Re: Please help this desperate mother

Enabling histrionics is not helpful either.

I apologize for sounding harsh, but it's more tough love than actual malice. Did you read everything I wrote to her across the board? There were helpful suggestions. What do you recommend she do? If I were a medical professional and she came to me and repeated everything she has written here I would write her a script for Xanax and tell her she should consider speaking with a therapist, possibly family counseling because until everyone is of sound mind and on the same page there's no benefit in trying to address the parasite issue when there seems to be some emotional or family issues that need attention. My questions about her living situation were valid. If there is nothing unusual about it then there should be no reason not to explain why she is currently living separately from her young, sick children that she would do anything to protect and care for. Does that not strike you as odd? If she had said, for example, that her mother is frail and ailing and she is staying there to help out her mother then that would make sense, but the part about why she's not in her own home, coupled with the fact that her own husband is going behind her back to inform the pediatrician not to listen to her is a huge red flag for me. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to act reasonably and with purpose. Waxing on about her sick children that she's not even there to take care of seems overly dramatic and disingenuous to me. I don't have kids, but if I did I would not up and leave them when they are ill and then go online to whine "woe is me, my poor babies!".

I understand that some people just want someone to listen to them, pat them on the back and tell them they are right and everything will be ok, but to me that's not helpful at all in fighting a very real infection. This is a parasite support board, not an emotional support board. Sure, those lines may cross occasionally, but as a realist I prefer to stick to tangible resolutions. Tweet