In case you were wondering, I'm surviving the wilds of Missouri pretty much intact. The upside to it raining every day is that it's chased the bugs back into the tall grass and I'm not faced with quite such an onslaught every time I step out of the house.

Every little bit helps, right?

I can't quite get used to the people. As I drive myself over to see Mom every morning, everyone I pass waves at me. It's a sort of small-town (read: "miniscule" with Pop. approximately 82) thing, and you have to wave back to be polite. I find myself waving at some scary-looking people, the kind I'd cross the street to avoid in Denver. And I'm related to some of them.

Yesterday I went to the post office to get Mom's mail and there was a "parcel at window" slip in her box. When I went up to the window, the guy gave me a phone book. He said the only way he can get rid of them is to hand them out with the mail. He thought that was a pretty clever ruse.

Mom's getting stronger every day. She still tires easily and of course her diagnosis is pretty firm, so she's never going to be what she was a year ago, but she's much stronger and more coherent than she was when I got to town.

This week mostly involves a few therapist visits and one consult with a sleep apnea clinic. She going to have a sleep apnea test, but we're not sure what day yet.

The real key comes next week, on the 9th, when she goes back to the ALS specialist and sees all of the other people he has lined up to give her information about services and support and suchlike. Unfortunately, I didn't know about that appointment when I booked my trip, and I'll be back in Denver by then, unless I can ever get through United's phone lines and change my return flight.

Either way, I'm leaving here on Friday. If I can change my return flight, I'll just inflict myself on the L-i-K-S for a few days, then come back down here just for the Tuesday doctor's visits.

Yes, I admit it. With 2-1/2 days still to go in my visit, I'm pretty much against the wall. After starting the week as the fair-haired girl, with everyone delighted to see me and being nice to me, I'm now settling back into my original position of the "failure" child.

This isn't my mother's estimation, you understand, but that of the sister, Billy Jo, that mom is currently living with. Billy Jo has actually never liked me, not since I can remember*. Normally I can face that fact with equanimity since she's a thousand miles away from me and I don't actually care what she thinks. Sadly, right now I have to care, since she's taken mom in to live with her. Much of my energy for the past four days has gone into 'making nice' to her and ignoring her increasing hostility toward me.

Actually, it all sort of started on Monday. Up until then, there were lots of visitors and family members coming and going in every direction and she didn't have a lot of time to remember how much she really disliked me. On Monday morning we had one of Those Conversations where she laid our what she thought life should be like, and I disagreed, and things have been going downhill since.

To make a long story short, I made it clear that if Mom needs a place to live, she's welcome and more than welcome to move in with me in Denver and I'll work out how to handle the 24/7 care needs somehow, but the thing that's out of the question is me giving up my life and moving here, or even to the thriving metropolis of Joplin.

I cannot live in Missouri. Just contemplating it makes me feel like finding a ledge to jump from.

That's not an easy conversation to have with someone without making it sound as though the place they've chosen to live is a dank, depressing hole where people "exist" more than "live". I skated the line pretty closely a few times and now every time she sees me, Billy Jo remembers more and more that she's never liked me.

My mother's life is important to me, but it's not more important than my own life. It's as important, of course, but it still makes more sense to me that she should come to share my life than that I should give up my life to come and sit around the kitchen table for eight or ten hours a day with this lot. (That's how they occupy their time. They get up, and spend the day sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and don't even get me started on how grotesque it is to spend days on end with people who live in a permanent haze of cigarette smoke, talking to each other largely about each other. After four days of this, I can already feel brain cells, not to mention lung cells, dying.)

Figuring out how to care for an elderly and infirm parent who needs more care than you can personally provide is just hell. Mom doesn't need "nursing" care, she just needs someone to be around 24/7, in case she falls or something and needs help getting up.

Also, as a symptom of her ALS, occasionally she has trouble breathing and chokes. Someone has to be around to make sure it doesn't get serious and to call 911 if she gets to where she really can't breathe. And, yes, she needs help with personal care like bathing and fixing meals and suchlike. I'm sure all of these services are available in Denver, along with doctors who specialize in her condition, although I don't know what they'd cost, but I'd happily look into them and take on living with her if I could convince her to move to Denver.

She's not going to do that, and I'm not going to move here, so we have to think of alternatives which, at least for the short-term, means her living with Billy Jo.

Whiny today, aren't I?

Sigh. It's 9:45 and I'm grossly late in showing up over there this morning, so I'd better get moving.

________________

* It's near-inconceivable to Billy Jo that a woman wouldn't get married and sprout at least a couple of kids, and she has never been able to reconcile herself to the idea that a straight woman might still not choose to marry or reproduce. Still, this isn't the root of Billy Jo's dislike. She's disliked me since long before I was old enough to make such choices.