MIL was in the hospital this week with a blood clot in her lung. She was released yesterday, but I've found myself playing non-professional social worker, family counselor, and medical transport for the past two days. Her husband, my step-father-in-law, has his own medical issues and has serious mobility issues because of them. Some of these mobility issues are legitimate and would be there no matter what. Some of them are because he isn't making any effort to do what he needs to do to take care of himself - like his physical therapy to recover from his surgeries late last year. MIL takes care of him completely. And she can't now, because of her own medical issues (which at least are not helped by the stress he puts on her).
We got the call that she was in the hospital Tuesday evening. She drove herself there and checked herself in on doctor's advice. H and I took Wednesday off of work to go see her and take care of her. But we ended up spending most of the day taking care of him. He had a doctor's appointment. He isn't physically capable of driving right now, so MIL asked if we could take him to the appointment. This, in and of itself annoys me, because he has kids who live in town and my husband should have been spending time with his hospitalized mom rather than carting his step-dad around to appointments. His kids should have been taking care of that.
We ended up spending 7 hours getting him to his appointment and waiting for the appointment to end (he didn't know the doctor's name, what time the appointment was at, or where the doctor's office was, so we went to the wrong location. He has no mental deficiencies that would prevent him from being able to manage this information, he just doesn't bother with it because she handles all this stuff for him.) We spent 2.5 hours with MIL at the hospital. We left earlier than we wanted to because he wanted to go home - despite the fact that I told him repeatedly that we planned to spend at least 4 hours with her and if he was too tired to go, we would take him home first. He literally pitched a fit in her hospital room because we weren't leaving when he wanted to. He also complained about the manner in which I was pushing his 300 pound self around the hospital in a wheel chair (while making fun of other overweight people he saw.) I got so fed up with it, I told him that I could leave him right there in the hall and he could get himself around the hospital if he preferred. On the way home, he wanted us to stop at the store to get him snacks that his doctors says he can't eat and got very sulky when we declined (refused) to do so. It was completely exhausting for H and I. I don't know how she does it and I am seriously worried about her mental health from the stress he puts on her.
Yesterday was better, mostly because I got to actually take care of MIL. H doesn't have a lot of paid time off, so I took the day off to pick her up from the hospital. I went in early and met with her and the hospital social worker to get home care set up for both of them. I also had a long talk with MIL about how it's ok to be overwhelmed by taking care of SFIL - H and I had a hard time doing it for one day and there were two of us in much better health. I convinced her to get in touch with her former therapist and schedule an appointment because I am very concerned she is dealing with serious depression. This woman is such a neat freak, she used to clean our bathroom for us when she'd cat sit when we were out of town. Now her house looks like its been taken over by hoarders. We've got a social worker and a home health nurse coming to evaluate both of their medical needs. I'm working to get them both home health aids (though I am tempted to call SFIL's son to ask him to step in and deal with getting SFIL's health aid set up - I don't know how appropriate it is for me to be doing that).
And to top it all off, my very sweet cats decided I didn't need to sleep last night, so I am still exhausted today.
MIL is home. I got all her prescriptions. H and I are going to the hospital to get her car, pick up the remainder of her prescription, and go grocery shopping for them this weekend (and we aren't buying stuff that isn't on their doctors' approved eating lists).
My darling husband took me out to dinner last night to thank me for taking care of his mom. But I need a nap. And wine. Stat.