I'm tired of cooking/preparing 3 meals a day. It's just the two of us but boy oh boy can that woman eat!! She stays slimish, I get fattish. It's bad enough I do everything here much less start making her one thing and me the other. At times I feel guilty when I buy her fast food cuz of the nutritional value....not to mention I eat it too.
CM told you so is not something I l ever say but I swear that people with dementia defy all the odds and live long past what we expect! I think that diet sound perfect - stay strong sweetheart Keeping you in our thoughts - I would wrap you in Buble wrap too but Mallory seems to have her siights on Michael Buble! xxxxxxxx
funny story ;
edna came out and visited with me in the bunker a couple times last summer and went back and told her daughter i lived in a shack . the next visit edna and i hauled a couple loads of driveway stone and she got to visit upstairs for a while . i asked sharon if edna was still talking that " shack " crap . lol . sharon said edna had replaced " shack " with "absolutely beautiful little house " .
hope edna can come visit when i move upstairs . i wish she could live with me , i could take a few months off work to care for her .
I actually meant to thank everyone properly for the thoughts and hugs and good wishes, but got sidetracked and need to rush. Mother seems to be drifting in and out, unconscious when she stops breathing every couple of minutes, but all the medically qualified people are telling me that very old people often do this and then are right as rain a few days later. It could be the last leg, or it could not be. I'm just hanging around the bed rooting for her, giving her her medicines while she's still able to take them, and spooning in anything she seems to enjoy eating. I'm not sure chocolate ice cream, jelly (gello? What's the US spelling?) and cup-a-soup are ideal nutrition but quite honestly who cares. Please wish her whatever is best for her - I hope that won't be dying, but I'm trying to accept that it's not up to me.
Jude usually when I'm looking for keys after I've looked everywhere I discover I've been holding them the whole time.:)
Now breathe sweetheart you have the inner strength xxxxx
Thanks everyone for the kind words.
Mom is back home now. Turns out what looked like a cardiac event was most likely mild dehydration (it's SO hard to get her to drink enough) - so there's a very good chance that she blacked out from being dehydrated just enough to throw her enzymes out of whack. The doctor (whom I really don't like) claims that she must have just fallen asleep and fell out of the chair - uh NO - he wasn't there to see it. My mother was unconscious when she fell out of the chair - she remembers absolutely nothing from the time she left the chair to when she woke up on the floor. 99% of people will startle awake when they fall asleep and start to tip over - mom has *never* tipped over when she was asleep - ever - she always leans back in her chair. This was something entirely different. Her arms were loose and limp down by her sides, and when she started to lean forward, I called to her, because I thought she was reaching for something - but she continued to go forward and right out of her chair. She never once woke up, startled or tried to stop herself from falling, and her eyes were closed. That doesn't mean she *wasn't* sleeping, but she is a very light sleeper and startles awake very easily. This was not sleep, the way I see it.
Mom hasn't really been hungry all day, which is very unusual for her, but I think this fall really affected her very deeply, and she's pretty upset by it. She's been almost in tears several times as she said she didn't want this to happen again. I'm sure it scared her just as much as it did me.
We are going to look into getting a hospital bed for here in the house for mom with side rails - she slept better in the hospital with her head elevated. If her doctor won't write a prescription for one through medicare, I'll just rent one from the local medical supply myself. He's a pain - he wouldn't write her a script for a power scooter either, when she could no longer walk long distances. I bought it myself. I understand the concept that people should stay active and walk as long as they possibly can, but when they can't, they should be allowed the accommodation they need to live a relatively normal life!
Now I have to deal with my own fears - fear of leaving her alone AT ALL, even to run to the corner store for 10 minutes, fear that she will fall at night when I'm sleeping and I won't hear her, fear that this is a major step forward on the road to the nursing home (which I am very afraid that it is).
