, after my mom passed. But as I got better at navigating the murky waters of grief, I started to notice those other changes and problems.
For one, I was restless and uneasy. I would pace between rooms in the house at times. I didn’t recall ever doing that before, aside from the week my mom was in hospice. I liked to relax whenever possible. What was this about, I wondered?! I began noticing, too, that something was going on with my mind. Thoughts were racing and intrusive, and I would be a bit forgetful. I wasn’t able to “zone out” by just watching TV anymore. I had to, also, navigate and skim things on my computer, when watching a TV show. Memories and moments of despair played like songs on repeat in my mind, like the time my mom told me, about a month before she passed, that she didn’t have the strength in her hands to cut zucchinis for Albondingas soup. That was the last time she helped me in the kitchen.
I started to realize that it was like I was stuck. Stuck in my role as caretaker for my mom. Stuck trying to fight my hardest to keep her alive. Stuck dealing with, and often pushing back against, her doctors and hospital administrators, monitoring and assessing her condition every day, counseling her to take all her medicines, and then keeping her as comfortable as possible in hospice.
Yea, I was stuck. My body and mind didn’t know how to turn itself off or even how to lower the volume. Part of them, I’m sure, didn’t want to. I just wanted my mom back. How dare the system take her away from me, from us, so unjustly and prematurely! To accept my mom passing was to accept that we ultimately lost the “battle,” so to speak.
The restlessness, intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance I just described are classic symptoms of PTSD. I, thankfully, don’t have nightmares. But my sleep isn’t great. More than a year after mom passed, I still wake up a few times during the night, as if she’s still here. She’d wake me up, for different reasons, or I’d wake up to go check on her. And rare is the morning that I am able to sleep in past 7:00. I used to get up at that time, like clockwork, to give my mom her morning medicine. I can still be tired, but my racing thoughts won’t let me go back to sleep easily.
And irritability? Check. Anger? Check. While I experience these emotions at times, for what appears to be no logical reason at all, unrelenting intrusive thoughts summon them easily enough. As for flashbacks? Sure. When I see a homeless person or when I’m at a doctor’s office for a medical checkup, my blood pressure and anxiety easily rise. I’m back there, again, in some fashion.
A tribute to mom: A rose, representing mom, going to heaven.
All this said, I am in counseling and doing my best to take care of myself. I was 8 months into my grief counseling when I started to see another counselor for more formal treatment. He would diagnose me with PTSD. I’m also experiencing low-level depression, which makes the self-care part of my healing hard sometimes (I have little motivation to cook), but my counselors say I’m doing very well, all things considered. Still, I know I need to find a meaningful purpose. I need to find peace. I need connection with others. I need understanding. It’s a long road and will probably always be a winding one. But I’ll persist and continue to heal because I know my mom would want me to.
I did my best to write this past week, a year after mama passed away in hospice care. Between the intense emotions I was feeling, rituals I did for peace/tranquility and having to work, I only managed three posts. She would pass on the ninth day of hospice, only 24 hours after placing her in a hospice facility from home. I plan on writing on my experience with grief soon. For now, here’s something I wrote on February 27th, the anniversary of my mama passing, on Facebook.
My mama passed away a year ago today. I wasn’t with her at the time. I had decided to go to work, thinking that she had at least one more day left, given the “near death symptoms” she was exhibiting.
As it was, I had to put her into a hospice facility, because I didn’t have enough support at the house to take care of her. She had become bed ridden and my extended family had to return home. I did make arrangements, of course, to have someone there with her, while I was gone. In the morning, the substitute caretaker and in the afternoon, my dad.
Fortunately, dad was with her when she passed, but not being there with her when she passed gets me down at times. Course, people have tried to assure me it was better that way and that it’s what mom would have wanted. I’ve even heard stories of people dying in hospice care the moment a loved one arrives or leaves the room. If mama got to “choose” when to pass/transition, then I know that is what she would have wanted. She wouldn’t want me to see her/be with her like that and she’d want to be with my father, whom she always cared for, even after their divorce.
