Yes, less than diligent. I know. These days, I am finding it really difficult to sit down and actually write about my day. Mum\s Day. There are probably many reasons for this: I am busy with volunteer stuff, I am busy with the kids' stuff, busy running my house (or trying) and busy with Mum.
Mum keeps me busy. Mentally. All day.
That may be a statement hard for most to understand. Easy for a caregiver to understand.
I notice that mum has declined quite a bit over the last three months. Call it a backslide? She rarely has any idea of time and date, she sleeps in the day, she is up in the nite. She has absolutely no idea where she is when she wakes up, finally, during the day. I find this really horrifying. Can you, just for a minute, imagine waking up and having absolutely no idea where you are, and what you are doing there?
Amazingly enough, she is usually thankful to see me. She almost always recognizes me, but that is beginning to change too. How is she goingto react every day, waking up, and not knowing who I am? When this happens, I try to quickly bring up my father's name. This jolts her memory, as I believe she will remember PJ until the day she dies. It takes a second, but you can see it all swirling around in her head, as she tries to grasp onto one or any memory she can.
But that has it's drawbacks too. Gets me out of one sticky spot... but throws me directly into another. Bringing up PJ's name then launches all sorts of questions on his whereabouts. Mum has no memory that he's dead...most of the time.
The constant repetition is killing me. The Obsessive Compulsiveness is killing me. Combine these and I'm pushed right to the edge. I can feel that I am in desperate need of a break right now.
Last nite, it took me over three hours of constant attention and numerous attempts at finally getting mum successfully and safely into her bed. It's ridiculous, it's surreal, it's outlandish, it's crazy, it's demented and it's getting the better of me. In dementia-land, when you ask the sufferer to do something, like go to bed, you have to hold their hand every step of the way. You cannot leave for a minute, or all momentum is lost. Even if you follow it through, right to the end, (like actually getting her into bed\), it is usually followed by numerous wanders, questions, arguments, etc.... repeated over and over and over again, until finally something clicks and she is happy to stay snug in her bed. Simple tasks/routines like bedtime, morph into these horrific, horrendous tasks that you dread each and every day. Another example is the shower routine, or the bathroom routine. Yeah... you just grow to dread them.
What is sad, is that if you thread all these dreaded experiences together.... for example: dressing, washing, bathroom, meals, teeth brushing, bedtime etc............. There comes a time when you thread them together, stand back and realize that you are basically dreading your whole day... each and every day. Yes. There comes a time when you realize that you are dreading your life.
Mum is headed into respite for 21 days, at the end of this week. By the time she returns, I will be refreshed, rested, a little relaxed and ready to face each day with a new and different routine.
This (I find) is a very effective and efficient way to deal with the overload of "there comes a time". Its probably not. It's probably really unhealthy to bring myself to the burnout point, only to barely pull myself back for another really short time. But it's my way, it's working and I will have lotsa time to rest when I'm dead. :)
peace out.
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