Mom met the family GP this evening to top up on her high blood pressure medication. While our GP, Dr. Soo, took her pulse by the wrist, I couldn’t stop laughing. The GP must have thought I found him funny.
You see, the GP has been seeing my mother for her complains of rapid heartbeats for years. But as fluent as he was in medicine, the doctor could not advise my mother in the most effective way.
Mom, if you don’t yell so much, you will see doctor less frequently!
The effects of my father’s brain haemorrhage years ago must have been exhilarating for my sixty year old mother. While other sufferers lose the use of a limb or become paralyzed half of their body, my father recovered very well physically. But the damages exist, and they are very insiduous. The damages affect his reasoning, emotional regulation, temperament, and personality. He lacks real empathy for others and higher executive functionings that govern our ability to feel responsible.
So for years, my father looked very normal and made people treat him as normal. Eventually, the psychological problems I mentioned above would manifest into unacceptable behaviors that bewilder people who come into contact with him. But since he seemed like a very normal person over the next twenty years, it’s really hard for the average person to understand and forgive him for the things he said and did.
As his daughter, I was emotionally affected because I lost the ideal father figure I was born to, at an age when I needed him most. But just like any child, I eventually grew up and learned to separate myself from my parents, develop my own identity, and direct my own life.
My mother on the other hand, is stuck.
Sometimes mom tends to be unreasonable, we all do. I used to respond to her with equally unreasonable behaviors, like trying to drown out her yells. But ever since I became deaf and have the option of switching off my hearing aid, I no longer have to hear anything that upsets me.
Deafness is a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately for my mother, she does not have this luxury.