This week was hard, but today has been OK. I took mama flowers this morning at the cemetery, lit candles this afternoon, through the time of her official death, and am going to eat one of my mom’s favorite meals for dinner. I’m getting better and, dang, in some areas of my life, I’m hella strong and people better watch out cause I don’t have the anxiety I’ve carried around with me all these years, since my mama got sick, anymore. Thanks for those of you who have supported me, since I first posted about my mama’s condition just three years go. I appreciate you.
A year ago, today, would be day 6 of hospice for mom. By then, she wasn’t eating and was physically very weak. She needed substantial assistance to get out of bed to go to the bathroom or another room.
At one point, I believe on day 5, she asked one of my cousins why she was getting weaker. My mama truly didn’t understand. Such was the state of her serious mental illness (SMI); She’d have little self-awareness about her true medical condition.
Indeed, since my mom first started exhibiting signs of a SMI, this had been a constant feature. Even as her physical health sharply declined over the years, her lack of self-awareness just became more elaborate.
“The machines (blood pressure and glucose monitors) work when they want to.” “The lab results are being tampered with.” “The medicine is what’s making me sick.” She’d say all these things and more on a regular basis.
In fact, to my mom, the beginning of hospice just confirmed her belief that she would start getting better, since she could stop taking her medicines (In hospice, a patient’s regular medicine is stopped and the focus becomes on keeping him/her comfortable. Yay for morphine.) This is what she was saying God wanted, before hospice even started, after all.
While we were careful with our words, in response to my mom’s question, my cousin could only tell her the truth, “It’s your kidneys.” Mama didn’t respond. It was taking a lot of effort for her to talk at that point. Perhaps she just decided to save her energy or just pray silently. But I’m sure that didn’t make any sense to her at all. My mama was expecting to get healthier and stronger, not sicker and weaker.
As if navigating the situation and counseling her weren’t challenging enough, given her delusions, she’d also experience intense hallucinations.
Now before hospice, as part of her SMI, mom had regular audio hallucinations. But aside from occasionally seeing things that weren’t there, like cameras on the walls (They were usually just spots of sunlight coming into her room.), she didn’t really have visual hallucinations. Visual hallucinations began appearing relatively early in hospice, though. Being new to her, this understandably confused and, at times, distressed and scared my mama.
They’d begin on day 3 and, curiously, would begin around the same time she’d start developing severe apnea. My girlfriend and I were talking to my mom by her bedside in the evening, when she seemingly started nodding off to sleep. She closed her eyes mid-sentence and her head began to lower.
Around 30 seconds later, she raised her head, opened her eyes and asked us:
“Do you see them?”
“See who, mom? It’s just us. What’s there?”
“There’s some people standing over there. Shadowy figures. I can’t make out their faces.”
“Are they scary, mom?” I asked. To my great relief, she replied, “No.”
This continued around an hour that evening. Mom wouldn’t see things every waking minute, fortunately, before finally falling asleep. But she’d continue to see the shadowy figures and would begin to see flashes of light. She’d also say she saw a woman she didn’t recognize, sitting in the room with us. Thankfully, mom wasn’t frightened, but she was perplexed by these new experiences.
Disturbing and scary hallucinations first appeared in the form of several faces she would see. One appearing minutes after seeing a little girl. We had just convened in the living room with my aunt and cousins.
“Do you see the little girl?” she asked, as she pointed behind the couch.
“No mom.” “No Aunt Josie.”
The little girl disappeared and we continued talking and interacting with her, as normally and supportively as possible. My cousins, being older than me, had a lot of good memories to share with my mom and I about my mom’s younger days. They were reminiscing when my mama let out a sudden shriek and pointed towards one corner of the room. I don’t remember the exact words she used to describe the face, but she described a ghoulish or devilish morphing one.
Unfortunately, these scary visual hallucinations would continue when mom had acute psychotic episodes. I believe three altogether. In the evening on day 6, for example, she started complaining that her feet were getting really hot. She pleaded with my girlfriend to take her socks off. “Hurry! Hurry!” she said frighteningly.
