I went to the neurologist this morning and after all of his tests, he said he couldn’t find anything neurological that could be wrong with me. He thought it might be behavioral, but that wouldn’t explain the morning heaving. He sent all of my records back to the gastro doctor and we’ll see what they say when they get back to us. So I’m kind of feeling a bit deflated.
Meanwhile, my mother is driving me insane to the point that I had a minor breakdown in the car while she was yelling at me. I had to repeat over and over that she needed to be quiet and she kept saying things like, “you have so many rules!” Finally, I said, '“these are the code words. If you hear me say the exact sentence, ‘you are making me anxious’ she had to be quiet and count to 30 in her head.” She agreed. Angrily. She doesn’t find that reasonable.
She’s also quite hard of hearing despite having hearing aids, so I’m having my wife sit in during these evaluations via Facetime so I can tell my mother “the doctor didn’t say that” and have someone else agree. It still hasn’t worked 100% of the time, but it has worked.
Also, every single time there is a possible diagnosis or she reads something that she thinks sounds like my symptoms (and she’s always wrong about that), she decides that’s definitely what I have and she definitely knows what should be done about it.
This time it’s worse, because she was a psychotherapist and she actually knows a little about behavioral therapy. But I feel really bad for her clients, because they had a totally crazy lady for a therapist. And she kept some of them on for like a decade after she officially retired. They came to her house. So they actually liked whatever she did for them. All I can think is that she has a completely different personality as a therapist.
Oh, she also thinks that the dry heaving every morning is inconsequential and I should just accept that I’m going to have to live with it the rest of my life. What. The. Fuck?
I guess it’s been so long since I’ve spent more than a few hours with her that I forgot how truly nuts she is. And a bit on the narcissistic side.
Edit: Ugh. This fucking guy again.
I’m sorry to hear about this setback. I’m crossing my fingers for you for finding a solution to your health troubles.
One thing to help you out with her on this. My aging mother was having the same problem and in talking to her I learned how isolating this becomes. There’s only so many times a person can ask someone to repeat themselves before its socially awkward. Many times the hard-of-hearing person eventually just gives up and nods pretending to hear and just becomes not part of the conversation. They can be a room full of people and be totally alone.
I found that her hearing aid brand has an external (bluetooth) microphone option and got her one. These are called “Buddy mic”, “Handy mic”, or “Partner mic”. It is a small rechargeable batteried mic that can lay flat in the middle of table of people (omnidirectional mode) or clipped on a lapel (unidirectional) that will isolate just the one person its next to (to combat loud noisy places and bring out the voice of the person being talked to). There’s usually a smartphone app the user can control modes and further filter sound. The one I got also has a 3.5mm audio input so you can plug it direction into a sound source like a TV which will pipe the sound right into the user’s hearing aids.
Find out her hearing aid brand and model and do a google search to see if hers has one. It will likely be a couple hundred dollars but it is a GAME CHANGER. My mother has had it and used it for months now and uses it all the time. If she is having trouble hearing in a conversation, she’ll quietly pull it out, set it in the middle of the table and is back in the conversation being able to hear everything and respond. She loves it!
The same may help your mother, and its possible some of the friction you’re experiencing from her may be her frustration with being sidelined because she can’t hear and her getting frustrated with that and it coming out on you.
Thanks for letting me know, although she absolutely never listens to any medical suggestions I might make even though she has plenty about me. She does say her hearing aids don’t work very well anymore, so she clearly knows she has to get new ones. And she does take care of her health. Hopefully she’ll get the right ones that do something like that.