pyewacketsworld

Part I:

Before I continue with my ongoing series in my Bits and Pieces Of My Life, known as “It’s Great How Things Have Fallen In Place For You” I thought I would show off some of the photos of some of the cats I gave up.

These are the “happier” and luckier ones who were eventually taken in by pet rescuers, and some where later adopted out to good homes.

Even before the eviction issue occurred back in March of 2006, I was lucky to have a wonderful woman, named Virginia come to my home and adopt out Pixie on August 20, 2005. Pixie was one of the original six from the very first litter of kittens born on April 6, 1993 and whose “mom” was Whoopi, and pops was Keiko. He was an “older” cat to begin with, being twelve years old at the time. He is still healthy and thriving and doing very well with Virginia of whom I’m still in contact with.

This is a picture of Pixie snoozing on a TV cart and was taken not long before he was adopted out to Virginia

The next two cats to be taken was by a rescuer from Animal Haven in Flushing, NY and were Kola and Matoaka. Kola was born on September 9, 1997 and Matoaka was born on May 9, 1995. When the Animal Haven in Flushing was closed down, they were transferred to their Manhattan Animal Haven. I was recently informed that both were adopted to new homes.

Kola

Matoaka

The next two cats to be taken by a woman named Lynn, in an upstate rescue place on March 11 2006, were Missy and Winema. Missy was born October 11, 1999 while Winema was born on April 7, 1995. Winema was adopted out, but sadly some illness overtook Missy, even the pet rescuer’s vet was at a loss of not knowing what happened to her and she died on April 6, 2006.

Missy

Winema

Will continue my tribute to my cats in my next entry

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 8:

As I previously mentioned the Animal Care & Control was to come into our apartment nearly on a daily basis on and off from April 18th until May 4th of 2006. I hated every moment of it and had really wished that pet rescuers could have helped out when I was reaching out to them in the previous years. If each rescuer could have agreed to have taken at least one cat, the problem could have been solved long time ago, and who knows? Maybe my mother and I wouldn’t have been involved with a second eviction issue in the first place.

I’ll be frank, I have no great love for the whole Animal Care & Control issue, yet to be honest, some of the “agents” as they are called weren’t too bad. There was one guy who was almost a regular and was the one most often to come to pick up the cats, and often kidded me that I should have been a rescuer myself, for you see, rather than have some stranger try to grab at the cats, I decided to do this myself and it was no easy task. The cats somehow sensed something was up and as soon as they saw me put on my clothing to be ready for the AC&C van and wait for the phone call to announce they were on their way, the cats, like I said, sensing something was up, would start hiding. Their favorite places to hide was scrambled under my bed. A few would hop up and into the kitchen cabinets. I then decided on a different strategy and would try and grab two cats and bring them into the bathroom and close the door…that made it a little easier than trying to grab them from under the bed or try to get them from the kitchen cabinet my cats would sometimes hide in. There was a woman who once came and was rather nice, and by talking with her found out she had been assigned to help out and rescue the abandoned and stranded pets that had been left behind during the Katrina incident. So while I hated the whole AC&C thing, at least the people involved were genuinely nice…except for one.

On Tuesday, May 2nd (of 2006), the AC&C van didn’t come until rather late, around 2 in the afternoon, rather than the usual 11 or so in the morning. The agent was one that had never come before and he seemed to be a “hotshot” and not at all nice as the others had been. There was just something about him I plain didn’t like. Well even though the cat population was going down quite a bit by now and you would think it would be easier to get to the cats, it was the opposite and it seemed the smaller the cat population became the harder it was to get to the cats. On that day, the cats made a mad scramble as soon as they saw me getting dressed to get ready for the van to come. The cats by now had gotten to know the “routine” and believe me, animals are not stupid. The cats were realizing that their “pals” were being taken away one by one, and I can’t help wonder if they were wondering if they would be next.

Well on that day, it seemed harder than ever before to try to get at any of the cats. I couldn’t even grab any to bring into the bathroom to keep the next one in there in preparation for when the van came. So when this agent came into the apartment, the only cat I saw “available” was Porthos who was up in the kitchen cabinet. Well the cabinet was up high and over the sink. There really wasn’t a way I could grab at him, so the agent took out this contraption that was a long rod type thing with metal claspers at the end. The idea being the agent would swing the claspers around the neck of the animal he was trying to get to bring him down. So the agent placed this clasper thing around Porthos’s neck and virtually dragged him down from the cabinet, Porthos being frantic, dangling in the air with this metal clasper around his neck, and then the agent quite literally slammed the poor cat into the metal cage. Believe me the agent wasn’t at all gentle but it was almost as if he took delight in being rather abusive toward Porthos.

