A Trip to the E.R.

(Note: I also posted this on the Children of Hoarders Yahoo! Group earlier today.)

My mom went to the hospital around 11 PM last night, complaining of severe pain in her hands, arms, and sides, and feeling extremely warm, even though her bedroom was fairly cool. Now, my mom has had strokes and fought hard against getting an ambulance and going to the emergency room, but this time around, she thought it made sense to go, so I figured it must be serious. (I live a few hours away from her, so I get my clues where I can.)

My sister got to the hospital around midnight, and sat with my mom through the blood drawing, the Q&A with nurses and doctors, and then, just as she was figuring that it was time to go home and come back in the morning (it was around 2 AM), the emergency room doc came in and gave my mom some Tylenol and discharged her without further explanation. (Not going to go into details, but the doc seemed to be a real piece of work.) My sister asked the doc if he noticed that mom can't walk, mom is now pushing 200 lbs, and that sis is a petite 5 foot 2. Long story short, they had to arrange a medical transport service to take her home. By then it was a little after 4 AM.

Here's where it gets good:

When the doc gave her Tylenol, my mom wouldn't take it at first, because "I never take that kind of stuff." Nope. Not Tylenol, not aspirin...nothing. "Drugs" upset her body. "I don't want those chemicals in me." Of course, she'll take any supplement that she hears about on the radio or TV, by the fistful, but she won't take a pain killer when she's in pain. She says, "I'm a SURVIVOR! I adapt!" (She places extra, almost pouty, emphasis on each syllable of "survivor," like she's proud that she doesn't take appropriate action. She said the same thing when we were kids, and we couldn't let a repairman into the house to fix little things like ovens, furnaces, water heaters, refrigerators, etc.)

Anyway, back to the story...

We've discussed on the message board how hoarders appear to have some very distinctive speech patterns, like not being able to distinguish between critical information and ephemera, taking ten minutes to say something that could be said in one minute, due to unnecessary detail, etc., etc. Well, at 4:20 AM, my mom called me to tell me that she was back home.

She told me all about the ambulance driver, whose "name was Jeff -- isn't that something? What a coincidence! Another Jeff!"

Jeff, a very unusual name, of course, was the name of one of the kids I hung out with in high school, oh, 25 years ago.

"Jeff and the other guy were so funny; we had a good time! He lives in Springfield. I wonder if they know so-and-so."

Then she switched gears, and told me that she heard a little kid crying in the emergency room. "Gee, I wonder what was the matter with him. I didn't get a look at him, but I could hear his parents. They had some kind of an accent. I don't know where they were from. There was a lady who looked like she might have broken her arm, too, but she didn't look like she was in much pain. I had it worse than her, I think."

You get the picture. I managed to get a word in edgewise, and asked her, "Well, how about YOU? How are YOU? What did the doctor say?" Another roundabout story of how even her cat knew something was wrong with her, since he kept looking at her funny, etc. etc., and that she had dinner a little late, etc. Finally, I said, "Mom, it's 4:30 AM. Are you OK?" Like usual, her response to a direct question is, "Well, I have to tell you the story." "No, Mom, the ambulance driver's home town is not 'the story,' your health is the story. It's after 4:30 AM. Tell me if you are in any pain, or tell me if you are still overheated." After about two or three tries, I interrupted and said, "Obviously, if you are well enough to talk about the cat, I can go back to sleep now."

"Oh. Okay. Boy, your sister was bent out of joint."

Me: "Mom!"

"Are you coming down to see me today?"

Me: "You're fine, I'm going to go to work. Bye."

"Oh, everyone is in such a hurry!"

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another day in the life of a COH...

Maintenance Free

I've come across a wonderful new blog by a fellow child of a hoarder, and I've added it to my blogroll. Please check out Maintenance Free when you get a chance - the blogger is a very good writer, and she has some pictures that look very familiar.

How Donna Spent Her Summer Vacation...

My friend, Donna, spent her summer vacation cleaning up her mother's home (with her mother's permission).

Donna made a video to show the progress.

Advice for the Mother of a Hoarder

Hi Everyone,

Kathy, a mother of a hoarder, left the following, heart-wrenching comment on The Hallway post below:

I'm a 52 year old widow...boy does this hit home...

My deceased husband had this problem, and left a large mess with 2 large piled storages also..toys,toys toys, books, magazines and on...

