Made possible by

My day was made possible by my TENS unit and my mom's psychiatrist.

A TENS unit, for those of you not in the know, is a magical little device that shocks the living hell out of your nerves to ease pain. That's a little dramatic, but that's the kind of mood I'm in so I'm going with it.

My electrode pads, those little white patches in the picture, don't typically stray from my spine. The basic idea of the unit is a current travels across the skin and along nerves to disrupt pain signals. The unit can also help increase your body's production of endorphins. Provided you don't crank that bad boy up to full strength immediately to imitate getting kicked by a mule at the same time you lick an electric fence, it doesn't hurt. It is, quite frankly, a miracle in my opinion. Long time readers may remember I have an issue or two I've inherited from my parents where the best solutions doctors offer are those nifty drugs advertised on tv as may cause cancer, tuberculosis or death.

And to those who have the delight of intense menstrual cramping? Give it a go. Seriously. Minimize your time in the fetal position of agony - unless that's your thing. Sciatica? Migraines? Chronic pain? It can help, though as with anything else, results vary. For me so far, it's worked like a champ. And it's a relatively inexpensive purchase from everyone's favorite on-line retailer.

My mother has been on a manic-y and hallucination-filled ride of late. She picks apart her food at every meal to look for things hidden within. Last week she claimed someone had etched a message on a chicken bone. She thought her chair was full of ants, but sat there anyway taking on imaginary bites. After a meal out with my father on Valentine's Day and a generally pleasant day, she ended February 14th asking my father if he wanted a divorce so he could be free of her. And she sees pencil shavings in ice cubes at the moment, so hold the ice for the time being. I won't even begin to explain the debacle that took place when she asked for hot chocolate and believed we'd given her something else.

"She claims that's what she gave me." This is what she told my father about 30 minutes in to what became a night-long event.

So, I was delighted when the psychiatrist's office moved her appointment up. Because these day's it's a constant weighing of each situation to decide if she needs to be seen ASAP or this is just the new normal.

He makes it look effortless.

In addition to adjusting Mom's medication this time (for about the 4th or 5th time in less than a year), the doctor gave me her personal cell phone number to keep her updated more easily.

Well that's gotta be a good sign. Right?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

It's a difficult step to add another new medication to my mom's list and not one her doctor took lightly. Decades of being on heavy-duty anti-psychotics, some for far longer than is now recommended, have wrecked some of my mom's organs. It limits what she can take now. Gold standards in treatment have to be avoided because they would kill her.

So we add a new, fast acting prescription and wait and see if it helps control the rampant visual & tactile hallucinations, delusions and off the charts paranoia.