She then described seeing the earth opening up below her and became afraid she was going to fall down through. We did the best we could to keep her calm and assure her Jesus wouldn’t let anything happen to her. “Focus on Jesus, mama. Look for Jesus. Nothing sinister is welcome here.”
A picture/illustration of Jesus mom had in her room. a caption
The hospice chaplain recommended we tell her to look for Jesus and the light, when she started seeing things. During another acute episode, I read her favorite verses from Psalms for close to an hour. My aunt and cousins prayed with her, recited the Rosary and had salt at the ready for the duration of their stay.
I saw my mama suffer tremendously throughout the years, physically, mentally and spiritually. It traumatized and saddened me, for sure. And seeing her scared during hospice was particularly heart wrenching and painful, since she was in her final days.
Not being especially spiritual or religious, I found myself asking my grandmother, my mom’s mom, to help me and mom, out of desperation. I think she visited us on day 7, in the early morning. I’m pretty sure I smelled her, after not smelling her in more than 20 years. I, also, think mom sent a humming bird to visit me this past Monday, what would be the first day of hospice last year. I’ll elaborate on that event in a subsequent blog post.
Hospice was life changing. I’ll never be the same again.
Mama would be in hospice at home a total of 9 days. After two days of many tender, loving moments with family and no significant complications, she’d start experiencing nausea and end up vomiting twice from her bed on day 3. That day was a year ago today.
Mama’s room, a place of tranquility now.
This was on my mind pretty heavily for most of the day. I would actually end up sweeping and mopping her bedroom floor today because of it. The grief and restlessness motivating me to do so were clear. I went over the areas of the floor she vomited on particularly well, though the floor wasn’t too dirty, since nobody enters that room now but me. And that’s just occasionally, mostly to open and close the blinds.
Overall, I’m thankful I’ve felt pretty good today, though. This is in stark contrast to how I felt for much of Monday, what was day 1 of hospice for mom. Those feelings of tremendous worry, fear, sadness and even some guilt that started to hit me when hospice day arrived reappeared, forcing me to relive it all over again.
My mind raced with tremendous stress and anxiety, on that day a year ago. Would the hospice staff and nurses be good and helpful? I heard of bad experiences with loved ones in hospice from friends and family. Even if they were decent, would my mom end up suffering too much in some way, still? Kidney failure is supposed to be one of the relatively easiest, painless ways to die, I was told. OK, but there’s still the matter of her serious mental illness. That was never successfully treated. I knew acute episodes were going to be inevitable. And the fact remained that she was coming home to die! I didn’t want mom to die! I fought so hard to protect her and keep her alive for so long!
On top of all this, we couldn’t even tell my mom she was coming home to die in hospice care. My mom wanted to live. She didn’t even believe she was really sick, due to her serious mental illness. For years, in fact, she regularly insisted that “devils” were attacking her organs and that she didn’t really even need medicine. I lied and told my mom that the new hospital bed, oxygen tank and medical support at home, all provided by the hospice, were just part of added support the hospital was giving us. Luckily, she didn’t question any of that.
Not being able to tell my mom, though, was to a large extent like a gut punch, the latest in a long history of gut punches. There was nothing else that could be done, though. Mom was suffering mightily. For months prior, she was declining markedly and becoming increasingly uncooperative and medically non-compliant. I knew the time was near and was actually frustrated that her doctors wouldn’t help me put together a plan for putting her into hospice. “She has the right to refuse treatment,” they’d say. I grew fearful that she’d end up dying of a heart attack at the house, perhaps alone or in my arms. Hospice was the more humane option, when all things were considered. I knew it was the right choice, as hard as it was.
The hospice staff and nurses ended up being wonderful. The nurses were exceptionally responsive, skilled and caring. They’d end up coming every day. What a blessing! We’d have some difficult times with my mom, but overall, things went as good as can be, considering the circumstances. And for that, I’m grateful.
