Who is the caretaker?

Clinging to the edge. That's the only way I can describe today.

The past few days have been an emotional rollercoaster, which is exactly what my psychiatrist told me to avoid. (How, he didn't say).

I have an old cat who will probably need to be put to sleep soon, so I'm having angst over that. Where does one draw the line over a beloved 15-year-old cat being in too much pain and being OK and still happy? My mom just wants it done because she's sick of cleaning up the messes. My dad is against it because he is worried about how I will react. So that leaves me with the deciding vote and watching my poor cat every moment wondering if she's OK or not.

In the middle of this, my mother has decided to go through one of her rebellious phases. She's like a fucking 14-year-old. She has COPD bad enough to be on 4 liters of Oxygen and she literally takes more than 20 prescription medications. She sees 7 different doctors, from her primary physician to a heart specialist to a kidney specialist. She also sees a hack pain specialist whose answer to everything is to give her more and more powerful pain meds instead of eating better or trying physical therapy.

She takes care of her own meds and doctor appointments - usually. But the past week she just "doesn't want to deal with it." She told me yesterday that "I'm 63 years old and I'm rebelling against the restrictions put on my life."

Seriously, mother? By 4 p.m. she was using her rescue inhaler because she hadn't done any breathing treatments all day. She refused to make 3 doctors appointments (wow, I wish I had the option to even see a doctor, let alone refuse to see one). By the time my dad got home from work she was shaking so back she kept dropping things.

I have no idea if she took her meds. I know she was up at 4 a.m. doing god knows what out in the kitchen. When I got up at 11 a.m. she was standing ASLEEP at the kitchen counter with a bowl of cereal. I had to poke her and prod her for 20 minutes to get the cereal eaten, then sent her to bed. I mopped up the mess from my sick cat, fed the other cats and cleaned up her breakfast mess.

And now I am a fingernail away from losing it. I depend on my parents being at least moderately stable. The last time my mom "rebelled" she ended up in the ICU and I just can't face that. I had to deal with it last time and I am panicking that it will happen again. And I won't be able to deal with it. I am afraid to go check on her to make sure she is actually in bed and not asleep on the damn toilet or something. All I can do is stare at the new scars on my arms and tell myself over and over that I can't go there again. But I need something stable to hold onto and it isn't there.

Yes, my mom is disabled. But she is by all accounts - when she does what she's supposed to - stable enough to take care of me. I am not - by all accounts - stable enough to take care of her. So what do I do when my caretaker decides to not only take the day off but turn into someone I need to take care of?

Yeah, that isn't in my therapy handbook.