In Which I Challenge the Medical Establishment

It is 2:27 a.m. on Tuesday morning as I type this. I am FUCKING FURIOUS. I am also trying not to weep out of frustration, anger, anxiety, stress, and utter complete despair. Why? Well, it's like this... as regular readers know, my mother is dealing with kidney disease. She's in kidney failure and undergoing dialysis three times a week. She comes home from dialysis loopy--unsteady on her feet, out in left field, weak, and just not on this planet. She's also been falling. A lot. She's blacked her eye at least four times since December--she's fallen on her face on the front walk coming from (or heading to) dialysis. This is NOT a good thing. This is, in fact, a VERY BAD thing. And today was the kicker--she went out on my uncle and hurt her back. He had the sense to call an ambulance. They rushed her to Lawrence Memorial. He called me around 6 to tell me, I went up and took over the watch, and then, convinced they were going to keep her, left for home around 12:15 a.m. Yeah, quarter after midnight. I hadn't had dinner. I was exhausted (loooong but productive day at work). I had been trying to keep Ma calm while dealing with assorted head-splitting beeps and lots of horrible energy (psychically, emergency rooms fuck me up completely, and tonight, all four bays were filled with elderly patients; the woman in the bay next to us had the single most annoying son... I wanted to strangle him to make him stop talking; yes, my nerves were shot, and to have done so would have been MOST insensitive of me because the poor bastard was in the same horrible position as myself). I got home, reheated some leftover Harrow's chicken pie (mmmmm... chicken pie) for me and the cat (even though she has nothing to do with my mother, she still likes the company in the house--she likes to have someone to nag), managed to eat most of it (sans the bit for the cat) when the phone rings. It's 1:00 a.m. I KNOW it's the fucking hospital before I even answer it. Sure enough, it's the hospital telling me that they're releasing my mother because there's no reason to keep her. Allow me to repeat that: they are releasing her because there is no reason to keep her. Less than 45 minutes before, I had left my mother, ditzy and out of it, dehydrated, weak, in the hospital, secure in the knowledge that she would be safe for the night. She would be watched over in a place where they could monitor her and find some answers. Now, they were telling me they weren't keeping her. I put on my hoodie over my sweats (I had shucked the clothes and contact lenses), slipped on the sneaks, heated up another hunk of chicken pie and grabbed a water for her because she hadn't eaten since breakfast and I proceeded to drive like I was trying to qualify for NASCAR up to LMH. I found my mother still loopy, still dehydrated, unfed, undressed, and out of it. And they said she was fine. I lost it. To use a favorite Britism, I went spare. I flipped the fuck out. Folks, my heart is being ripped out of my chest watching what is happening to my mother, seeing the bullshit going on. She's dying. Slowly, horribly dying. There is nothing good, just, or clean about her decline. It's horrible, unfair, and if I had a direct line to God or whoever is running the show, I would call the fucker out and kick his or her ass six ways to Sunday for this, and FUCK the ineffable plan and everything happening for a reason. This is my Mum and she's suffered enough. The long and the short of it is that they kept her over night. I'm not going into details--suffice to say that the words "malpractice" and "lawyer" and "don't fuck with me" were used. I mean, she couldn't even sit up without help. They were going to let her go home? Over my dead fucking body. So now, I am going to finally get some sleep. I had planned to bake tonight. And make chicken chili in the crockpot. And maybe even some homemade pasta sauce (because my honey's back is out and I owe people cookies). Tomorrow, I have a slate of phone calls to make. Including one to her GP to tell him he's an ass and to her nephrologist to ask WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING TO HER IN THAT SODDING CLINIC! Plus Elder Services to find out where the fucking cleaners have been because her room MUST be cleaned out of all of the clothes in there so she can move around. I leave for Halifax in ten days. Provided Ma is functioning. And I don't end up in either jail or McLean's for flipping out completely. Pass the Xanax, will ya?