My Mother Is a Horrible Patient

My mother is a horrible patient. The irony of the word “patient” is not lost on me.

When I was in the hospital, I hardly used the call button. Yesterday, during the roughly three hours I spent visiting my mother, she used hers four times. Clearly, we have different approaches to that button.

Today, I tried to explain that she’s in a facility where everyone needs help, and more people need assistance than there are people available to provide it.

She told me she needed help right away.

I pointed out that everyone asking for help probably feels they need it right away, too. Staff has to work through those requests. She needs to have some patience.

Now, I’m not suggesting she shouldn’t ask for help when she needs it. That’s what the button is for. But needing assistance and expecting someone to appear immediately are two different things. That was the point I was trying to make.

Apparently, a different message arrived.

When we got to her room, her roommate asked how she was doing.

My mother replied, “My son said I’m a bitch.”

“What??? I didn’t say that.”

There’s quite a distance between “You need to have more patience” and what she told her roommate. Somehow, my mother covered it in record time.

I explained to her roommate that I had said she needed to be more patient because she was in a place where everyone required help. That was the conversation. No name-calling. No insult.

My mother has always had a tendency to tell stories that, from where I’m standing, aren’t based on the facts. This time, I was right there to hear myself become the villain in a conversation I’d actually participated in.

I understand that needing help is frustrating. Waiting when you’re uncomfortable can feel endless. I can sympathize with that and still wish she’d recognize that the people helping her are also helping everyone else.

And I’d appreciate it if, when quoting me, she used something I actually said.

I went there trying to explain patience to my mother. By the time we reached her room, I was getting a lesson in how much of it I still needed.