My mom has Alzheimer's, or some other senior-itis-ish mental condition. There's some question if it's Alzheimer's or not because it came up so suddenly. A year ago, she was fine, if a little physically weakened. Well, perhaps she was not completely fine. Back then, she was hiring and firing helpers so much so no one could keep track of who was owed what.

Back then, I just chalked it up to having too many people helping her and losing count. When it continued, I started to see it as bullying, as her justifying her spiteful behaviour because someone wouldn't do something just right, just when.

Then she started to make little 'one-off' comments that didn't seem right. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong people. No, not wrong me or such. Wrong people not present when she's speaking. The decline started with little things like that, and disintegrated rather quickly in the past six months.

Wednesday, the convalescent hospital called. She was suicidal, wanting to go to Hong Kong, or die trying. While it's called a convalescent hospital, it's not quite a hospital. Nurses are on duty, doctors are on call, but they're not quite able to deal with anything beyond a certain range of 'normal' events.

This wasn't really normal. I called, tried to calm her down, but didn't get anywhere. She even tried to bring up a topic that we've crossed words on before, in hopes of causing me to ring off. That really hurt.

They sent her off to a real hospital. Worse, they told me they sent her off to one, and she ended up at another. I didn't drill them on "how could you do this?" After calling the hospital I was told would receive her that night and the next morning without being able to contact her, I called the convalescent hospital and asked them to look into it, with me staying on the phone while they did so.

I think that drove home that she's not getting better. Until now, it was just idiosyncrasies. Now, it's a matter of her being a danger to self or others. The hospital evidently disagreed -- they examined her and found her mostly fit, so discharged her back to the nursing home a few days later.

That was when the home called a second time. She was throwing things, refusing medication and food, hitting people. Needless to say, that didn't make my days any easier.

That's one from the triptych of reasons why I've been scarce lately. I'll find it in me to blog the other two later.