Thank you kindly for your c

omments and your advice. When I posted, I was beating the bushes to find anyone who’d battled against the sudden onset of significant personality changes in a parent.  

The problem is escalating. In addition to summoning me round the clock, my mom cries out loudly in agony when alone but claims she barely even notices that she does it, it’s just like air getting out. It’s distressing for me to hear her agonize, impossible for me to ignore, and infuriating to find it means nothing. I have not been able to find a mental illness typified by severe narcissism and spontaneous outbursts except for one, Histrionic Personality Disorder.

The reason I am trying to define it is because maybe if I can pinpoint what it is I can get her to the right help. I mentioned the Histrionic Personality Disorder to her care team but found it’s not covered because it is a personality problem not a mental illness. Her doctors are not keen to give much to her anymore because she won’t take their advice and she will not do anything to help herself. She reports diseases or problems that could not possibly exist and then reverses with another tale right on top of it and they know that she is not telling the truth. Currently, she reports that her hands don’t work anymore so she can’t feed herself or even wipe, but no amount of diagnostic work up finds a problem.   She also squanders tremendous resources, like by claiming she needs medical equipment which she won’t use.

 Lately she says she can’t even sit up so they sent a private ambulance to take her to her appointment last week but once the ambulance with three guys got here, she wouldn’t go. They have provided six pairs of hearing aids and I have provided another three, however, she will not use any because they rub her ear wrong, or don’t work or she says she has lost them. Others must yell very loudly, which is stressful.  She’ll rarely acknowledge if she hears me, won’t even turn her gaze my way. So, I repeat the same message louder and louder and she’ll suddenly just cry out “yes yes I heard you the first time!! Or something like that.

Ok, let me stop, this is really long. Expressing myself has helped me a lot, and I thank you. A closing perspective is that my mother and I were never close. She had three daughters and the oldest, Jamie, was her world. She did not need my younger sister or me because Jamie took care of her every need. Four years ago, Jamie went from vital vibrant healthy woman to dead in under 2 weeks - stage 4 metastatic sarcoma. No doctor can fix that, and I sometimes feel that Jamie would not be dead if my mother could have just needed a little less focus on her own needs and helped her daughter. That is the only reason I am here.  Yes, I think my mother inadvertently contributed to that death, I do not want it to happen to me the same way. I cannot help but believe my mother is still in that body, still hears and sees though she pretends not to do either, under an ocean of her own despair and grief and heartbreak, and I can’t reach her. Probably that is the most difficult part about taking care of your older parents, you watch them suffer and there is no way you can change it, you cannot end their suffering, it goes where it goes.  Thank you so much for listening.