On the following two days, the regular AC&C agent was to come to pick up a few more cats, but it wasn’t until late at night on May 4th, when Karen, the rescuer from Manhattan that was monitoring and tracking the cats that were going in, and consequently she was taking out and rescuing herself, gave me a call. She asked me, did I have a cat named Porthos? And I said yes. She told me that Porthos had to be put down almost the moment he had come in on May 2nd. It seems upon examining him, he had a lot of injuries, to put it into her words that he had severe injuries to his back as if he had fallen out of a window, and worse yet, a broken jaw. She wanted to know how could this have happened and even the people at AC&C wanted to know as well. I told her that Porthos had been a perfectly healthy cat with absolutely nothing wrong with him, and I proceeded to tell her of how the agent had handled Porthos, and she said no doubt that is how he sustained his injuries including the broken jaw. His jaw must have broken right then and there as that metal clasper went around his neck and the agent allowed him to dangle from up high with it around his neck before slamming him into the metal cage.

I felt horrible. I mean it was bad enough that the cats were one by one being yanked away like that, but none had suffered severe injuries due to a rather hotshot, uncaring and to my mind, sadistic AC & C agent. Karen, who as I said was a rescuer in her own right, had some ties with AC&C and knew some of the directors there, recommended that I place a formal complaint with one of the directors and gave me the name and number of the person to contact. She informed me, that this wasn’t the first time animals in general suffered from injuries due to mishandling of the animal due to a careless agent who probably just viewed his job as a job and had no interest in the welfare of the animal. You better believe I not only called but wrote a letter about the whole incident. It was due to that incident that I was totally fed up and didn’t want to “surrender” anymore cats to AC&C…and I didn’t. But until I was able to arrange other things, I had other things on my mind, one of them being, the first court appearance which was to be on Monday, May 8th.

Here’s a picture of Porthos. No, he doesn’t have one eye, but it’s just the way the photo came out when I photographed him. Like to think he was winking.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 7:

I have to confess, relating a lot of what happened in the year 2006 isn’t easy for me. Especially the part when Animal Care & Control came into the picture and on an almost daily basis started taking the “extra” cats. None of this would’ve have happened if my mother had taken on the responsibility of getting the cats fixed on time. As mentioned previously, due to my disability I couldn’t travel to the vet who was quite a distance away. There was nothing however wrong with my mother, and as the cat population exploded, she actually thought it was normal to have so many cats…believe me it wasn’t, it was sheer insanity, and I got stuck trying to keep the apartment as odor free as possible (a losing battle), while my mother didn’t lift one finger to help clean. Yes, granted, in her last year of life she was very sickly due to having been diagnosed with cancer, but that doesn’t explain the ten, twelve, fifteen years prior.

The so-called good news though was that due to my connection with a pet rescuer who lived in Manhattan, and who had some ties with Animal Care and Control, as the cats were being brought into the facility, she too was tracking them and rescuing them out. A total of eighteen cats were surrendered to AC&C and she managed to rescue and take out ten, some who were later adopted out and some placed in a feral colony for those cats who had more feral like qualities and had little chance of being adoptable. As for the other eight. Some were unfortunately euthanized almost right away, mainly due to age. That could have explained a lot of my difficulty to begin with in trying to get pet rescuers in general to take the cats: age. I remember even talking to the director of North Shore Animal League one time, and at first she seemed to be interested in at least taking one or two, until I mentioned what the average age of most of the cats were, that being eight and up. She told me honestly, that even they have problems trying to adopt out cats older than three, as everyone wants cute cuddly, young kittens, not older cats.

I was to have other luck on May 1st of 2006 when private pet rescuers agreed to take some of the cats. I say private as these were pet rescuers who had somehow got wind of my story via cross-posting from the different pet rescue sites I belonged to. These type of rescuers do NOT want to advertise their rescue operation as they don’t want the “dumpers”, that is people who will anonymously leave pets at a rescuer’s doorstep. So each of the two private pet rescuers agreed to take five cats each. The saddest parting was to be with Whoopi, the female cat who in effect started the population explosion. If it hadn’t been our limitation to only keep two cats, besides the two I eventually choose to keep, I would have loved to have kept her, as well as maybe two others, Sherkahn and Bobbity…the later two were taken in by a friend, Lisa, who had already taken two cats during 2001 when my mother and I had the first eviction issue.

