Last night I dreamt I'd forgotten my name because I sold my soul, but I woke just the same

I feel like a zombie version of myself this morning. Last night we had to take my mother to the hospital emergency room and she's still there. In case you don't know, she has MS and while she typically manages well, things get complicated when she gets sick with even a cold. Especially at her age. She takes a gazillion drugs, most of which have actual street value, and this also worries me and has for some time. So when she came down with bronchitis earlier this week, the coughing triggered her trigeminal neuralgia, which is a fancy way of saying the nerves in her jaw send shooting pains up the side of her face. It's quite debilitating. The doctors prescribed her a narcotic and something to calm those nerves, but did not tell her to cease any other medications in the meanwhile (this point is of course debatable because my parents do not listen well).

Two days ago, my father asked me to go over and take care of her but I declined; I said I'd get things for her and take anything to her she needed, but I didn't want to be at the house because I can't afford to get sick. I've become a total germaphobe - purell and handwashing make my hands dry and cracked and I refuse to touch anything from a student who is not well. Plus, I think my dad should be the one to take time off to care for my mother, not me, but that's yet another story entirely. I did call her yesterday to ask how she was and she told me she was "very confused" but I didn't think much about it when she said my dad was home for lunch.a

By suppertime, dad called to say that mom was barely awake and incoherent and could I come over. I asked if he had called an ambulance, but alas, he had not. Decided that a phone call to me was preferable to the one to 911. Ugh. Men of my father's generation didn't need wives, they needed mommies. Anyway, I go over there and she's sitting up but looks like someone who just came from a Dead concert - she's obviously OD'ed on something and when I talk to her she can only reply - if at all - with nonsense. She doesn't know what day it is, what month it is, nor how many grandchildren she has; in fact, she seems somewhat confused about the fact that she has them at all. I do mini Mental Status Exam on her and she scores zero. Can't tell me a thing. When I ask her who her own children are, she can only reply by spelling out the word "thing." I tell my dad that she is at the very least overmedicated and because she has twitching muscle spasms, I worry that she's having a small stroke. I tell him to get dressed because we're going to the hospital. Naturally, he opts for an ambulance instead.

Why is it that I'm the only one who can manage this situation?

It's me who rides in the ambulance because dad needs to "get dressed and wait for Tim" - my brother, who will undoubtedly ride in a white horse and save everyone and go home early because he needs his sleep. He will get all the credit for coming despite the fact he did nothing but grouse about bad hospital service and how much he has to do tomorrow. Yet another baggage item to be checked for later unpacking. The paramedics give her a drug to reverse the effects of narcotics in the ambulance, and by the time we get to the hospital, she is more like herself and can tell me that she has six grandchildren and clearly knows who I am and where she is. But she doesn't know why. It takes two hours to see a doctor, who basically only seems to know everything that I do about the situation and orders a million tests.

I have to teach at 8 the next morning (now), and so I excuse myself because my brother and father are there and call Jamison to come pick me up. During the time it takes for J-mo to get there, my brother decides he really needs to get home (but doesn't want to be selfish, he says), but he's the one who drove dad to the hospital. So instead of going home when Jamison arrives, I have to sit for another hour plus while my dad goes back home to get a vehicle. When he finally does get back, I finally go home and go to bed. It's after midnight and Jamison's got a yard full of fucking car parts that have to come into the garage tonight because it's going to snow. Make that three checked pieces of baggage.

So this morning I call dad's cell phone for an update because I knew they kept my mom overnight. Turns out, he went on home after all of that. He was so tired. I'm so angry that my mom spent the night alone that I could kill someone, and namely him. He was sleeping soundly at seven a.m. today. He mumbled that my mother has pneumonia at the very least, and they're concerned about her toxicity levels. That's all he knows because he's not fucking there. If I'd known that, I would have stayed there with her myself. She was still confused and there's no way she's going to be able to retell what the doctor says, and I still don't know what her head scan said. I doubt she had a stroke, but I want someone looking at important documents to tell me this and not just go on my educated guess.

And why am I here to teach anyway? I should be on the way to the hospital myself except I didn't know how to cancel this early morning thing without a whole class of folks being angry with me. Oy.