Going to the ER

[sunshine702]

My Mother in Law is going through some stuff.  It's the weekend of losing her husband.  I get that!!  So she took a trip to visit some family a half day drive away. The people had a cat.  She is allergic.  They tried to vacuum surfaces real good.  She slept in contacts with the dander and then according to her.......

Went to the ER for her contacts
In big city.  They fished it out and gave her some eye drops.

Umm ok.

Then she drove home and was fishing for my partner to take her to the ER again here.  Her vision was not perfect.  But ended up driving herself when he was not keen.

This seems ummm odd. 

Do you really go to the ER twice in 48 hours for allergies and contacts?

This seems a little attention seeking to me.

Any contact wearers weigh in.

[sunshine702]

Ok and upon my partner telling it it may be the Urgent Care in the big city which makes more sense - the actual ER that sounds more normal then

[NarcKiddo]

My MIL and her mother before her would regularly go to the ER or wangle some other way of getting admitted to hospital. MIL would then drag my husband there on a wild goose chase by claiming the doctors had found a tumour, which they had not. We live at the other end of the country and getting flights at the drop of a hat is neither convenient nor cheap.

Since Covid it is not possible to do that, and in any case she is now in a care home so they are the arbiters of whether she needs hospital care or not.

In my experience it is quite usual for medical issues to be inflated, invented or whatever. Although it sounds from your second post as if your MIL may not have been quite so drastic as you first thought. I don't know what age she is but I would also say that as people get older there can be a tendency to panic  more (especially if there is PD in the mix). My mother panics about everything and it has got way worse over the years. And if there is heightened emotion in the mix then that makes it more understandable that an over-reaction could occur.

To me it does sound like there may be an element of attention seeking. In my experience the attention seeking is not always planned, but is often a response to feeling things are going out of their control.

[sunshine702]

Well upon my partner re telling me the story she has a scratched cornea. That is tough but does heal and she went to a walk in clinic Urgent Care not the Emergency Room like I heard her say.  Part of me feels bad for doubting her but the other part of me really worries if this is going to be our new life -/ now drop everything to attend to her next crisis.

So my partner is EPIC level aloof.  When I broke my foot badly he had me drive myself to a clinic which I did but I wanted some TLC fawning. 

So it wasn't just me.  He did that to her too.  Not driving her which I hope nipped that in the bud...

We will see.!!