But seeing my mama increasingly decline (slip away) was probably the hardest part for me. Day 3 was the marked start of that. From then on, every day, she’d get weaker and exhibit more symptoms that death (her transition) was nearing. She’d begin to lose her appetite. Her physical strength would begin to leave her. She’d start hallucinating pretty regularly, too. She’d become bed ridden. She’d start frothing at the mouth….
A small piece of pumpkin pie, I believe, was the last meal she’d have. She loved pumpkin pie. In hospice, patients are allowed to eat whatever they wanted, within limits. That was on day 5, I believe. My memory of events and the timeline do get a bit fuzzy. It’s the trauma, I’m told.
February arrived with a wallop. I was instantaneously taken back to this time last year, the month my mama passed. The memories and flashbacks began occurring with a feeling of slight nausea. That hasn’t happened before, at least not since mama entered hospice the second week of February.
As February approached, I’ve wanted to write a post on my yearlong journey with grief. All this has changed my mind. My emotions are raw enough right now. I need to be careful. I’ll be visiting enough memories and experiences naturally. I don’t need to immerse myself any further.
Instead, I thought I’d post a bit of our hospice experience. I believe I still haven’t processed the time and events fully, so maybe this would help. Today, the 16th, was the day she entered hospice. It was initiated in the hospital. She had been admitted the day before, due to breathing complications. Mama had stopped dialysis and started experiencing more fluid retention, exacerbating her congestive heart failure.
As was usually the case, getting mom into hospice was fraught with immense stress and hospital/medical bullshit. Here’s a short recollection of how the decision was made…. by me:
A year ago today, the hospital gave me the authority to make decisions for mom. I had to put her into hospice. She had stopped dialysis and was increasingly medically non-compliant. It was a decision you never want to make. I didn’t hesitate when they asked what I wanted, though. Mama’s suffering was too great.
It was a bit fortuitous the way it played out. Top to bottom, authorities and health care workers gave her too much agency. “She has the right to decide/refuse treatment,” they’d say. On this day, her doctor and the hospital social worker were in the room with me together. That never happens.
The doctor walked in while I was talking to the social worker. At that point, the social worker was being super unprofessional, casually talking to me about how downhill San Francisco had gone. How dirty it is and how it “smells like pee.” I’m pretty sure I made her feel uncomfortable. The moment she walked into the room, minutes before, I told her what I was expecting from them.
Hospitals have traumatized me. I was hyper vigilant and told her my mom is not being released, until a plan is in place for her to be adequately taken care of, whether at our home or a nursing facility. The doctor walked in and, after a short conversation with me, straight up asked the social worker, “Does Josie have mental capacity to make decisions?” The social worker, without assessing my mom directly, said, to my relief and surprise, “No. She has a serious mental illness.”
The social worker only knew she had a SMI because I told her she did during our short conversation. She didn’t assess my mama directly like I believe she is required to do. Mama was, luckily, sleeping the whole conversation, just a few feet away. (Hospitals are dumb. Their staff will have conversations about their patients’ mental states right in front of them.)
Interestingly, many times in the past, even when authorities knew mom had a SMI, they still always hid behind their civil rights language and laws: “She has the Right to refuse,” they’d say. This even when she was clearly in a psychotic state.
When I look back, maybe it was God or the universe helping me and my family. Mama had been saying Moses was coming for her, after all…. (To be continued)
(This is a revision to a post I wrote in December 2016. It lost its focus halfway through, I recently realized.)
The end of the year holidays and winter cold were some of the hardest times for me and my family, since around 2010. Since then, my mom’s housing was unstable at best. The worst of it was punctuated by her being effectively homeless for two of those years, 2010-2012. In that time period, very short housing stints aside, she primarily lived in a car.
Mom and I on our way to Marie Callender’s for Thanksgiving in ’15.
I’d do my best to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with her, regardless of her immediate living situation. From the Bay Area, I’d drive down to meet her in Bakersfield or Fresno, take her to Marie Callender’s, her preferred restaurant choice, and usually put her up in a hotel room, so I could spend extra time with her.
I’d, also, take her shopping for some clothes and undergarments. She’d regularly have minimal clothing. Clothes that she’d buy or I’d buy for her would, typically, disappear within a couple of months.
