Replies to '07/01 A Secret Inside: Extreme Hoarding'

My mother-in-law is in a hospital now because of heart failure.   She has been there since January 2008.  Her daughter is with her, obsessively, and probably has a lesser form of the disease.  The daughter was a famous TV actress on a sitcom in the 80s for 6 years.   Reta used to collect things "on the set" until producers told her she was not allowed anymore.   She attended the Emmy's (her daughter won an Emmy  once) and collected the potted plants off all the tables as they were trying to close down the facility at the end of the show!   Even Hollywood turned it's head to this woman; she existed in plain view, although the family hid her house and the "big secret" all those years.   

Now the daughter wears the old smelly "good will" clothing too.   She stays in the hospital with bags and boxes of stolen hospital blankets, used food containers, hospital waste, newspapers, magazines, alongside the bed.  The daughter sleeps on the chair and never leaves the room.    She showers at most once a week in the nurse's shower facilities.    My mother-in-law orders the daughter around by writing notes, because she is on a traech tube (she can no longer breathe on her own because of her heart condition; she is 80 years old).     Reta writes scathing notes to some of her sons when they visit to control them I feel.   They feel so bad after they visit her; they love her but she continues to show disapproval of them to manipulate them.    One son takes the boxes to the storage rooms or her house.  Another son goes into the house once very year or so and cleans up the house.  The dogs are living in an apartment now, and have destroyed the apartment, also filled with junk.  Dobermans!       I don't think Reta will live much longer.   I wonder what the daughter will do with the storage rooms.   The family is very clan-like because of  hiding her and cleaning up after her.   They pay $2700/mo in storage rooms, have one 2-story house full of garbage until the son cleans it out with truck loads to the dump, 3 more storage sheds on the property in a ravine hide-away home, and one apartment full of junk with the dogs.  

Why the adult children do this is hard for me to comprehend.  My husband, her son, is a kind generous man who at age 45 only began to come out from under her control.  He has mild OCD and is meticulously clean about his person and likes to vacuum!  He makes a good husband! since I keep a clean house but am not that fond of vacuuming!    I love my brother-in-law that is the "cleaner", ie takes the truckloads to the dump.    My sister-in-law is mean-spirited like her mother, and despite her youthful beauty (now much lost), she has relationship problems left and right, but many Hollywood want-to-be new friends....always...trying to get into the "business".  These groupies keep her going but I fear she will end up like her mother, although she is nowhere near as severe as even the woman on Dr Phils show.

By the way, the grandmother was an alcoholic, tried to commit suicide once and died manacled to a hospital bed, raging and screaming!    I didn't know anything about the family's secret until after I was married for awhile.