Hopefully I'll be the only one to ever read this because if any of my siblings read it, I'm sure they would only be angry.
Well, here I am. I always took my mother's health and smarts for granted until a few years ago. There was a knee replacement and some shoulder injections and the diagnosis of spinal stenosis which meant using a walker full time. She lived independently in a condo in Decatur for over 10 years. I usually saw her on average once every two weeks and talked to her on a very regular basis. I noticed a decline in her mental capacity but it really seemed to take a nose dive about 2.5 years ago. My younger sister Sara (who I no longer talk to) and I both noticed it first and chatted about it quite a bit. My two remaining brothers and older sister (now deceased) didn't see it and often said, "She's just getting old". There was more to it.
Almost two years ago, we strongly encouraged her to move into an assisted living facility in Decatur which meant dismantling her condo of 10 years and attempting to maintain friendships, etc. We learned a lot about what not to do. First of all, she did not participate in the move - making decisions of what to do or not take. That was, in hindsight, our first sign. She was getting to where she could no longer make decisions. Once she arrived, she really hated it and felt very removed from her old social scene. She stopped driving which I thought was a physical reason but I think she forgot how to drive or where to go. Her social life dimensioned. She turned every body away. She did manage to create a very attractive apartment but didn't talk much on the phone (forgot I believe), make lists she couldn't find, stopped reading, and became obsessed with her health. On top of this, my sister died of end stage liver disease just prior to my mother's move. It was expected and not expected. She had been very sick and refusing to address her alcoholism. It definitely threw all of us for a loop but particularly my mother because nobody expects to bury their child.
Mom appeared to have some relatively stable times for her in assisted but she made no real friends and started losing her existing ones. On Valentine's Day weekend of 2011, Mom came to Springfield (I picked her up) and spent Valentine's Day weekend with Jim and me. She cruised around on her walker, did some shopping with me and was generally in pretty good spirits. She got herself in and out of her bed. The Friday following that weekend she was putting on her pants prior to going to breakfast and heard a pop. She felt a sharp pain in her lower back. She returned to bed and spent an agonizing weekend in bed, trying to recover. Brother Jeff and his family all showed up on Saturday after she asked them not to and declared her "fine". That's our family mantra. Late Sunday evening, she got so uncomfortable, she requested to be sent by ambulance to DMH to be checked out. There they did a back X-ray and an MRI. Sara and Jim came along and waited until she was discharged after midnight, declaring that there was "nothing wrong". She continued to feel terrible. That week she went to a regular appointment with her pain specialist Dr. Furry who realized she was in a lot of pain but unable to access her images because he works for St. Mary's. He prescribed some heavy duty narcotics. The next day Mom had an appointment to see her regular physician Dr. Geatter, who took her off all narcotics and put her on lyrica for nerve pain. She continued to decline. Eventually several of us talked her into switching physicians and