She’d claim people would steal them from her car or from the places she was living in. I knew, though, that she probably threw them out. That was her modus operandi, after all. When pressed enough with questions, she’d say they became contaminated with toxins or spoiled by evil spirits. “The devils tried them on!” she’d exclaim.
This is what the holidays were for me. There was no real respite or joy from my time off of work. It caused me immense emotional pain to visit my mom, since I knew my mom preferred to live with either me or my sister. I despised the system for her feeling abandoned and/or unloved.
We had tried to care for her, of course, in the past. Me, in San Francisco, in the summer of 2009. My sister, for a few months, in San Diego in 2005. But it proved to be too difficult and stressful.
My mom, unfortunately, refused to accept psychiatric treatment. While she had her “good days” and could appear functioning or “normal,” going back to at least 2009, I could discern she was in a psychotic state a majority of the time.
Delusions were definitely there most of the time. She believed and openly claimed people and the F.B.I were spying on her and following her. She, also, experienced hallucinations. The “good voices” were the “Gods.” The “evil voices” were the “devils and witches.” She would “talk to herself” for hours, including throughout the night, at times. Interestingly, in more recent years, she learned to talk to herself quietly, outside of acute episodes. If I couldn’t hear her, I could still see her lips move.
Her medical and psychiatric conditions would both deteriorate over the years, from her not being able to take adequate care of herself. In fact, beginning in around 2014, hospitalizations would become a regular occurrence. In my estimation, she’d be hospitalized every two months, on average.
By this time, she had developed congestive heart failure, cataracts and a schwannoma (a “benign” brain tumor), to go along with her diabetes. Like clockwork, she’d regularly stop taking her various medications, which would then exacerbate her medical problems. Her CHF would cause breathing/respiratory problems and her glucose level would become life threatening, often times reaching over 400! In 2015, this would culminate in my mom and I spending our Christmas in a hospital. She would be intubated for four days, including Christmas day.
By then, I had had enough. I couldn’t take seeing my mama’s health deteriorate, particularly her physical health. At only 63 years old, she’d have to walk with a cane and, sometimes, a walker. There were even times when she had to use a wheelchair.
I remember the first time I saw her in one. She looked so feeble and dejected, with her head hung down and food on her shirt. My mom was prideful, beautiful and strong! Despite all she was going through, she’d still do her best to assure me she was doing OK and getting better, when I’d inquire about her condition/situation on a visit or on the phone.
In mid-2015, I decided to start looking for housing for my mom and I. It took me longer than it should have. One place I secured, in December of 2015, fell through when the dishwasher sprung a leak and flooded the floors, the very first week I moved in. When I began my search, I certainly didn’t think I’d end up in Modesto. I signed the lease for a nice single family home in mid-February 2016 and moved mom in the following week.
Mama after helping decorate the tree in ’16.
As difficult as most of this past year has been living with my mom, I find much peace and consolation in knowing she’s physically safe. In the least, I don’t have to spend any sleepless night worrying about where and how she is, like I used to before. It hit freezing temperatures for the first time this winter this past week. Letters my mom would write to me, exclaiming how cold it was living in the car, have given way to complaints that the house is too cold at 65 degrees.
Tomorrow is Christmas and my mom has been able to enjoy her first Christmas tree in about ten years. She’ll, also, have presents to unwrap and a delicious meal made by our friend, Shari. She’s still greatly distressed psychiatrically, but I have, more or less, been able to help medically stabilize her. She takes her medicines and goes to all her doctor appointments, mostly. For me, my blood pressure is the best it has been in years. For these things, we are grateful.
(My beautiful mama passed away in late February last year. While she was weaker, from stage 4 kidney disease, and more aloof in her last months, I did the best I could to make sure she had a good Thanksgiving and Christmas, nonetheless. She was, of course, greatly missed this past holiday season. I love you mom! Happy New Year!)
As it was, I had to put her into a hospice facility, because I didn’t have enough support at the house to take care of her. She had become bed ridden and my extended family had t
benevolent neglect 