2010 | The Decision to Place My Mother at a Care Facility for the Aged

It was not an easy decision to put my mother at a care facility for the aged, and she always blamed Daniel for ‘kicking her out of my home’. Partly that was true. My mother herself made the whole family, including Daniel, uncomfortable. The truth is that neither of them made my life easier.

My mother and I never really had a very good relationship, although we got along better in the last few years before she moved in with me. Daniel, as far as I was concerned, did not belong in my house and had no say in my family life, but their constant bickering all but drove me crazy.

The day I thought my mom had had a stroke, the family doctor, after a thorough examination, decided to have my mother admitted to a medical facility where they could monitor her for a few days. He didn't think it was a stroke, but he wanted to admit her for observation by trained staff who could report on her condition so he could decide how to treat her.

Fortunately, there was room for her in a convalescent home near our house, and he immediately arranged for her admission, while I went to explain to my bank manager why I urgently needed to increase my overdraft facility by a few thousand rand. Again.  

My mother did not realise that one was supposed to pay for medical services. My father worked for a mining company for many years, where medical care was provided free of charge to the entire family dependent on his care. Nettie, my mother’s former carer, also always took her to a private doctor and clinic. I knew about this and contributed towards the cost of her medication and doctor’s visits, but at that stage she was still quite healthy. Of course, my mother was adamant that the same rules should now apply to the medical care she needed, which over time became more complex and much more expensive.

I tried to explain to her that my medical aid only covered my personal treatment, and that I could not afford to add her as a dependent on my fund. Besides, I was being treated by an oncologist, not a regular medical practitioner. For any treatment she received, I had to pay out of my own pocket. I also had to pay double fees for everything, because all her doctor’s visits now took place after hours. Unlike Nettie, I was not at home during the day to take her to the doctor and clinic. None of this made an impression on her.

She consistently refused to use the services offered by the local government clinic in town. Her excuse was that the queues were too long and that her body ached from waiting on hard benches. Unfortunately, this was the truth—at the clinics, one waited a long time and received only superficial treatment. Besides, she had no faith in the medication they prescribed for her. This meant that for every ailment she could not treat from her personal medicine cabinet, I had to take her to my GP, where I had to pay the fees for a private patient out of my own pocket.

Furthermore, she refused to let Daniel take her to the doctor. She wanted nothing to do with him and hardly spoke to him, except to pick a fight. She would wait until I got home in the evening to announce her latest ailment so that I could take her to the after-hours private clinic, at an extra fee, of course.

When I didn’t take my mother to the GP, she would down her own concoctions, which caused her to have frequent diarrhoea. Since she insisted on using a portable toilet in her room, the smell of her diarrhoea permanently hung in the house.

It served no purpose to ask Daniel for help, because he simply thought that she was just suffering from imaginary illnesses and was a difficult old woman who had been put on earth to make his life miserable. He (according to him) had no time for nonsense but expected me to take him to the doctor or hospital for his monthly check-ups and treatment. Did I fight this? No, because it was simply easier to give in. All the arguing and fighting only made my life more difficult.

My mother kept a large collection of pills and bottles of liquids of questionable nature in a trunk. Every now and then she would unpack the pills, cut them in half if they seemed a little too big, and then repack the stuff in new containers. And of course, the medicine got mixed up, and I had to go and ask the pharmacist to identify them.

Mostly I just let her do what she wanted and took her to the doctor when I thought she was in need of treatment. Other than that, I just put my faith in the fact that I had never heard of anyone dying from an overdose of Jamaican ginger, garlic pills, and fresh parsley. I found it rather odd that she treated her colds by eating Vicks right out of the bottle, but it didn’t seem to do her any harm. In fact, she seemed quite healthy.

I did replace the strong headache pills she regularly ordered from the pharmacy with a low dose of paracetamol, because I knew that the mixture of codeine, caffeine and antihistamine could not be healthy for someone her age. If the pills were yellow, they seemed to help for any ailment. I simply took the stronger headache pills myself when needed for my own headaches. And I often needed them. The doctor started prescribing Imigran for my migraines again, and I often took it just to get through my day.

To add a little more colour to the battles, Daniel, of course, also had to express his opinion on the witch-doctor medication and the smelly embalming oils he had to live with. He received treatment at the state hospital (then the Johannesburg General Hospital) on the other side of the city, which meant that I had to take a morning or an afternoon off work to get him to his doctor. For my own needs, I had to drive to Roodepoort to see the oncologist there.

My life was a nightmare of medical problems.

Those years of struggling to get through my workday, to balance my finances, to keep my mother-in-law’s wayward and selfish son sober and to try and educate my own mother in the art of living as a member of a family where she's not the big cheese required superhuman strength. My mother regularly announced that she was going to find herself another place to live, even if it was in a thatched hut, and I would of course arrange for private nursing for her. That was okay, I agreed, but only as long as she paid for all these luxuries herself.

It’s no wonder I erupted like a proverbial volcano in the doctor’s office that day. He sat patiently on the other side of his desk and listened to me wail, only occasionally moving tissues closer to the torrent of snot and tears that rained down on his desk. When I finally managed to get myself under control, he asked me about my domestic circumstances.

Why does your ex-husband live in your house? Because he has nowhere else to go. Not even his own mother wants to take care of him. And no, I can’t get rid of him, not just because I’m afraid my children will blame me if I kick him out, but because he will simply keep coming back. That’s another thing I couldn’t easily forgive, because if Daniel had taken care of himself like he was supposed to, and not wasted his pension money on crap, I could have easily supported my mother. So, yes, it was by and large his fault that my mother had to go to a care facility.

Why does your mother live with you too? Because no one else wants to look after her, the Care Facilities won’t take her in because she’s over eighty years old and doesn’t belong to the “right” church, and, besides, they’re overcrowded. (All such facilities in that area are run by churches.) They also didn’t want “difficult” old people, because their staff isn’t trained for that. And if my mother hadn’t been so difficult in the first place, and if I hadn’t felt so tired of life, we would all be able to live together as a family with a better attitude. So, yes, Daniel wasn’t the only one to blame.

But dwelling on “ifs” was not going to change the situation.

The doctor picked up the phone again and started arrangements to have my mother admitted to the care facility as soon as she was discharged from the convalescent home. I think this miracle worker had a special magic wand, or maybe a few shares in the care facility, because at the end of that week my mother moved into a care facility very close to my house, despite of the “wrong” age and church affiliation.

Mom was ninety years old, a very difficult age to be transplanted, but I needed an urgent break from my responsibilities.

From now on, my life should be much easier.

That’s what I thought.

Featured image: AI Illustration of a hut made of reeds and braided grass mats used by the indigenous population.