One Thousand Pound Sisters

I sat on my mom's couch the Sunday after we found her bottle.  We brought her dog back from the vet with us.  The day wore on.  I watched my sister start puffing up the air mattress and realized I was in a really bad mood.  My sister emptied Hunter's drain throughout the day and walked him outside on a leash so that he could pee.  We put a soccer jersey on him, the same one Lola wore when she had stitches, so that he wouldn't scratch at himself.  When we tried to eat, Hunter tried to bite my sister.  More than once.  

The following Monday was Temple's birthday, the birthday Alec and I chose for her.  My sister took me to the dog bakery to pick up her cake.  I went by my house and got a few things.  And then, we went back to my mom's.  We worried about leaving her alone for any period of time, even in the morning.  Alec facetimed me that night while he gave Temple her steak dinner and a piece of cake.  I watched her get her presents.  My mom asked a couple of times what was going on.  
"It's Temple's birthday!"  my sister and I shouted.
She didn't really seem to care.  

I spent the days trying to get into my mom's accounts.  It was nightmarish.  She had a hodgepodge of methods for accessing her stuff, mainly from her phone.  She didn't know any passwords or usernames.  When I would try to take care of things on her phone, the face recognition thing would lock me out.  It was infuriating.  My mom was giving money away left and right and I was trying to get it to stop.  She had monthly and sometimes weekly subscriptions that were costing hundreds of dollars at a pop.  I downloaded a financial power of attorney.  I paid off her car with some money I had gotten her to transfer into her checking account.  I wanted to be able to sell it and put that money toward other bills.  

My sister puffed up the air mattress again.  I laid there in the living room, in front of the front door.  It felt like the Twilight Zone.  My sister laid next to me.  Some nights we would laugh and make jokes, I guess gallows' humor.  Other times we laid there in silence.  Hunter would rumble around, his cone bumping everything.  One night he shit on the floor and my sister stepped in it.  She was rightfully screaming and I just sat there, trying not to cry.  

I emailed an alcohol rehab.  They called and did a phone evaluation.  My mom told them that she only had two drinks a day.  My sister and I started screaming.  I talked back and forth repeatedly with these people.  Some representative recommended a place three hours south of Atlanta.  They said that would be the best place for my mom.  They said they would call back after they tried to get the request approved by Medicare.  They said they would know within two hours.  They called back a few days later.

"Medicare isn't going to cover her if she says she only drinks two drinks a day."  they informed me.

We put my mom on speaker.

"She is going through a gallon of rum every couple of days.   TELL THEM MOM."  we yelled.

They said Medicare would cover it.  

My mom needed new hearing aids and apparently had some benefit through Medicare that would cover two-thirds of the cost.  I went to the website they told me to go to and did the online hearing evaluation.  I kept getting error codes when trying to order the actual hearing aids.  I called the number and one of the smarter representatives said that the evaluation had to be done on an iPhone.

"Look, that seems a little odd.  I am using a MacBook.  How would these old people get hearing aids if they didn't have an iPhone?"  I asked.

The representative got short with me and before I knew it, I was screaming at her.

My mom started laughing, making fun of me for losing my temper.  I was ready to shove my foot up her ass, too.  

I called back and got a different person who said that my mom had to go to a certain clinic and get the evaluation there and that they would order the hearing aids.

"That's funny."  I responded.

"Are you sure it isn't because you have to use an iPhone?"  I asked sarcastically.

I called all the numbers and got my mom an appointment the following week.  We decided to put off the rehab until she had her hearing aids.  The guy said they could have them on her the following Monday and we decided we'd bring her to the rehab that Tuesday.  We didn't think therapy would work if she couldn't hear anything.  I called the rehab to tell them and they told me to call back the weekend before she was arriving so that they could arrange a bed.  

After multiple attempts, I got some Bangladeshi guy on the phone that helped me get my mom's Medicare open enrollment done.  I was praying it was being done correctly, and just kept saying yes I'll wait, thank you, yes I appreciate your time.  

The days wore on.  I missed my house.  My dog.  Alec.  Clean clothes.  My mood was already bad because of my foot surgery lack of mobility and it was only getting lower and lower.  At my house, I was rarely able to go outside.  No exercise, either.  This was even worse.  I kept contesting charges, cancelling subscriptions, trying to break into my mom's online accounts.  Then, I would put on Good Times in the late afternoon.  And Love Boat.  When five thirty hit each day and it finally got dark I was sort of relieved.  At my mom's suggestion, my sister and I started watching "1000 -lb Sisters" on one of her TV apps.  I am usually in bed by 10:30, but as the days grew I started staying up until two in the morning, unable to sleep.  I'd lay there next to my sister on the air mattress in the Bermuda Triangle, watching these horribly fat people act horrible.  

My mom would go between being clueless, to snippy to occasionally being her former self.  One late afternoon, she randomly threw up on herself and turned yellow.  She shuddered from drafts we couldn't feel.  

Almost a week after Hunter's December 6th surgery, my sister and I took him back to Blue Pearl to get his drain removed.  That felt like a big step, but we were afraid to leave my mom alone for even an hour or so, even early in the morning.   I wanted to get Hunter boarded while we figured out how to get my mom to rehab but it was very difficult with his drain, stitches, medication and Christmas coming.  People were basically like, hell no.  We noticed that he turned evil pretty fast and would bite when the urge struck him.  My sister and I joked about how his eyes would narrow and go dark and he became a different dog.  A dog that bites.  I sat out front at the specialist and saw a door swing open.  Hunter stood in the back, his green soccer jersey tied tightly on him and his cone protruding out.  He was glaring right at me.  

