Sunday, November 19, 2017

Truth Telling

My mom has Alzheimer’s.

There I said it.  We dance around it, never admitting to the wider world what the problem is.  She has had it for at least 6- 8 years, probably longer.  And in that time I have watched the woman who taught me to bake, taught me to sew, supported me every time I stretched outside the box of convention and expectation disappear into the fog that is Alzheimer’s disease.

She knows who we are, her husband of 57 years, each of her children., not so much all of her grandchildren.   Her short term memory is gone.  Her long term is developing holes.  She only leaves the house for doctor appointments.  Her personal hygiene is pretty much non-exsistent.  Her caregiver team cannot force her to bath or change her clothes, my dad won’t support them when they try.  He doesn’t want to fight with his wife, he never has.  So I have fight a weekly battle to get her in the tub to bath and wash her hair.

The woman who managed the household, took care of the bookkeeping and bills slipped away several years ago.  I took over the checkbook for everything and the receipt book for the rentals.  I pay the bills, sort the mail and put her meds into the dispenser for the week.  I have fought with scammers who tried to leech onto them through their credit card.  I try to keep my dad from falling prey to them ones who call or show up in person.   I have learned to be a bitch on wheels, if needed.

But, a really big but, I refuse to do it all.  My sister Robin is my back up and I have pushed to homemaking chores off on somebody else, primarily her caregivers, but sometimes Robin. My BIL Doug took over mowing the grass when I went on vacation a couple of years ago and the rest of the family discovered just how much there was to do to keep them together in their house.

In the last two years she has been hospitalized twice, once from dehydration and a fall and once with a broken vertebrae from osteoporosis.   Both stays were followed up by weeks of rehab in a nursing home.  Each time we bring her home and we add hours to the caregiver team, trying to fulfill their wishes to keep her at home.  Currently she has help about 12 hours a day.  Dad wants to know when the ladies are leaving and is saddened when I tell him they are there until she goes back into a nursing home, dies or we run out of money.  He says that the whole thing is mentally exhausting.  I have told Robin that this is the last Christmas that I expect her to be at home.

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