Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

As one of the wisest women on this board has said,

"Hold your dominion"!

Phoenix--

You're tonic for my ego. Many thanks.

Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones
Noddy - Your situation makes mine seem simple.

I agree about the marriage vows, and also the grudging compliance.. I think coping with such problems as you are facing requires gritting your teeth and remembering the man you married. He is now hidden from you, but there must be some trace of him. Do what you need to do, for the sake of that trace.

TomKitten--

One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time.

Fortunately the dog is always speaking to both of us.

Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones
A wild and woolly evening! I got back from my Monday library stint, a bit of time on the treadmill and then picking up my dinner takeout bag from the dining room, to find a message that Bob had injured his ankle, probably broken it. And he certainly had. Nobody has any idea how it happened; the one thing that it could not have been was a fall.

So it was off to the hospital for a speed-record-breaking time, namely just under four hours. But now he's back in his bed at Clark House, fairly comfortable (two Vicodin before the ambulance took us to the hospital), and I think he will sleep. But he really didn't need all this, poor soul.

I had my book and a tape, but he had nothing but confusion, although the Vicodin did help keep him calm most of the time.

Always something...

Quite funny for me: could stay in bed today as long as I wanted and didn't have to get up at 5:30 like all the days before .... which meant, I awoke at that time and was up at 7:30 :wink:

Walter--

Has anyone every mentioned that your Unconscious Mind might be just a wee bit inflexible?

Tomkitten--

Never a dull moment. You must wish for a few dull moments these days.

Perhaps November will be an uneventful month?

Not really, Noddy, :wink:

Walter--

Then why were you wide awake this morning? Were you planning on milking cows and slopping hogs?

I'm an early bird since school time .... and don't need much sleep since I was in the navy

Walter--

Milking the whales? Slopping the dolphins?

Well, I'm nearly pinioned against the wall now, my dear ... :wink:

Walter--

October, 2007, is the month when your life starts getting more and more simple.

This really seems to be so - even my sister and I start to talk normal again ...

Walter - it's time for you to start watching the sun rise because you haven't gone to bed yet, not because you're already up!

walter wrote :



a full two hours wasted in bed just tossing around . there ought to be a law against it :wink: !

we usually get up about 7 a.m. and leave for the pool around 8:45 , but since we both have a bit of a cold we've been staying away from the pool not to spread the germs . been getting up at 8 , 8:15 , 8:30 ...
but back to the routine tomorrow .
hbg

Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones
Now that I'm relatively free, I wake up early and get up early. The difficulty is that I go to sleep late; all this freedom is going to my head, I think.

Today the ambulance took us to the orthopedist - squeezing Bob in between other appointments - God bless that man - and arrived at the office to find that they didn't have the right kind of wheel chair and couldn't move Bob from the stretcher to the X-ray table. However, after some fancy footwork (physical and metaphorical) by the ambulance women we were seen, the foot rewrapped more firmly around the half-splint, and back we went to Clark House. But it was a panicky few minutes while everything got sorted out.

Bob was so tired and laced with painkillers that he couldn't manage to feed himself. I warned him that he was being spoiled today, but he would have to feed himself again, from now on. (Bet I don't stick to that, though - he looks so pitiful, like a baby bird.)

Tomorrow is my Poetry Reading program - I've made a few changes, but being seasonal (i.e. Halloween) it's basically the same as a few years ago. This time, though, we have our neighbor playing the piano before and after, and during the break. So I think it will be fun.

Walter - enjoy your freedom!!!

I've been listening and picturing myself there with you all.

Which precipitates that I need to say a word about my childhood friend M. Her husband was a physicist and liked to sail and hike. He developed massive rheumatoid arthritis and spent a number of years flailing off horrid infections, involving amputation. Many years for all this, and I usually only heard quiet comments from her at holiday time. I met her again not so long ago, and she was peaceful.

I may even still have a letter from her, all that time ago, saying she and .. wanted to live their life together. I went to her wedding, a couple of thousand miles away, with my mother, who was even then starting with alzheimers.

It's tough, it's brutal. Support to all of you, and thank you for the glimpses, however frustrating/excruciatingly sad.

Hamburger--

I hope you and your lady are feeling better soon. Would that everyone were as selfish about their germs.

TomKitten--

I'm glad your finding the New Normal.

So I visit mother daily ... but mostly only for a few minutes.

She only sits in her room (which is similar to a normal hotel room but with a motorised chair), doesn't want a tv, doesn't go out, ...

What she wants is a) a suitcase to be driven home and/or b) to visit my aunt. And since this comes up as a topic any fiv seconds - I leave at the third time.

This sounds harsh, and I always wonder that I can do it.

But actually she's got more what she do there (easily!) than at home:
- go to church (mass) daily (just 15 steps to/from the elevator,
- a priest (a Franciscan frater she knows from her parish church) has his apartment (he's part time employed there) nearly exactly opposite her room,
- she's been to church today (we arranged that with the nurses), met three (out of six) ladies she knows really quite good,
- five steps to the right of her room, in the hall, is a "meeting"/sitting place, where a lot of activities take place
- plus, plus

But she just sits there in one of her two chairs.


Objectively, even considering the worst scenario, she's kept better there than alone at home in the big house.
Either she gets that - or the worst scenario happens.