Is anyone else living like this... or am I the only one who feels like their house has turned into a hospital ward? My mom moved in with us last year after she finally retired from the school district. She was a math teacher for thirty years so I guess the numbers thing makes sense... but it’s getting out of hand. She has this little black logbook. She sits at the kitchen table three times a day—morning, noon, and right before bed—and she does the blood pressure cuff. ZIP... WHIRR... BEEP. If the top number goes up by even three points she starts sweating and looking at the door like she’s waiting for the ambulance to pull into the driveway. I’ve been observing my own internal state when she does this. It’s a very specific kind of irritation... almost like a physical weight in my chest. I find myself staying at the office later or sitting in my car in the driveway just to avoid the "report" she gives me at dinner. She’ll say something like "I was 128 over 82 at noon, but now I'm 131... that's a significant increase." I try to tell her it’s just because she had a cup of tea or whatever, but she just looks at me like I’m being careless with her life. It’s like she’s convinced she’s going to have a stroke the second she stops watching the screen. The neighbors all think it’s so sweet that she’s here. They see us at the grocery store and talk about how "lucky" we are to have this time together. I just nod and smile because appearances are everything in this town... you don't want to be the daughter who complains about her aging mother. But they don't see her at 2am standing over the sink with that machine. I can hear the velcro through the walls. RIIIIIP. Then the silence while it pumps up. It’s like I’m living with a ticking clock but the clock is her heart and she’s the one winding it too tight. Am I a bad person for wanting to throw that machine out the window? I actually thought about hiding the batteries yesterday but then I felt like a total monster... like I was actually trying to hurt her. I’ve noticed that I’m starting to check my own pulse now too. It’s like a contagion. I catch myself pushing two fingers against my neck while I’m sitting in traffic on the 405. I’m only fifty and I’m already acting like I’m waiting for the end. Is this just what it’s like? Do you just hit a certain age and your whole personality disappears and you just become a collection of medical stats? I don't even know how to talk to her anymore. Everything we talk about gets circled back to her "numbers" and how she feels "fluttery." I looked at her notebook when she was in the shower and there are hundreds of entries... pages and pages of blue ink. It’s a Meticulous record of her fear. I just want to have one dinner where we talk about the kids or the weather or literally anything else. Anyone else out there dealing with this kind of health obsession? I feel like I’m losing my mom to a piece of plastic and some velcro and I’m just... watching it happen.