Thanks amandalouise, I appreciate your example and I have tried to consider looking at it that way. The room my mother was put in was not something the doctor suggested, it was my sister's decision and at that time my sister had chosen to take over and that was in the beginning part that gradually got more and more toxic. And it got to a point where my sister ended up raging at me simply because I happened to be with my mother to witness my mother have a stroke and took steps to get her to an ER.

What I have gradually been seeing when it comes to my sister is how she tends to talk down to others. When she does that with people it has a bad affect on them, the wrong affect and I have noticed how that has pushed people away to where they begin to want to "avoid" her and to be honest, I am the same way where she has a bad affect on me to where I want to avoid her too.

It's like my sister insists on being the "stage" director where she needs all the characters to do what SHE directs them to do and if they don't she blacklists them or punishes them in a way where they "feel" and "learn" that if you don't play HER WAY you don't get to play. I had even at one point compared her with nurse Ratchit in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" .

I remember one day when I sat with her and she began discussing my mother where she decided SHE knew that my mother had dementia and she began using that label constantly in a way that she would begin talking about my mother like that and it would be very bad for my mother to overhear that kind of talk about her.

The REAL TRUTH that was revealed after my mother had a stroke in front of me that led to her having a Cat Scan and MRI of her brain was that my mother had had a stroke that showed up in her brain that had affected her ability to be more mobile. That is what created her confusion both mentally and physically and what also took her sense of having the ability to keep up with cooking my father three meals a day and keeping up with keeping their big house clean.

When I experienced that day when my mother was acting one way in front of my sister and my father only to completely change once they left and it was safe, my mother completely changed in front of me both physically and mentally as I knew her, her old self. That was pretty traumatic for me to witness. And I was already struggling with PTSD and very confused about that at the time and everything in my own life had literally turned upside down.

If you pay attention to the drugs my mother was pushed to take and all the side affects of these drugs, including the anesthesia she was given for her back surgery that really left her extremely confused and disoriented, you can begin to recognize something that is NOT just dementia. I also know first hand what it's like to wake up from surgery all confused because of the anesthesia and hallucinating. I know when I had my life saving surgery the last thing I needed was to be put in a room with a woman who is loud and doesn't even speak english to "stimulate me". You DON'T choose to stimulate someone who is CLEARLY showing signs of confusion and is disoriented and FRIGHTENED. I also know what the surgeon meant when he told my sister to WAIT and give my mother time to gradually regain herself as her brain and body got over the affects of the anesthesia. I had to do that myself. Along with the affects of pain medications as my mother had those too because of how her back had been cut open and her spine had been worked on.

Then my mother was given another drug to help with her phantom nerve pain and that drug also had side effects of dizziness, sleepiness, confusion and even some depression and suicidal thoughts ALL OF WHICH my mother had, NOT dementia or just being BAD and refusing to do what my sister pushed her to do. Add to that how my sister refused to listen to the surgeon and put my mother on Rameron that made my mother feel sick to her stomach and not want to eat, I KNOW FIRST HAND about that because that is EXACTLY what happened to me when that drug was pushed at me.

I changed my mother's room that night because I knew I had to get her away from that room mate who's family came in and they were all very loud speaking Spanish and I could see how that was scaring my mother and she was shaking with the blanket pulled up to her eyes. I have been in that state of mind myself and the last thing one needs is loud people that you don't even know what they are saying.

I tried to step up and question and communicate my concerns, all that did was result in my sister not including me in getting to know what medications my mother was on and forget about my being able to talk to doctors or any staff for that matter.

One day I stopped to see my mother and she was sitting in her living room on the window seat already tired out from the time my sister spent with her. I had thought my sister had left and she did not leave but went up the back stairs, stayed quiet to spy and then suddenly came down the front stairs with that ANGRY cold body language and she walked past me and said in her angry cold tone, "Hi OE, bye OE" and just after that I had a flashback. I could not talk and I could see my mother yet I was overcome by the flashback and had no control at all. It frightened my mother, and it sure frightened me.

It took a few years to finally be able to understand WHAT triggered me to have that flashback that day and that my sister was the trigger. I began having more flashbacks and I was totally confused by them and why I was experiencing them. I big part of me felt that it was a punishment for "not telling" about things I was experiencing in my childhood. I got so I believed the only way I could get them to stop is to "tell". And I did not have help at the time. I was actually right about what I had thought, but where I was wrong was about WHO to tell. It's a bad idea to tell the very dysfunctional people that were so dysfunctional that it resulted in the trauma to happen in the first place.

People have said to me "ignore your sister, don't give her the power", and I have tried to explain the kind of power she had that I never CHOSE to give her and had not even realized she had over me either. My sister's behaviors opened this door in my mind that I had NO IDEA existed where I could experience these flashbacks and not even have any idea WHAT was going to come forward and put me back in a moment I never realized I had storred that moment that way.

