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I have just spent the loooongest weekend helping my mother through Hurricane Irma. Of course she insists on living in Florida and of course she refused to evacuate. Her housemate wanted to wait out the storm with friends a few houses down, so I volunteered to stay with Mom to keep things on an even keel between the two of them. My mother has been dealing with severe anemia as well as her usual balance and mobility problems, and she's reached the point where she does absolutely nothing for herself except go to the bathroom and move between her bed and her chair. She can't/won't get herself a glass of tea or water, let alone make any food or anything else for herself. At the same time she's such a princess - she's the only person on earth who can't drink bottled water from a bottle and must have it poured into a glass (which someone else has to wash) with a straw. So I spent a long weekend waiting on her hand and foot, to the tune of constant nagging and requests for every little thing, most of it in a power outage with no air conditioning or lights and cooking meals for us on a coleman stove out in the shed. She's on a regimen of IV iron supplements for her anemia, and she called me earlier to demand that I cancel her appointment for tomorrow, as she just doesn't feel up to it. I haven't canceled the appointment and I plan to tell her that if she refuses to go to her appointments, she can make her own food, get her own beverages, and figure out for herself how to manage until the power comes back on, because she shouldn't expect to be waited in hand and foot while refusing to do her part to try to get better. Sorry, I just need to vent!! I have missed this forum so much during the power outage. I finally found wifi in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, so I'm sitting in my air-conditioned car charging my laptop and ranting about my mother. I hope all of you in Irma's path are doing at least as well as I am at this point.

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Carla, hugs to you in this very challenging situation! Rant away! Keep us updated.
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