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[quote=Anonymous]Long story….tldr she’s driving me batshit insane by refusing medical help and has run her health into a gutter and I now I need to leave home/kids and go help right the ship . And I’m selfishly mad and resentful because the timing is nothing short of predominant (to quote the office)

I live here and have a handful of young kids.

My mom lives about 1000 miles away. She is 80, single and I am her only child. There are other family members that live near her with various levels of interaction. Frankly they would see her more but she spends a lot of time avoiding and ignoring people. In her younger years she would avoid situations that were not planned out (ie if someone dropped by unannounced she would not answer the door). In her older years this has progressed to not making or avoiding plans at all and therefore seeing people less often.

She does not see doctors or dentists. She does zero preventative health care or screenings. She does not have a primary care physician. She never has. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. In the last 10+ years it has been a source of arguments and frustrations with her avoiding me/the topic when she is sick or this subject arises. She does get vaccinations like Covid or the flu as she sees fit from the pharmacy.

Now we get to this summer. 
Day 1 - 6 - she does not answer my phone calls/rarely returns my texts. Turns out she is sick with a “stomach bug” her words”. It’s pretty typical for her to ignore and avoid me when she is sick due to the practice of avoiding conversations about medical care.
Day 7 she seems fine, attends dinner with people I know
Day 8 no shows at a birthday party. Does not call or text to let people know. Minutes before sending someone over she answers the phone and says she has food poisoning from dinner the night before. I’m also told that she delivered the birthday gift the night before, was she planning on missing? Why did she pre deliver the birthday gift if she was going to the party before she had food poisoning?
Day 8-10 she is presumably recovering from food poisoning but continues to be distant. I assume it’s the 1-2 hit from two illnesses back to back.
Day 11 I receive a very early morning text from her that she has tested positive for Covid and cannot attend the family vacation that is starting in 4 days. Shit. I try to talk to her on the phone but she is short on details. Did she have Covid last week? No that was different. Was the “food poisoning” really Covid? Or was it the stomach bug? She refuses antivirals. Refuses telehealth. Arguing is pointless.
Day 12-15 she seems to be doing fine. No better no worse. Glad she is resting.
Day 16-22 I am with kids on vacation. She is still avoiding me or is she too sick to talk? Or is she bummed she’s missing the vacation? Cell phone reception is spotty at best. I reach out everyday and she isn’t terribly responsive but says she’s doing better.
Day 23 I am notified by a neighbor that an ambulance was at her house. Doctor’s running tests. Worried it’s heart failure. She’s too weak to talk on the phone. She is not ambulatory. She has overall body weakness. She has metabolic acidosis. She is in ICU tonight.

SELFISHLY I knew that her neglecting her health would end up with some crisis like this. I’m pissed off that this could have been POTENTIALLY avoided with some routine care or going to see a doctor at anyone of the preceding days. Numerous people offered to take her.

I know there will be many people who tell me to think of her and not myself. I have spent ten years trying to get her to live with us, live near us, see a doctor, monitor her blood pressure, follow up on the heart murmur that was detected when I wrangled her into cataract surgery five years ago when she couldn’t see anything. But she neglected all of her health and now it’s blown up. Kids are starting school soon and I have all the shit you have to do the days before school starts. Will they be fine with dad juggling work and their stuff? Yes, they will live. But it doesn’t have to be like this! So now I need to drop all this and go deal with this mess. And I am resentful. And I’m mad that even when we fix this, ASSUMING we can get her healthy again, she will go right back to her old ways until this happens again.

I am mad that she denied medical help over and over and over and over. I anm mad that she lies and avoids everyone in her attempts to keep people ant bay so she can let her health decline in hiding.  And I am going to lose my mind when she goes right back to doing it again. And yes, i am mad that it makes me look like a shitty kid for not helping. When I have tried to help and she won’t let me. I bought her a blood pressure cuff for at home use and she fing packed in her suitcase and gave it back to me because she wouldn’t even monitor it at home.

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