BPD mother with narcissistic tendencies with sick father

[NCGal25]

I grew up in what was a fairly normal childhood so I thought but over the last several years I have come to recognize that what I thought was normal, really wasn’t all that normal after all. In the past year I have recognized glaring tendencies that my mother is BPD with narcissistic tendencies. I would say the queen/witch. I recently started going to see a therapist due to the fact that my father has become ill with GI related issues that have been unresolved for months with multiple hospitalizations. He has been released from 5+ physicians care not to him being the issue but my mother being the problem and trying to dictate his care. If the clinician is not in agreement with her thoughts on what she thinks is wrong with him, she lashes out in anger, retaliation, fear, etc. My siblings and I have tried to intervene to help care for my dad but we have been unsuccessful at this point. She has criticized us, told us that we don’t love him or her because we haven’t helped in the exact way that she wanted, because we have disagreed with her or told her that she needed to let the physicians practice medicine, or when we helped we didn’t do it in the way in which she felt was appropriate, she has accused me on conspiring against her to make a physician offer my dad an invasive procedure that she feels he doesn’t need (this is clearly untrue) and she has gone off the deep end. My dad needs to go back to the hospital and has asked for her not to be involved in his care and we have a plan to take him tomorrow, yet my mom threatened tonight to canceled his insurance if she isn’t allowed to be involved in his care. I guess I am just looking for guidance on if anyone has dealt with something similar where the BPD is interfering with another ones healthcare and how they navigated the toxic relationship to get the person the care they needed and deserved. At this point we are worried my dad is going to die of infection and she has hindered his ability to get an accurate diagnosis due to anchoring and being so sure that she is right that unless the doctor agrees to do exactly what she tells them to do, she basically ends up getting kicked out of the hospital or my dad gets released from him their care. Healthcare POA only works if my dad isn’t cognitively able to make decisions and at this point he is coherent and cognitively still functioning but with COVID -19 only one caregiver is allowed in the hospital and therefore my mom has been the only one involved. Please help!

[zachira]

My heart goes out to you with your mother with BPD wanting to have full control of your father's medical care. It is a step in the right direction that your father has said he does not want your mother in control of his medical care. I suggest you and your siblings meet with a social worker at the hospital so the medical team knows what the situation with your father is, and you can find out how to have your father sign the proper paperwork so one or some of his children will make the decisions if your father is unable to. Do you think your father can stand up to your mother and insist his children be in charge of his medical care when he is unable to make decisions for himself? What has your father done so far to resist your mother making decisions for him that he could be making himself? The medical team needs to know that they should talk to your father alone without your mother present when decisions need to be made about his care.
I too was raised by a mother with BPD with narcissistic tendencies. It also took me many years to realize that my family was anything but normal. I have found the biggest challenge is to set and maintain healthy boundaries with dysfunctional family members, especially because they will fight like crazy any boundaries set because they want to control everything no matter how harmful it may be for the rest of the family. I have felt similar pain as yours, as my mother abused my brother when he was dying of cancer and the social services had to get involved.
We are here to listen and support you. There are many members who are/have been in similar long term situations like yours and understand your pain and frustrations.

[Notwendy]

I am so sorry. I wish I had better advice for you but as long as your father is in charge, it's his call to insist that your mother not be involved in his medical care. If he's dependent on your mother's insurance, that is also a difficult situation.

I agree with Zachira that if your father is willing, speaking to his medical team- asking to speak to a social worker to see what his options are. I don't know if he's old enough for medicare or can he purchase his own health insurance. For him to have autonomy, he needs to have control of his insurance plan.

It is possible he's not able emotionally to detach himself. I know it's tempting to look at your mother as the problem but it's the relationship between them and he's part of it.

Please read up on the Karpman drama triangle. There is information on this site about it. I see the potential here as I was in a similar situation with my father. He was critically ill and my BPD mother was also involved in his health care decisions and I had concerns about that. However, he needed to stand up to her in order to change that and that is not something he could do. The two of them were very much enmeshed and that relationship was complicated. I naively stepped in as a potential "rescuer" on that drama triangle. While I don't regret that I tried to intervene when it came to his welfare,  I don't think I could have not tried to help him, it didn't seem to be effective. My mother got angry at me, and my father sided with her.

I called social services at the time and what they told me was that as long as my father was mentally competent, there was no way I could step in and try to get POA. This is really up to your father to decide. If he can't do it, I hope you can understand that the dynamics between them are complicated and at this point, decades long, and may not be something he can change at once. This was confusing to me at the time. I perceived him as a victim of my BPD mother, he was the good one, she was the bad one, but in reality his enabling was also a part in the dynamics between them. Neither was the "good" or "bad" one in this, it was somehow a match.

I am glad you are seeing a therapist. This is a time to take care of yourself. It's very stressful.  I do hope your father gets the help he needs and recovers. Please be good to yourself, do what you can within the legal limits of your power, but also understand that, even if they become angry at you, and your mother makes accusations, it's the drama triangle. It's not you. I hope you can learn to understand your family dynamics and not take these behaviors personally. Take care of you- this you can do.