Expectations

Expectations
©2011 Joan M. Newcomb  

The moment I came up with today's Ezine Essay, a mischievous side of me emerged.  Like, don't send an Ezine out at all!  Write something outrageous.  Do something unexpected!

  

I think it's my Expanded Self giving me the antidote to Expectations.

  

I've been writing about the roller coaster ride with my Mom that I've been on since April.  First she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Then it became necessary to drop everything to be with her.  I can't really say that I've moved, since I've been living out of 2 suitcases since June 29th.

A month ago she fell and fractured part of her pelvis.  We ended up in the hospital for 18 days.  I say "we" because, with Alzheimer's, she couldn't be alone.  A cancer patient knows where they are and why they're there.  

An Alzheimer's person is constantly surprised by everything.  Why can't she roll out of bed in the middle of the night and pee in her "chamber pot"?  An Alz. person won't know to ring the call button & wait for a nurse to show up to help her to the commode.

In the hospital they discovered 'a spot on her lung', and did a biopsy.  (Actually, they did many CT Scans, Xrays, an MRI and then a biopsy.  They love their machines)!

The results weren't in before we were discharged and I decided not to find out right away.  I didn't want to get on the cancer roller coaster until after she'd recovered a bit from the fracture.

Soooo.  I discover I do okay as long as I don't have expectations.  When I've gotten REALLY pissed off with siblings, it's because I expect them to "get it" and "come through for me".  However, they're not here so how could they really know or understand?

Expectations make things more difficult.  I'll get upset with myself for being upset.  ??  Just because I'm psychic, just because I've had decades of personal growth, just because I've lived through challenging times before, I should breeze through this?

Expectations are perfect pictures.  It's viewing the experience through lenses of perfection, and then judging the hell of it because it doesn't match.

I'm not a natural nurturer (like my mother was).  I was always more of a trail blazer mom.  I'd spend money taking my kids on trips, giving them adventures and life experiences, rather than on material things.  I'd encourage their independence and let them go on their 'road trip of life' (while their dad would bake them cookies for care packages and phone every day).

So here I am being my mother's care taker and I still want to charge ahead and take her with me.  Ironic, since Alzheimer's makes one's world smaller and smaller.

But I'm the right person for the job.  It was interesting bumping up against the hospital's expectations.  They were used to injured and medicated patients, not someone who would walk out to the nurses station, question every medication and protest unnecessary interruptions. (jezus why don't they let patients sleep?? Isn't it necessary for their recovery?)

Dorothy's going to need an advocate and defender as much as a healer.

But who knows?  We'll find out the biopsy results next week.  Could be nothing, could be something.  The next steps will unfold from there.

This week, catch your own expectations.  Turn them upside down and inside out.  See what happens when you do!