Re: pressure--nada relishing medical stuff

May 19, 2004

Hi, all,

Mine does exactly the same thing, relishing gruesome medical

details. She likes it best if they are HER illnesses of course. It's

one of the things that bothers me *most* about her.

Whenever she is upset about something, she goes to the emergency

room cuz she thinks she is dying. That's the only kind of nurturing

she can get for herself, apparently. Then afterwards she

announces, " I was so sick, I went to emergency room, I almost

died!!! " It's like she's almost gleeful, behind that mournful

attention seeking facade. She always made up stuff about heart

trouble which never existed.

When I was younger I believed in these " brushes with death " --and I

lived in constant fear--now I understand they are just made-up. :/

She was so happy a few years ago when she was finally diagnosed for

real with rheumatoid arthritis, which is painful and crippling and

requires lots of drugs.

She has a mild case, relatively, although I know it's a bad disease

regardless, but she overdramatizes everything. For instance:

I called on Mother's Day. (Yes, ack it upset me, but I did.) Dad

answered phone. I asked how mom was, after some minor knee surgery a

few weeks before. He said, " She's getting around great, yesterday we

went downtown to the waterfront and had coffee, it was really nice. "

I said " great, are you guys going anywhere today for mother's day? "

And he said, " depends if she wants to, she hasn't decided. "

So then he brings the phone to the bedroom and lets me talk to her.

She answers in her dramatic, feeble " i'm-at-death's-door " voice. I

ignore the voice, ask her how she's doing. She says (same voice

throughout) " HORRRIBLE, I can hardly even walk to the bathroom. " I

said, " Oh so you're not going to go out today? " She laughs a weak

little contemptuous laugh and says " No, i had KNEE SURGERY, I can

*hardly walk*. " Again, like she's relishing this soooo much, and

acts like I'm some callous idiot for suggesting she could go

anywhere at all.

So I said, " Oh I didn't realize it was that bad, cuz Dad was just

telling me you went out for coffee yesterday. " And she heaves one of

her huge martyred sighs and goes, " Yes, he really wanted to go, I

had to struggle to get to the car, but we made it down the street

for a lousy cup of coffee, yeah. " (Not downtown in her version, not

at the waterfront, where you have to walk down to get anywhere.)

So I just dropped it and tried to get off the phone, but not until

she managed to say reproachfully, " I didn't even get your card on

time. " I said, " That's too bad cuz I mailed it a week ago. " Then I

ended the convo. But. For all I know she *did* get the stupid card,

because she lies constantly.

I'm really struggling with the problem of WHY these stupid phone

calls upset me so much and ruin my day. Since I recognize her

problem and I know what she is doing, why can't I simply ignore it

and not let it effect me? Plus, I really limit my contact with her a

lot. Are there strategies for this that some of you use? Thanks, -

Kari

May 19, 2004