On and off, almost on a daily basis from April 18 until May 4th, AC&C was to come to our apartment and take at least one or two more cats, as I’ve mentioned they were to take a total of eighteen cats. By now we were assigned to a new lawyer via JASA-Legal Services of the Elderly, although she didn’t come to the very first court appearance which was on Monday, May 8th. Luckily the director of JASA had sent via DSL a letter of postponement to set another court date in which our lawyer could come and represent us.

Then there was an incident that happened that completely turned me off with the whole AC&C deal and I refused to surrender any more cats to them…don’t worry, I managed to place the cats elsewhere, but the whole AC&C incident was aggravating. I couldn’t help thinking it would have been so much better if the other pet rescuers I had contacted on and off all the way back to around 2003 when I got computer savvy and was able to contact  some many pet rescuers if each one could have taken at least one, then NONE of the cats would have gone to AC&C.

More and to be continued in my next entry.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 6:

What I’m relating here in general of all the goings that occurred in the year 2006 beginning March 2nd, is as you can guess very minimal. That whole year I was practically living on the phone, making so many phones call while I was home, and going to the internet place to use their computers every single day for a few hours reaching out to pet shelters and pet rescuers. You also have to understand, I’m not exactly a phone person to begin with, so just making all these calls non-stop practically was a challenge in itself. Let me put it this way, with all the phone calls I was making in 2006 I think I did my quota of phone calling for the rest of my life.

I can’t even count all the lawyers I was contacting to see if anyone could represent us, and at a long shot, I even called up our former lawyer who represented us first time round in 2001 over the same issue, but when I finally got the nerve to call her, well, it’s a wonder she didn’t hang up on me right off the bat. She wanted nothing to do with us.
It wasn’t until March 22, 2006 that I finally got around to calling JASA-The Legal Services For The Elderly, but all I succeeded in doing was leaving a message. In fact, that seemed to be the norm, no matter who or where I was calling…just leaving messages all around. By this time I was also getting in contact with the news media. I was actually trying to connect with some of the same people who had featured our story first time round back in 2001, including Jeanne Moos of CNN who had done a feature of me and my mother and our cat situation back then. When I finally did get in contact her, she was very kind and nice, and did indeed remember our story that she had covered about us. Unfortunately, as much as she would have loved to have done another feature on us, she told me CNN just wasn’t “into” those kind of stories anymore.

The whole idea of me trying to get the media in the first place was to see if anyone would be interested in our story again, to perhaps encourage people to adopt our cats, just as people had taken an interest back in 2001 when our story hit. One slap in the face, was I had called a major pet organization..I won’t say whom, but the person in charge had at first seemed very promising and thought maybe he and his organization could somehow help out. When I called him back again on March 27th, he did a complete 180-degrees on me and was rude and rather obnoxious. Boy talk about wanting to slam the phone down in disgust. I mean I just couldn’t figure out why he did such a complete turn around when he had sounded so nice and friendly when I had just talked to him a few days before.

In the meantime the whole month of March and into April I was still trying to find a lawyer to represent us, and as mentioned before most times all I was succeeding in doing was leaving messages…most times, I never got calls back. Same with JASA, but I guess someone must have been doing something since next thing you know the director of that organization told me to fax any court papers right away…I think what they were planning on doing was send some kind of notification to the court itself to terminate any further action against my mother and myself as far as the eviction issue went, as supposedly we were supposed to have technically speaking vacated the apartment by April 19th which was all too rapidly coming up.

In the meantime, through a few animal organizations, things were being arranged and I was being pressured to consider Animal Care and Control to start coming to pick up the cats. Oh, can’t begin to tell you how much I was against this…to me AC&C was a death sentence since this is a kill-shelter, but what could I do? With the exception of those two pet rescuers who took two cats each between them back in mid-March, none of the shelters or pet rescuers were helping us, and I’m talking about at least fifty places I had contacted, and not just in the New York City area, but upstate New York, and even had contacted some pet rescuers via email in the New Jersey area an Pennsylvania….no one was helping. So with arrangements via ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance I had to give the go ahead with Animal Care & Control. So on April 18th, AC&C was to begin coming to our apartment almost on a daily basis to start picking up a few cats each day. In the meantime, JASA did get a postponement of our eviction which technically speaking would have been the very next day on April 19th and a court date was being set up.

