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.
just plant it up the holler on copperhead road ..
lol
i hated driving my mom around too cause for one thing she would want to go daily if possible , for another she would sometimes bust into a bipolar crying jag while i was trapped in the car with her ( very uncomfortable - caused me the only speeding ticket ive ever had in my life ) , and finally , i felt like she was trying to replace my lameass dad with me . his idea of " living " was beating the roads every day visiting poor bastards who didnt have enough forewarning to hide out from him . sometimes i regret that i didnt do more to help mom get out and socialize but recently im wondering if anyone else in the world could do any better if faced with moms lifelong mental illness's . bipolar alone is enough to destabilize a domestic partner , add several stages of dementia to that and , yea , i feel like to this day im in the process of recovery .
im a homebody . if not for work id only go to town about twice a year -- get a hundred pounds of yeast and some copper LINE -----
I had to postpone my Mom doctor's appointment for tomorrow because I am under the weather, plus their car has a mechanical issue which makes me nervous about driving... sorry, I will NOT drive a vehicle where the engine temp shows HOT.
I can't use my vehicle nor my sig other's because my Mom no longer can climb up into the vehicles.
Susan, can't give you a helmet, but I can give you a virtual (((HUG)))!!! You'll need it. One day you'll wish life was as simple as mom can't remember is she ate or not.
CM, you are doing AWESOME lady!! Geesh but it is a struggle to keep up with everyone and everything...
My department manager got angry because she had to revise the work schedule 3 weeks in a row until I went out on fmla.I have been released to go back to work as of today, April 21. In my department managers angry, she won't give me hours for this week, saying, "I have revised the schedule for you several times, the schedule is already made and I will not take hours from others for you, just get sick leave pay for the week." While I understand her position, I can't help but feel she is being vindictive as though I did this to purposely inconvenience her. I know she will transfer me...that is fine...and I really have no lose to incur if I apply for jobs with other grocery stores in the same union. Going to the union with this will only make it worse when I return. I am told I will be on the schedule the week of the 27th.
Today has been another of those "wow" kind of days in terms of Mom's slowly slipping memory and cognitive awareness. She ate a good breakfast, lots of protein and such, about 45 minutes ago. Then she decided to lay down for a nap, despite my requests that she shower first. Popped back up 15 minutes later, and wanted something to eat, saying she was hungry. I told her she had only eaten 30 minutes before, and should not be hungry at this point. "Oh. Well, I'm not hungry then." Um...wow. She went to the bathroom and then laid down again - I asked if she was still feeling hungry, and she said no, and then said, "I guess I lost track of time - I looked at the clock and thought it was time to eat." So *that's* the problem. She's losing the sensation and understanding of whether she is full or not and just eats because she thinks it's time to - and can't remember that she has already eaten just 30 minutes ago.
I really, really hate this stage of life for her. Now I know why she's constantly raiding the kitchen at night and eating all night long. I suspect I'm fighting a losing battle here with that one. I'm already hiding food in a locked cabinet in another room (and intentionally leaving that room cluttered so she can't get in there and raid THAT), because she will go through 5 bananas a day if I don't hide them. Now if she can't get to those, she's raiding something else.
Someone give me a helmet and about 10 more hours in my day, please, so I can keep up??
Poor GP really is having to find her feet plus she's moving house on Monday. I'm just happy to know that she's in for a very pleasant surprise when she discovers quite how brilliant her support staff and the local health services are; but given the state of most of the NHS I can't blame her for not having expected much of them when she arrived.
I misconstrued her new GP's intentions, and also wasn't familiar with the use of oramorph to slow and hence improve breathing - I automatically thought of morphine's suppressing respiration while keeping the patient happy, and jumped to a wrong conclusion. I will have to work out a way to apologise without sounding too grudging (thank God I didn't actually level any accusations at her). But I'm STILL cross that she wasn't keen on following up on the low O2 that her out-of-hours colleague found yesterday - I agree that you don't want to make a hobby of sticking needles in little old ladies' ear lobes but I'm sure mother will cope. Veronica she's not blue but she is pale and yawning, or was; and although the finger O2 readers aren't great her results using them are normally 95-97% - 90 for her is low. I wanted the oxygen because that's what they'd give her if she were on the ward and it's just Not Fair… but I agree it comes with its own problems and I can't pretend she enjoys having plastic spikes up her nose.
The GP is keen to meet with the district nurses, who I'm confident will do a lot to get rid of the emerging image she's got of a poor dying woman whose daughter insists on her being treated willy-nilly; we've compromised on a chest x-ray after her pacemaker check on Thursday; I managed to get a clean urine sample so we can rule out any nasties there; and (muttering under my breath) I'm pretty sure that the big improvement is down to the disastrous experimental Baclofen now clearing her system. Fingers crossed at the GP's next visit, next Tuesday, mother will be a lot less depressed, a lot more responsive, and generally less of a candidate for New GP to practise her Excellence in End of Life Care (or whatever they're calling the Liverpool Care Pathway these days) on.
Crumbs. Imagine walking in to your brand new job as a Senior Partner in a bustling general practice and getting handed a whole bunch of patients like my mother on your first day. And a whole bunch of relatives like me ??? :/ The poor woman must wish she'd stayed in Wales where it's peaceful and there are better pubs.
you gotta overlook the patients malarky .
aunt was playing with her homemade rolled up cushion / pillow this evening and told me how her pet raccoon ( that lived and died decades ago ) crawled in one end of the pillow and out the other . now that obviously didnt happen but im not going to be the one to harsh on her buzz .
i smiled and enjoyed the ( flawed ) memory with her .
when my mother was near death and hallucinating a couple years ago i told hospice " we dont need no stinkin facts around here " ..
we were livin the ( pipe ) dream ..
I was enjoying my steak, but noted that a couple of minutes had passed by and her steak was still in the microwave. So I went to get it out. It was a touch shy of a piece of tough charcoal. I said that I hoped it was still edible. She ate it, but complained how tough it was and that I ought to buy better cuts at Publix and quit shopping at Wal-Mart. I give up -- It was from Publix and it was a good cut that was burnt just to spite me.
I don't understand the spite we see. It makes no sense at all. The only thing I can figure is that it is resentment because we are not as old as they are yet. Nothing else makes any sense.
WHERE'S MY HELMET !!
elder care isnt always dread and gloom . edna comforts me and keeps me grounded too .