I tried to find a mobile notary for the power of attorney.  Some guy I found on Yelp wanted a hundred dollars to come to us so we decided to drive to him.  In Rex, Georgia.  The three of us going anywhere was a circus.  My mom on a walker, me on a knee scooter and my sister opening doors and lifting our equipment into the car.  Fuck, even the dog had stitches and a cone.  We sat in my mom's car in Rex, Georgia in front of the notary's house, signing like crazy.   He was wearing paint covered sweat pants because he was remodeling.  I sat in the same clothes I had been wearing for days.  

My sister took my mom to get her initial evaluation for hearing aids at the clinic.  We were running so late that I sat in the car because it takes me about two hours to move an inch.  We went to the bank to get my name put on my mother's accounts.  We tried to do it online, but they said we had to make an appointment with a branch.  When I made the appointment, they asked if we wanted to do it on the phone.  When they called for the phone appointment, they said we had to come in to the branch.  The Monday the hearing aids arrived, we had been told that they could be fitted the same day.  When I called, an incredibly pleasant woman said that they could not be fitted until Thursday.  Getting my mom to that rehab kept getting farther and farther away.  When I called to schedule her intake, the guy on the phone wanted to start the whole process all over again.  

"We've been through this."  I told him.

"They even got approval from Medicare."

"Okay, I'll call you back in ten minutes."  he stated.

No one called for days.  That was probably the fourth time I had heard call you in ten minutes or in two hours, only to hear nothing.  

My sister and threw away all the food in my mom's fridge.  It was rotten.  My sister took her bathroom trash out.  We had to space it out over two weekly trash days so that we wouldn't overflow the herbie.  The house was starting to smell a little better, or maybe I was simply dying inside there.  I had little fantasies.  While my mom was in rehab, I would get her house cleaned and unbox all of the shit that had been sitting in boxes for seven years.  All the stuff she never unpacked when she moved in.  We'd get rid of the filthy chair she sat in all of the time and buy a new one.  I'd get the door replaced that was damaged from the break-in, put some blinds up.  Maybe get bars on the window that someone had climbed through.  That notary had volunteered his home repair services.  Maybe she would be better if her house was better.   I started a to-do list for while she was away.

My sister and I took Hunter to get his stitches out.  He was given a steroid prescription that would last weeks and required daily hot compresses to help him get rid of some excess fluid near the surgery site.  I spoke to the rehab again and they started expressing reservations about my mom coming.  
"Is she a fall risk?"  
"Well yeah, when she's shit faced."  I responded.
"Because, you know we don't know..." they continued and asked me why I was referred to them in the first place.  I thought my head might explode. 

"If she's been sober for a week, we aren't sure if she needs us....."

"My sister and I have been sleeping on her living room floor this whole time.  We aren't working, we aren't doing anything.  This was not some act of will on her part, we have literally barred the door so that alcohol can't get in."  

"Okay, we'll call you back...."  they responded.  

"I'm incontinent."  my mom whispered, a dramatic look on her face.

I looked back at her.

"Are you going to sabotage this?"  I asked.  

She tried to look innocent.

"Are you telling me that you can't throw your diaper in the trash and put a new one on?"

I was furious.  I realized that she was really in no rush to go there.  And that rehabs aren't really dying to take on an eighty year-old.  She had kind of found a sweet spot where no one wanted to treat her.  And, she really just wanted me and my sister to leave.  No acknowledgement of how awful all of this was for us.  No acknowledgement that she had a real problem.  I called the original hospital and asked about their services.  They offered a five day medical detox.  We needed residential treatment, for a minimum of thirty days, I was guessing.  But who the fuck knows?  This whole thing hasn't exactly been my skill-set.  I texted back and forth with a private rehab that said they could keep her for thirty days for $15,000-$18,000 for the month.   I asked if they knew of anything else and they gave me the phone number for a crisis hotline.  I called it.  They lady emailed a list of five state-run rehabilitation centers.  One was in Atlanta.  I called. 

"We do evaluations every morning, but our last morning for evaluations is Monday because of....."  she trailed off.

"Because of Christmas."  I finished for her.

"I understand."

I understand that people get Christmas.  

Shortly after, my sister and my mom got in a huge argument.  My mom was being really rude, dismissive, snarling at my sister in her mean alcoholic voice.  I snapped.

"ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS YOURSELF!!!"  I screamed.  

Her face filled with fake shock.

"OH YES!  OH POOR YOU!  DISMAY!"  I screamed.

"I HATE YOU!  DIE DIE DIE!"

I grabbed my stuff and starting throwing it in my bag.  

"We're taking the dog too!"  my sister yelled.

We sat on the front porch with our stuff in piles.  Hunter was out there, too.  My sister's husband pulled up in their van and we piled in.  The air mattress.  Her dog.  Our piles of clothes.  On what would have been the tenth night at my mom's house, we went home.  

I looked out of the window at the Christmas lights in people's yards.  I thought of something my sister said a few days earlier, when we sat on my mom's front porch.  

"People can smell the white trash on us.  You know that we will never get away from it."