It was Thanksgiving night 2023, and I was standing in the long, gray hallway of the hospital emergency room, talking to a doctor. My mother had been admitted to the ER that afternoon. She’s been acting erratically for months, losing household items, making impulsive decisions, not taking proper care of her apartment, and taking more pain relievers than recommended for ongoing dental issues.
She hadn’t yet been diagnosed with dementia, but I suspected that she was showing signs. At the ER, the doctors had told me that the levels of acetaminophen in her blood were elevated but not dangerous, and she’d passed her psychiatric and cognitive tests. The doctor looked at me blankly.
Follow up with her doctor,” he said before briskly walking away, disappearing into that gray hallway, which looked darker and blacker to me, like I was staring out into an abyss, about to be swallowed whole. During the weeks that followed, that feeling of being swallowed into a dark hallway only escalated. It was clear that my mother needed much more support than I could give her, and I couldn’t see a way out of what was going on.
It soon became clear that I’d need to pay specialists to clean out her apartment. Also, I needed to take over her finances, get her evaluated by a doctor ASAP, and find her full-time care. All of a sudden, I was in charge of my mother’s entire life, and the seemingly endless to-do list of cleaning and caregiving tasks.
And all of this had to happen immediately—all while I was working full-time and raising two kids. I’ve suffered from anxiety for as long as I can remember, and in my 20s, I was diagnosed with panic disorder. But for the first time ever, I was experiencing depressive symptoms, coupled with suicidal thoughts.
One morning after my mom’s ER trip, I was walking to her house to meet the cleaning crew we’d hired. In my extreme state of fatigue and depletion, I stepped off the curb while crossing the street and almost got hit by a car, which honked at me and came to a screeching halt. The thought flew into my brain, and as I walked, I imagined other ways I might be able to quickly die.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