Well once again this will be continued. As mentioned I’m just brushing the surface of went on that year of 2006…if you were to see my detailed journal of all the calls, all the running around, all the emails, everything I was doing back then you would probably wonder how I survived it all…even I wonder myself. But yes, the end result things did fall into place, which is the whole theme of this series that I’m writing.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 5

Once again I have to backtrack about getting a new lawyer when my mother and I were threatened with eviction beginning March 0f 2006. I had to actually look at my journal that I kept a record of what was happening during that time to get specific dates right. So here is a more specific listing of the events that were to occur in 2006.

March 2, 2006: Thursday:
I was on my way out to go to the library to use their computers, as I didn’t have my own computer at the time. Before going however, I picked up the mail and among the mail was an envelope from the landlord’s lawyer. Without even opening it, I knew what it was. A Ten Day Notice To Terminate, meaning that we were being threatened with eviction again due to the cat population problem my mother had created. Even though years have passed, I remember my exact feelings that day…to put it mildly. I went back up to my second floor unlocked the door went over to my mother where she was sitting on the sofa and threw the envelope on my mother’s lap, saying something to the effect, “I just knew this was going to happen one day,” and stormed out. I changed my plans and instead of going to the library I went to the local internet place I sometimes went to, as I realized I needed to do some serious work, especially re-contacting via email with the many pet shelters and rescuers asking for help, and that was going to take more than the alloted one hour time the library allowed for computer use.

Thank goodness for copy/paste! I did a basic email letter once at the internet place and emailed, without exaggeration over thirty pet shelters and rescuers telling each one how desperate I was as now me and my mother were being threatened with eviction. I was to keep emailing these people practically on a daily basis. I also began my phone calling to lawyers around and at this time for a full week after getting the notice. Most times all I did was leave messages to the lawyers that handled landlord/tenant/pet issues…some never ever were to call back.

In the meantime, while I was doing all this scrambling around with calls, emails etc, on March 9th, a week after getting that Notice, my mother had to go into the hospital. Oh, gee great! Another thing to worry about. But at least it was during this time, that two different pet rescuers were willing to take two cats each, and one rescuer was to come on that Saturday, March 11th, and then another rescuer came on Tuesday, March 14th and took two more. All through this time I was still trying to find legal representation. Even some of the lawyers I did get to talk to and explained the situation weren’t willing to help out, not so much due to cost factor and our perhaps inability in paying them, but due to the complexity of the case itself.

You see, it would have been different I think, it this had been the first time for us to be threatened with eviction due to having so many cats, but since technically speaking we had breached the stipulation by not having only two cats, the case was a lot more complex. And inwardly, I knew how hard it might be to get any kind of support of any kind anywhere. I even said over and over again to my mother during the years 2001 up til that time, that if ever we were threatened with eviction again because of the cat situation, we weren’t going to get the support we ha first time round. And I was right. I was even trying to get news media coverage about our situation, just as we had, had back in 2001, but even the news wasn’t interested. I contacted the news as I though maybe with media coverage our issue could be brought out in the open and people would be interested in adopting the cats in the same way people became interested in adopting the cats due to the media coverage we had had in 2001. But nope, not a nibble.

Now you have to realize what a hardship all this contacting was for me. I’m generally not a phone person, and never had been, in fact I downright hate talking on the phone unless I really need to, and that whole year believe me I needed to. Lets put it this way during that whole year of 2006, I think I did my quota of phone calling for the next twenty years between phone calls to rescuers, pet shelters (I wasn’t only emailing them), lawyers, news media, pet advocates, you name it. When I wasn’t out for awhile to use a computer either at the library or internet place, I think I was living on the phone each and everyday. Was my mother doing anything? Was she helping out with phone calls? Nope. The whole time she just sat on the sofa. She didn’t even answer the phone. Luckily I would have my answering machine on to take any messages, and I’d get angry at her no end, when someone important, like one of the lawyers I may have contacted and left a message to them would call back. I’d ask her, “Why didn’t you answer that phone call?” She would just give me her classic, standard, shrugging of the shoulders answer.