I have watched as my sister talked down to my parents and changed both of them to where they gradually became afraid of her. I have sat with them and listened to them BOTH describe my sister as "mean and bossy" and how that was gradually upsetting them both. As I mentioned I had taken them out to dinner one time (they were both much more mobile at the time) only to see them both act like my sister was there telling them to move along and hurry up and I had to stop them and literally tell them "She is not here, we have plenty of time so you can relax and take as much time as you want to walk around and be relaxed".

The flashback I had that day was about an experience I had with my older brother who was chasing me and I was running through the doors in that house to get away from him. I did not understand how my sister could trigger that flashback because she was not in it. It took me a long time to finally understand the connection to what I was witnessing and what that brought back from my past that I had no idea I had stored or even that it could come forward the way it did.

What the connection was had to do with my older brother and all the abuse I saw him suffer through and how much my sister ALWAYS hated him and threatened me where if I was nice to him and was friends with him that she would punish me and be mean to me. What I witnessed him go through every day traumatized me and I saw he did not deserve to be treated so badly and how much it was genuinely hurting him and even more importantly how alone he was. So I became his ONLY friend and always had to do that when I knew my sister could not see me being nice to him. Yet, my older brother faced so much abuse that he would get to a breaking point and I had to know how to look for that because that's when I had to run and hide from him. I always knew this rage he had was not his fault and I was often amazed at how long he could go before he would need to vent. I always KNEW I could not tell because all that would do is lead to him being punished even more. His rages were manageable, but if he suffered even more abuse they might not be and that could end up with me being hurt, maybe even killed. My older brother was peeing his bed and floors and sucking his thumb constantly every night, all of his behaviors were a result of CHILD ABUSE and that abuse was something that my parents were told to do with him and the teachers when all he suffered from was learning disabilites and an older sister that hated him and encouraged the other children on that bus to pick on him and she wanted me to do that too, and I would not do it.

OE is a protector and I have stood up for others who don't deserve to be punished or hurt. What I saw happening to my older brother was wrong and I spent my entire childhood praying for someone to help him. That has actually been a very big part of my life, protecting someone who doesn't deserve to be punished for something they can't help including my own child who also struggled with learning disabilities.

The only way I could really KNOW how my mother was REALLY doing was to be alone with her. My sister was being to pushy and mean and bossy with her and all that did was make her do anything she could to ESCAPE. My sister tends to INSIST she is always right when she IS NOT RIGHT. That is what I saw happening to my mother and that's exactly what I saw happen to my older brother too. Yet, I never made that connection where these flashbacks were showing me moments in my past that I had no idea I had somehow saved where I could have these flashbacks. These flashbacks did not come forward in a story like one would think they would either.

My sister's behaviors towards me have been toxic and mean and even bossy much like my parents had experienced and talked with me about. I wanted to love my sister and try to focus on the good in her, I tend to do that where I do focus on the good in people. Yet, she always sees things HER WAY and she has always been controlling and always wanting to be the one "directing" and would punish if others did not give in to HER having that position. I can see it even more now, not only with my parents but I noticed it in how she was with the staff at the hospital and the rehabilitation facility where people would see her and want to hide from her.

That day I went to visit my parents at her house I saw so much in her behavior that I found deeply disturbing on such a deep level in myself. Even making that call to wish my father a happy birthday was met with her answering and forcing her control with her immediately talking down to me. Well, as was always the case, if I did not play HER game, then I would face her wrath.

People can say, "this is your parent's fault" and on some levels that is true, but they genuinely did not know it. What saddens me is how my sister will fight for the control until the very end, even if it hurts everyone else involved. The last time I got to see my mother alone she got so she began to be herself again with me and she told me what it was like living with my sister and she told me how much she missed not seeing me for so many months. I felt such a deep sadness because I was hoping this so called dementia had gotten her to the point where she would not be able to remember how long it had really been since I got to be "alone" with her.

When I started this thread I was just trying to find a suggestion of how to answer my father when he asks me "when am I going to see you". I feel terrible lying to him about why he is not seeing me because the REALITY is that I feel so unwelcome whenever my sister is present and that runs so deep in me that it can take me several days to regain my sense of self again.

I don't want my father to think I don't care or love him, because I really do and I really miss both my parents. My sister has said things to me that are VERY MEAN and she has made a huge effort to encourage me to feel guilt for any help my parents gave me. And my parents did help me get back on my feet after I experienced some major challenges, especially major medical challenges as I have mentioned. She has even said things to my older brother in an effort to encourage him to see me in a bad light. Yet, my older brother already knows how toxic she can be and he has shared that he doesn't want to remember that time in his life and I can respect that because I was there, I saw it with my own eyes.

Reality can bite hard in ways we suddenly become more aware of then we did in our past. I got so busy with my own life that I did not foresee happening what I have had come up in my face the way it has.