And what is now horrible now is my 23 yr.old daughter has this disease, and put my apartment in hell she has no place where her bed was cause of the mess, and sleeps next to her sister. And is ruining my 2 other children's lifes along with mine... This has destroying our lives...

I can't reason with her, i want to die when i look at this stuff... And none of it is functional... I am afraid the manager is gonna kick us out because of it... I think she has every beauty product in the world, and all it does is pile up... And jewelry, etc...

I don't have the money to get her help...There is no one i know that come here and help...I can't even kick her out. My husband passed this bad habit/disease on to my kids!

Kathy

If anyone has constructive advice to share with Kathy, please comment on this posting, or send an email to me at h0arders0n at aol dot com, and I'll add it to the comments.

Thanks for your help!

Too little, too late.

YouTube user JaclynFett left the following comment about "The Empty Nest" video at the video's YouTube page:

"Don't let this happen to your parents."

How can you say this over and over. They do it! I didn't do it to my mom's house, she did it! Don't let it happen is too little too late.

I admit that Jaclyn's comment stung a little when I read it, but once I got over myself, I realized that I could have been a little clearer about what I intended when I said, "Don't let this happen to your parents."

Since YouTube only allows 500 characters in a comment, I'll respond to Jaclyn here:

Hi Jaclyn, I absolutely agree with you -- it really is too little, too late, and it's not the child's fault that the house gets uninhabitable. Unfortunately, when one is a child raised in such a situation, it is hard to figure out how to intervene -- or even if it is possible. When I was a kid, I so badly wanted someone to take me out of that house, but I was too terrified to do anything about it on my own.

It is such a twisted, tormented situation, and the parent will often push every psychological button the kid has. So many years are lost to useless churning and frustration, and I guess that's my point: SOMEONE needs to intervene sooner, rather than later. In my case, I wish I had the courage and the knowledge to do so for myself twenty five years ago!

PS. The "this" I was referring to was the "letting the situation get so bad that the parent is found dead in a pile of trash and then the child is left to deal with the hoard." When you're a child, it's almost impossible to do anything about the situation, because you don't have the resources or capability. When you're an adult, however, you do have a choice between taking (probably very painful) action or walking away. I guess we each have to weigh which approach hurts the most.

The Empty Nest

I know that this may be very difficult to understand for people who are not familiar with OCD hoarding, but I guess that's one reason why the associated behaviors qualify as symptoms of a disorder -- they do not make sense; they are not rational behaviors. In this case, a person with more than adequate financial resources, with far above average intelligence, with a high degree of social functioning outside of the home, seems utterly incapable of distinguishing between "important" things and "trash" -- leading eventually to living conditions of abject squalor. Attempts by others to help to clean up or at least to manage the clutter can be traumatic, with the hoarder refusing to allow the removal of almost anything that most people would regard as trash, insisting that things will somehow get "squared away" eventually.

Many health care professionals advocate taking a slow, non-judgmental, low-pressure approach to resolving such cases. While they are almost certainly correct that different methods may be too traumatic or may prove unsuccessful at providing permanent solutions, I believe that other factors should also be weighed when considering treatment or assistance strategies:

• What is the impact of "go-slow" approaches on other family members, particularly on juveniles who are raised in squalor?
• Even if there is significant relapse after more aggressive intervention, what happens when a "go-slow" approach fails to generate adequate progress before the hoarder becomes elderly or infirm, when the likelihood of progress is dramatically reduced and the likelihood of injury drastically heightened? (See The Hallway for the result of "too much patience".)

I am not saying that a "go-slow" approach is necessarily wrong; indeed, it probably should be the first thing to try. However, it must be balanced against the impact of hoarding on the entire family and the prospects for the long-term safety and well-being of the hoarder.

The Hallway

I've been inspired by another child of a hoarder to get off my duff and upload some video I took at my mother's house last summer. It's a warning about what can happen when one waits too long to intervene. I wanted to clean up the audio a little, but I could never quite get up the energy to edit it -- it's very, very painful for me to listen to my own narration and to see the surroundings -- how could we not have intervened earlier?

Of course, many children of hoarders know the answer -- our hoarding parents have meltdowns, they threaten to kill themselves if anyone gets involved, and they push every emotional button that they've identified in us since we were toddlers. Ugh, I feel so raw now -- such a mix of sadness, guilt, anger, and relief that at least some of it is out in the open. A big part of me wants to take down the video and go hide under a blanket, but if keeping it online helps one person prevent a life-threatening crisis for a loved one, I guess my pride is a small price to pay.