March 13-15, 2006:

This was the day I was to start making phone calls to JASA and the same thing happened as so many times before…I would just be leaving a message. The next day, March 14th I called them again and actually got to talk to someone. The person answering told me to fax over a cover letter and the Ten Day Notice itself to them. So I went to the internet place, typed out a letter and was able to fax everything over to JASA as the internet place had a fax machine. The next day, the 15th I called JASA to confirm whether they got my faxed information, they did. and was told they would call back in a few days to let me know if they could represent me and my mother. By this time my mother was back from the hospital.
During the days that were to follow I still was connecting with more pet rescuers, more reporters from various newspapers, and, more lawyers. I kept leaving messages with JASA, but that was it, no one was getting back to me from them. In the meantime, the hospital were my mother went to for all her medical and psychiatric needs, had a special “Lawyer Day” where people could often get help or get resources on where and how to get help, so I gave it a shot and had an appointment for 2:00 p.m. on March 23rd. Wasn’t very promising either as he was more there to just give advice and couldn’t legally represent our case. He kept suggesting Legal Aid , but as I’ve already indicated in my former entry, Legal Aid doesn’t step into the picture until an actual 48-hour eviction notice, and that certainly didn’t sit well with me. I wanted legal help and representation ….like yesterday.

As you may well gather, I was having a LOT of frustrations here, and the clock was ticking by me all too fast. I was at my wits end, and it’s a wonder I didn’t have a breakdown with all the work I was doing trying to get help for our case. Think I’ll stop here and continue tomorrow for more of my “lovely” adventures of my winner year of 2006.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 4:

To understand this forth part you’ll have to back track to my earlier entries. This part takes me to what happened beginning March of 2006, which I call my “winner” year, you know the kind I mean. I think everyone has a time like this, when it’s one thing after another like a snowball effect, and usually in the negative sense. The kind of things that happens to a person and one wants to throw one’s hands in the air and ask, “Why me?”

By 2006, my mother’s mental and physical state had deteriorated all the more. In fact, I hardly knew my mother anymore, even though I had been living with her all my life. She had lost a tremendous amount of weight due to her cancer, was very weakened and hardly left home at all, and her mental state was just as bad. To be honest when March 2006 came round and when we were given an eviction notice for the second time round due to the overpopulation of cat issue I don’t even think she was one-hundred percent aware of what was going on. I was still dealing with my anxiety disorder, but if anything shot me out of my comfort zone, what was to happen certainly got me out of my own problems and thoughts and surge on forward to come up with solutions…and FAST.

First, was just trying to find a good lawyer to represent us. As anyone knows, lawyers are not cheap. And forget that adage many ads will say and claim, “We never charge a fee, unless we’re successful.” Balony. After the so-called initial free phone consultation, all lawyers if they are to represent you wish to have a minimum of $1,000 to get the ball rolling and started in their representation of you. I first looked into lawyers that not only specialized in landlord/tenant disputes, but more specifically, ones that also handled pet issues. There were a few “big-wigs” noted, and tried for them, but the one I tried wanted at least $500.00 off the bat and he estimated it would be another $3,500.00. Well, sorry, no could do. With my mother being on SS and pension benefits and me on my SSI there was no way in the world we could even dig up that first $500.00.

As far as Legal Aid. FORGET THEM…First, I kept calling them and all I got was one of those press 1 for this, press 2 for that…I never got a real person until the very last time I called them. They informed me that they couldn’t handle eviction issues until one got the actual 48-hour notice of eviction, not the Ten Day Notice To Terminate warning. The person told me to call back when I got the 48-hour notice of eviction then MAYBE I could be helped. Well, screw that! I wanted legal help NOW…it just didn’t sit with me well to wait around until getting that 48-hour notice of eviction.

Then someone suggested to me JASA-The Legal Services of The Elderly. I didn’t qualify as I wasn’t old enough, but my mother sure did, so gave it a shot. Once again, I had to concisely explain the whole issue that was happening…I had repeated this story countless number of times to at least a total of ten lawyers previously one the phone. At first we were “assigned” a lawyer, but things seemed to go painfully slow and the clock was ticking….supposedly we were to vacate the apartment April 19, 2006 yet our official court appearance was on May 8th. More time was slipping past and I was starting to get real nervous as it just didn’t seem we were being legally represented.

If all this worry wasn’t enough…I had to do a real jump start to find places that would take our extra cats. Ever since I got computer savvy about five years ago, I realized what a valuable tool the computer was. I was only aware of some of the major shelters, like the ASPCA, Bide-A-Wee, North Shore Animal League and Animal Care & Control. With doing a search on the Petfinder.com and Pet-Ark.com websites a whole long listing of shelters and rescuers opened up before my eyes…I even joined several Yahoo pet groups asking for help. No one did..not during all those years of reaching out. Finally, something started to happen. One well known pet shelter came through and took two cats, then another pet rescuer came through also taking two cats. Little by little the cat population was going down. But it was to take quite awhile to get the cat population down to only two which was all we were allowed to keep according to the stipulation agreement my mother had signed on June 1, 2001 during our first eviction issue.

