More Mother-In-Law Trouble: the Twist

See the previous post for the background on this issue, then read this one, which is a continuation.

As you might imagine, my Mother-In-Law's suicide attempt landed her in an ambulance for a trip to the hospital where they performed tests and sent her to the psychiatric unit for recovery and observation. Luckily for her, the medications she took were not fatal in the dosage she consumed and the most effective treatment was to let her sleep it off. They watched her to make sure nothing more serious happened, but she slept fitfully for about 24 hours before coming out around.

From there, the hospital ran a battery of evaluations in order to determine her mental state, which I think is standard procedure for a suicide attempt. During that time, I ran an evaluation on myself, trying to figure out if I was the cause of what happened. Was it possible, I asked, that I led her to the suicide attempt because I asked her to leave. In my effort to eliminate negativity in the household, did I trigger a mental issue within my Mother-In-Law that led her to a strong enough feeling of despair that she felt it was time to end it all?

The next day, as I marshaled all the forces of positivity within me so that I could attract a favorable outcome, my wife and I visited the hospital for a family meeting that was called by the counselor assigned to the case. When we got to the floor, we met with the counselor, who was an interesting gentleman with a calm manor which I thought was perfect for his line of work, and we went over what happened. My wife was adamant that her mom get the help she needed, but she could not come back to our home because of the suicide attempt and how it was done in front of her oldest son. We were to meet with her mother after our initial meeting the with counselor, but my Mother-In-Law complained of chest pains and needed and EKG.

What was to be a couple of hours spent on the unit ended up being all day so that the EKG could be done and while we waited for the counselor to see his full slate of patients. Finally, we met with him and my Mother-In-Law. My wife did most of the talking about how we needed to find a personal care or assisted living facility because of the experimentation with the medicine and the effect of that experimentation. Even her mother agreed we couldn't all live under the same roof.

After a few more days of observation, which spanned the holidays between Christmas and the New Year, my Mother-In-Law was assigned a social worker in order to place her in the correct facility. But trouble arose there because the worker was trying to find an independent living space for her, not a place where she can be assisted. That set my wife off on the social worker for not looking out for her mother.

That's when we found the twist to the story. After all the hospital's mental tests on my Mother-In-Law, hospital determined that, other than a few memory deficiencies that are common to adults her age, there was nothing wrong with her mental health.

They explicitly told us that she's been fabricating her psychiatric issues for the last 10 years.