Crazy Mama

Well....my mother is in the hospital again.  In Harrison.  What the fuck, you may ask, is she doing in Harrison?  Long story short, she went nuts last night and disappeared, and that's where she ended up.  She is suffering from psychotic episodes (the doctors' words, not my own), and she has had a heart attack at some point in the last 24 hours.  I'm surprised she even made it to Harrison, since she hasn't really driven a vehicle in the last 3 years or so and never has been good at driving at night.
She's been off for a while, and has been gradually sliding into psychotic third base for a long time now.  It's just recently come to a head.  Ever since her mother died, followed shortly by her brother, she's not been herself.  In fact, it's really affected her role as my mother and my kids' grandmother in a negative way.  She's stand-offish, even cold and mean sometimes; she irritates my father on purpose, she's even more dramatic than she was when I lived at home, and she's clearly having memory lapses. Her constant drama lately has really worn on my dad, and last night they got into it pretty hard.  He had to leave for an hour or so to cool off and keep from slapping the shit out of her.  He just went to walk around at Wal-Mart.  While he was gone, Mom decided to go looking for him (so she says), and that's how she ended up in Harrison. I personally think she meant to head for Harrisonville (in Missouri, south of KC), where her longtime friend Flora Lee lives, and became confused when she saw signs for Harrison, Arkansas and followed them.
She was pulled over by the Harrison police (two of them) and a state trooper-yes, it took all three of them to get her to finally stop-for driving erratically in front of the Taco Bell. The officers realized something wasn't right with her when it took getting the police dog after her to get her to come out of the car.  They took her to the ER there, and that's who called to let me know where she was.  Meanwhile, I was busy as a pallbearer at my Great-Aunt Eva Jo's funeral.  I got the voicemail message after the funeral was over, and immediately hit the road to go pick up my dad.
We were under the impression that Mom would be transported to St. Edward's in Fort Smith, and that we needed to get to Harrison to get their car out of impound, so we headed that way.  On the way there, the hospital called again to tell me that St. Edward's had refused to accept her based on the fact that she was being evaluated for cardiac trouble and psychiatric problems at the same time.  They thought it would be best if she were kept where she was overnight, so there she stayed.  Tomorrow, if her heart issues are any better, she may get transported to Washington Regional in Fayetteville, which is about an hour closer to home than where she is now.  She'll also get a visit from a social worker, who will try to determine what kind of psychiatric help we may need to get for her.  I'm going to insist that, once we get her heart under control, she be signed into Vista Health in Barling for a sabbatical until we can figure out what's making her go batshit at the drop of a hat.  Let's just hope it all works out soon....Dad and I are exhausted and frustrated trying to figure it out.

Wow...my mother is crazy. I don't even know where to begin. I'm almost certain this won't get any better, either. I just don't know what to do.

Wow. I can't believe I made it a whole year.

I did it! This is the first time in 15 years I've been able to say I've gone a whole year smoke-free!  I am so proud of myself.  I couldn't have done it, in the beginning, without the help of Chantix.  Thanks to our health insurance through Jon's company, I got the entire Chantix program with zero copay.  Finding out it was free was what finally got me to dive in and just do it....I'd been toying with the idea for a long time, and even had my doc write me a prescription, but until the insurance change happened...it was just so expensive.  I'm so glad I was able to do this for myself and my kids.  I'm still taking it one day at a time, but it gets easier and easier as time goes on.