By then however, we also got a new lawyer to represent us via JASA who couldn’t have been better…she really busted herself for us and if it hadn’t been for her no doubt my mother and I would have been evicted.

More on this in my next entry
©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 3:

Before I go into the details of what happened beginning March of 2006, I have to backtrack to around June of 2005. While my mother had been seeing a therapist for about four years, I really felt she wasn’t being helped, and no doubt, she never told everything she should have to him as she wasn’t exactly verbally communicative, not even to me. I knew she had depression issues, and perhaps a whole lot of other personality disorders. I had no say in her “clinical care” as she never signed an authorization proxy. Maybe a smart move on her part, since I would let not only her therapist, but doctors and social worker know the truth of what was going on, including the cat issue. Had she truly mentioned how many cats we had at the time, I think that would have sent a red flag up that her therapist was dealing with a hoarder person, but usually when asked how many cats we had, she most often say, “Oh, just a few” Then I desperately tried to get the attention of her therapist, doctors, social worker about a new issue that cropped up. My mother was demonstrating bulimic behavior. Here I’d cook wonderful meals for the two of us, and a few minutes after she ate, I’d watch her rush into the kitchen, where she would stick her finger down her throat to make herself throw up. Great! Now I was dealing with another problem with my mother.

I even wrote several long paged letters to the Executive Director of he hospital where my mother was getting all her medical and psychiatric needs met, and told him about my mother’s bulimia. All I ever got were letters of a few sentences long back to me saying “Due to the Hipaa Privacy Laws, we may not discuss your mother’s clinical care with you. Thank you for sharing your concerns with us.” That was it…nice, huh? God knows just what my mother would tell her therapist…she was a pathological liar and a great actress. And she told scores of lies about me making me sound like I was a blithering idiot..I was to learn the lies she was telling sometime later. I found out much later too, that what everyone was doing was in effect wrong, they may not have been able to discuss my mother’s clinical care with me, but they should have at least investigated whether my mother’s bulimia was indeed psychological or physiological…it turned out to be the later.

On a rather hot Monday, June evening around 11:30 p.m. my mother went to take her bath. On and off I would check in on her as she had a habit of falling asleep while taking her bath…Well, no on this occasion she didn’t fall asleep, but when she tried to get out of the tub, she couldn’t. I tried to help her out, but she became like dead weight despite her being very thin. I just couldn’t lift her or help her out. Well, since I knew my neighbor next door was a night owl, I decided to ask her to help me. I had to wait a few minutes as my neighbor got some clothes on, about fifteen minutes. By the time the two of us came back into my apartment and into the bathroom, my mother was out cold. I yelled out her name several times…slapped her on the face…nothing. She wasn’t responsive at all. So there was only one thing I could do. Call 911.

Once the paramedics arrived, even they had a hard time helping my mother out of the tub, but finally they did and my mother, myself and the neighbor were taken by ambulance to the hospital’s emergency room. It would prove a total eight hour wait for her to get officially admitted and have a room. One of the great things that was to occur however, was that I finally was able to have some kind of say in things, as a whole host of doctors were asking a battery of questions about my mother and I mentioned her bulimic behavior. Even a psychiatrist came and asked me questions. It turned out however her bulimia wasn’t a psychological thing…one of the procedures they did on my mother was to insert one of those cameras down her throat. It was discovered that she had esophageal cancer and no doubt she did her bulimic behavior due to the food irritating the tumor. Now if the jerk therapist or anyone had listened to me when I first tried to get in contact and get someone to take note of what my mother was doing a year prior, then they may have caught the tumor in time, as it may not have been cancerous yet.

Her being diagnosed with cancer though was like a wake up call for me…the idea that my mother may not be around much longer. The only problem was, my mother was refusing any outside help. Rather than going to a rehab place so she could get all her nutrition built up and getting her cancer treatments, she would have none of it…now I became her caregiver, and quite frankly she became a further pain in the butt to me. As if I didn’t have enough to contend with, with my sill continual daily cleaning of all the cats we still had, I now had to be practically a 24/7 nurse to my mother. She had an operation in which a G-Tube was inserted, since she couldn’t eat by mouth, but had to have “feeding” of things like Ensure. Also annoying was that she kept tugging at the feeding tube…the result being she yanked it out not once, not twice, but three times. Lovely. And you better believe she took advantage of the entire situation by becoming a full time woe is me martyr.

Well will stop this for now and continue my story tomorrow.
©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket