take care of my parents

It’s tough growing old and even tougher for her so I need to be more mindful of just how much more difficult it is for her to live with it than it is for me!

I’m realizing how we all take care of each other. Isn’t this what family is supposed to do? Yes…most definitely worth doing.

Yesterday there was a moment when my father suddenly started to look sad, upset…I have no other way to explain it. Iggy and I were able to make him smile. I played the harmonica and Iggy “sang” along. My dad laughed. My parents love that pup so much. We all do. Yea for Iggy! :)

at my house the next two nights because he unexpectedly has to work again before heading back up to their house. This will save him paying for a room for two days or commuting 7 hours.

Yeah, I guess this counts. :)

they took care of me my whole life so I wanna take care of them eventually.

My dad was walking back from Silver Sneakers, an exercise program he does at the local Y. While walking along, he had a weird visual break-up, the sort of thing you get when you get a migraine aura. And then, by the time he got home, he was having problems forming words.

My mom realized that he was having another TIA, and called his doctor. He wouldn’t take a cab (growing up during the Depression makes some older folks a little loony I think about spending money), and so someone from their condo took him to the Urgent Care clinic.

Further to being a little loony about spending – then, he wouldn’t take a cab home – he took the bus, god help us. No, he didn’t want to bother me, or my husband, who is home anyway during the summer and the girls are at camp, so what else is he doing?

I want to take him to his follow-up appointment on Wednesday; I don’t know if I can convince him that would be OK.

Time is precious and so are Mom and Dad. I want to give them whatever I can (and I don’t mean worry and headaches – a little of that goes a long way!).

What to do…I need to think creatively. Something special when things settle down a bit for the family. Playing life by ear right now.

Mom says she’s going home today. ai yi yi. She wants me to go to the apartment and move around furniture so she can get around in her walker. My feeling: what is she think she’s doing, “get around in her walker” when the doctor said that she should do nothing, do exactly what she’s doing in the hospital, ie, 100% bed rest, if she’s using a walker?!

My dad says that not only should she move into the assisted living facility that my aunt lived in, he’s ready to move in with her. But gettting a hold of the staff on a weekend is proving difficult.

My uncle had at least two very serious health issues going on, that required emergency room visits and hospitalization. My cousin, his daughter, is going through a divorce and has, in my opinion, limited capacity to deal with it.

My parents were at my uncle’s home, where things have been neglected and piled up for years. For example, he hasn’t paid his income taxes for three years. His home has no heat because he hasn’t paid the heating bills. That sort of thing.

I talked to my mom, and she was upset – she has dealt with her mother-in-law, then her mother, then her sister, and now her brother-in-law – all people who were in their homes far too long, and she and my dad had to do the physical and financial clean-up in the wake of it all. (not relevant to this story, but as an aside: I CAN NOT BELIEVE THEY DISCHARGED HIM TO LIVE HOME ALONE AGAIN. WHAT IS IN THEIR MINDS?! My cousin is just not up to doing the agitation to make sure that that didn’t happen! And he’s such a flam-flam artist! He’ll talk to you in a foreign language, pour on the charm, and you’ll think, yeah, this guy in his mid-80s is doing just fine. Well, NO! He ISN’T just fine! But it’s really my cousin’s call, not mine – I’d say it’s his call to make too, but I don’t think he’s on deck enough to make it. They’re basically shortening his life – I really have no words for this so I’ll stop here.)

OK, so, then, a few days later, my mother had difficulty walking. Then she couldn’t walk at all. She went to the emergency room, and has been hospitalized for days.

My mom and dad are team. They make up for each other’s deficiencies. I’ve often said I don’t know what would become of one if the other became seriously incapacitated or died. Well, now we’re dealing with serious incapacity.

I was terrified that they were going to discharge her tonight. Hospitals like to clear out patients on Friday. I just couldn’t see her going home with only my dad to take care of her. Like, an 80 year old man with a bad knee is going to help her get on the pot to go pee-pee four times a night? I don’t think so.

What has to happen: she has to be discharged not to home, but to the rehab wing of a long-term care center. Maybe the place my aunt lived in until she died – my mom liked that place, and it isn’t that far from their condo. She needs to be there for several weeks.

But that doesn’t mean that my dad is going to be just fine while she’s there. He’s on overload, with both his brother struggling home alone, and my mom dealing with her problems, too. And my mom really does do a lot of the thinking and keeping him on deck in their household. I want to make sure that he is doing his routines – attending class at the university, going to Silver Sneakers (the gym class for the elderly), making dinner, and so forth – and not faking it like his brother so artfully has for so long.

I need to be there for both of them. My brother’s in Denver, and while he’s concerned, he isn’t going to be doing it. It’s got to be me – advocating for my mom with her health care providers, making sure dad’s OK, and then seeing where they are in a month or two with this crisis.

I painted my mom’s toenails as if she was in a nail salon. She giggled like she was 13 and we were having a slumber party. So cute.