Mommystuffs

Mom is doing better.  She has the pacemaker and the catheter out, so that means her heart is doing okay, rhythm-wise, although she is still in CICU.  Last night, she was being her normal self bizarre and freaking her nurse out; as she was wheeled up and her nurse was hooking up her crap, she made the comment that as much as this had hurt, she was certainly glad that she’d never had a heart attack.  

…huh?

The nurse advised her that, in fact, she *had* actually had a heart attack.  To which, Mummers replied that she may have, but her heart was not damaged, so it was not a *real* heart attack, just a painful episode.  To which the nurse responded that as far as anyone could tell, she would have heart damage—as most heart attack patients do incur.  To which my mother said (irritatedly) that everyone knows that heart attacks cause heart damage, which is why she is so glad that she has never had one.

Welcome to my Mommy.  Enjoy.

The nurse asked me if I thought she was acting peculiarly.  As much as I wanted to corroborate her suspicions of CICU psychosis, I had to tell her that Mummers was actually being 99.9% normal.  Then Nursie looked at *me* like I was weird.  

Eh.  You’re about to have at least eight hours with her.  You’ll figure it out.

When Mom had her bypass surgery a few years ago, they warned us when we went back to visit that she would have “pump-head”, a condition resulting from the use of the heart-lung machine that keeps one alive whilst the heart is temporarily out of service for renovation.  As a “pump-head”, they said, Mummers was going to be blathering, nonsensical, and possibly delusional, and they just wanted us to be prepared for it—our mom hadn’t lost her crackers, and this was Only Temporary.

Neither Meg nor I could tell any difference in her personality whatsoever.  I personally believe that speaks volumes, so I’ll not.  :-)

When we left (they limit you to visits of only five or ten minutes), her nurse mentioned that Mom would be back to normal in a day or so.  I told the nurse that Mom seemed normal already, except for her unwavering belief that her nurses were trying to kill her.  She had asked me to summon the police a few times, and tried to talk me into wheeling her bed out of there, begging me not to leave her with the crazy women who were trying to murder her.

“Oh,” said the nurse, “that’s probably why she keeps asking for a telephone.  That’s CVICU Psychosis.  It’s normal.”  

So what she is saying, I explained to Meg in the elevator as we left, is that we’ve finally found a place where Mummers fits in.  They *understand* her.  They’ll feed her regularly, and she will get used to it after a while.  Let’s run off to Alaska and leave her here.

Meg declined, so a few weeks later we picked her up and took her home.  Her nurses, notably, did not all come out to send her off as Squooshable’s did.  We think that they may have been hiding.  And to this day, my mother is still convinced that her nurses in the CVICU were trying to kill her.  She is a little vague on the motivation as well as the method, but if you disagree, she will argue with you.  Vehemently.  As proof, she brings up the fact that they would not give her a telephone so that she could call the police to stop them from killing her.  And she’s harbouring anger towards me over my not having phoned the police for her, something she still occasionally brings up in arguments.

Yes…that’s my Permanently Pump-Headed Mommy.

So she’s as okay as she’s going to be in her situation right now.  I do not *like* seeing her like this.  I especially don’t like it that I have no one I can complain about her to (and I can’t rail on her, of course), and I have no one to kvetch about how incredibly…whatever it was of her to put this all in my hands.  That was really unfair.  Sigh.

But I guess it’s all okay.  Who cares, anyway.  What is important is that she is still alive.  This would have been a sucky Holiday Season without her.  She’s all about the turning over a new leaf thing right now.  I guess we will see how long it lasts *this* time.  I do love her.  And she’s having a blast driving her nurses and the nutritionist completely batshit, so I guess that’s good.  I like it when she’s happy.  I like it even better when it is not at my expense.

Now I have to get some sleep so that I can go visit with her before I go to get the ultrasound done.

G’night.