Countrymouse, best wishes to you as well. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
As for the topic of living to 100, this is a point of discussion a lot with my husband. We saw that article in Parade a few Sundays ago that middle aged people aim to make it to 100....they must not have witnessed what life becomes like when people hit their 90s, (or often sooner), and they talk about hiking and biking etc all up to that age....From all I have seen and heard in the last year I don't think I want to live to be 100.I don't see many people even walking at that age let alone hiking or biking...It scares me that I have relatives on both sides that are 97 and 103...they are not getting much out of life anymore.
I've been told (Dad had a pacemaker) that the pacemaker will not "keep" the heart beating - that it is only there to keep an actively beating heart in the proper rhythm. But if you are at all concerned about that, be sure to ask the cardiologist if it needs to be turned off at a certain point. I know that's a horrible thing to think about, but we all face it at some point. I'm so sorry you're dealing with all this now.
Apparently she had some sort of minor cardiac event - not a heart attack - but something that was enough to make her black out, and that's why she fell out of her chair. She had a rolling hospital table in front of her chair that she uses to eat from, etc, and when she started going over, she kind of landed against it, and because it's on wheels, it just rolled with her at first and then away from her, increasing her momentum and she ended up kind of almost launching out of the chair, faster than if she had just simply fallen. She hit the entertainment center and opened up a 10" gash on her head that went right down to the skull - I could see the bone when I turned her over. I can't even begin to describe how terrifying and awful it was.
She's in the hospital for observation overnight, and then we'll go from there. Obviously, leaving her at home for any length of time now is going to be a no-go, so I'll have to have a caregiver come in if I want to go anywhere at all. I jokingly told her I was going to wrap her in bubble wrap, but on a more serious note, this living room is *definitely* getting re-arranged. I can't have her taking another header out of her chair and hitting that stupid entertainment center again. We don't have a huge amount of space in this house, but I'll figure something out. I'll get rid of my desk if I have to and find something smaller to work from, if that's what it takes to make the space we need to keep her safe. Still can't believe she hit the entertainment center - it looks to be far enough away from her chair that she couldn't possibly hit it - but she did.
Have been at the hospital 2 hrs now. 1O" gash over the forehead and top of her head, so deep that I could see her skull. They stitched her up right away, ran a CT scan and EKG, but are going to repeat the blood work because her EKG had some abnormalities, which is something new.
Sooooo...keep a thought in mind for us tonight if you would, please. At this point, it looks like she might have just fallen asleep and fell out of the chair, but not sure.
On the less good side, I'm not completely confident she'll make it through the night. It's getting on for half past two in the morning here, and I can't decide whether to go to bed with my fingers crossed or hang over her bedside cheering her on but then be good for nothing come sun-up. EArlier today her GP ordered her beta blocker and diuretic re-started, left me a bottle of Oramorph (we've braved a teaspoonful. So far so… nothing much), and handed me a bag of controlled drugs with instructions to lock them away or "hide them in a drawer." These last are for use by the district nurses who will be helicoptering over the weekend.
I embarrassed myself - it's the world we live in - by having been briefly cock-a-hoop to learn that the x-ray showed no signs of chest infection. I was so relieved that I haven't cacked up monitoring her swallowing that I momentarily overlooked the fact that we still have to figure out why her breathing has gone belly-up, her pulse is rocketing around from 88-130 beats per minute, and she's sweating like billy-o. The GP didn't say anything rude: if she's as experienced as she seems to be in palliative and hospice care then I expect she's used to carergivers regarding the avoidance of guilt as No. 1 Priority.
At this stage I'm not sure what it's best to wish for. On a slightly macabre point, does anyone know how you, er, "tell" when there's an active pacemaker keeping the heart going? I hope it's a premature hypothetical question.
I'm considering that when I get to "a certain age" that I will refuse treatment and just allow myself to die. I don't want to be a burden to anyone and I believe if we live long enough we will all lose our faculties and therefore will need to be taken care of.
Sorry if this has already been discussed. I don't have time to reread the whole thread and sorry if I sound negative.