The Sandwich Generation is such an odd term. While I am sandwiched between a child in grade 1 and an elderly mother who has just been diagnosed with dementia, "sandwich" isn't quite the word I'd use. Lately, I've felt more like a boob in the middle of a mammogram than a sandwich filling. A filling has room to spread to accommodate the bread on either side; the boob, not so much.
My mother and I are rapidly becoming frequent fliers in the Ontario health care system. In the last year, my mom has had several treatments, including 6 weeks of radiation for Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and is currently growing two new lumps in the same general vicinity. We spent 12 hours in ER a couple of years ago because mom fell getting out of bed and peeled the skin off the back of her hand like a banana. 28 stitches to fix that one. We spent another 4 hours because she had whacked her leg and developed a giant blood blister that had to be surgically drained. And in the last 3 weeks, we've spent 33 hours in ER because she fell and whacked her head, which caused a series of events that resulted in a 27 hour wait in hospital, and a 2 week hospitalization, most of which mom only has a hazy recollection of.
And on the other side of the coin, my daughter is in grade 1. Thanks to her birth mother, she has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety Disorder that we know of. She has symptoms of ADHD, but isn't "bad" enough for a clinical diagnosis, and she may or may not have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Some of her OCD manifests in hoarding and repetition. She also fixates, usually on people. Her Anxiety manifests in maniacal laughter that tends to escalate. She also screams alot when she's stressed-I mean full on, multi-octave, rattle the ear screams which is often reserved for when she's in the back seat of the car. If it's at rush hour, or in the middle of a round-about so much the better.
My daughter and my mom are tight. My super-strict mother who still tries to tell her 49 year old daughter what to wear, and still feels she needs to remind me to get my work done folds like a deck chair when it comes to my daughter. I once came back from a meeting to find my daughter eating ice cream out of a crystal ashtray. My mother only recently gave up playing hide and seek with her granddaughter. On January 14, my mother collapsed as she was walking up to the door of her apartment building after church. She hit her head on the pavement, and she was conscious but not cognizant. And my daughter witnessed the whole thing. Mom and I spent 6 hours in ER that night, and that event triggered a chain reaction downward spiral that led to the 2 week hospitalization.
My daughter already knows that sometimes when grandmas go into hospital, they don't come out again. We lost my husband's mother to cancer a year ago, and my daughter went to the hospice every night to hang with grandma. So when my mother went into hospital, her anxiety kicked into overdrive. We took her up to see my mom one night, and she was right off the charts at school for the next two days. My mom needed a granddaughter fix; my daughter couldn't handle another grandma in hospital. Parenting fail.
So I juggle. I juggle the needs of a young special needs child with an elderly parent trying to cope and come to terms with her worst nightmare. I juggle the roles of writer, editor, wife, mother, friend and try not to lose myself in the process. Sometimes the balls slip, and sometimes I choose to put one down. I make the best decision I can with the information I have at the time. Sometimes I make the wrong one. My husband helps as he can and my friends keep me sane. But then, as we're finding out with mom, sanity is a relative concept.
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