Life's Been Good To Me So Far

OK, so I'm a Joe Walsh fan.  Who isn't?  James Gang?  Eagles?  You catch my drift.

I have been thinking lately about all of the things I've learned about my mom and about Alzheimer's Disease, and about how much I DON'T know about either.  Here are some of the things I've learned:

With mom, it's all about humor and touch.  Mom responds so well when I'm upbeat and happy and singing and acting, and for me that seems to come naturally.  I was always at my best in front of 10 or 15 people who never touched a database and who didn't know that a couple of hours with me having fun with Access and Excel might change their lives for the better.  I thrived on seeing the lightbulb come on in at least one person's eyes.  So, now I've changed roles and stages, but I'm still "on" in every sense of the word.  Keeping her from sinking into a deep despair sometimes is hard.  Today she really got upset about "those guys out back" who come in when she is sleeping, even when the doors are locked, and they take things or move them around.  It was hard to get her re-directed.  It was kind of a rough afternoon for her until I presented her with the big chocolate bar that I'd sneaked in earlier.  She's a tough student sometimes.

Yesterday, as I finished washing her hair and was strutting down the hall singing and shaking my ass, she started laughing (as she invariably does), and she said to me that she thought I needed "a psy-  . . . a psy . . . a SWINK"!!!  And that led us both to nearly falling on the floor together.  Those moments are treasures.  And if only I had had my camera, once we got her hair dried and into the hot rollers, we went down to sit on her front steps.  "Her" cat (a visitor that she feeds and pets and loves and worries about") came up and crawled into her lap and proceeded to knead his razor-sharp claws into her legs as she petted him.  Didn't have the EasyShare, but it will remain in my memory forever - or until I become a victim of this awful disease.  Those are the humorous parts.

The touch part is new to me.  Mom and I were never very physical with one another, but circumstances have allowed us to become more so.  How could they not, when I am learning to be the major caregiver in charge of personal cleanliness?  Never thought I'd be helping mom with her shower, or telling her to "wash your hoo-hoo" (I had to point, but she got the gist). But the best parts of the physical relationship is that I get to hug her and scratch her back ("Oh, that feels so good!).  We hold hands when we take walks, or put our arms around each other.  Lotioning her up after she acquiesces to the shower and hearing her sighs of pleasure.  I so enjoy the rituals we're learning.  Washing hair isn't a chore, it's a labor of love.  You know how nice it is to lean back in the hairdresser's hair and she actually massages the potions into your scalp and makes you feel relaxed?  We do that, only she is leaning forward.  Drying her hair with warm air (and the occasional surprise blow of the dryer down her shirtback, letting her hand me the pins for the hot rollers, and when we take them out, letting her put the rollers back into the setter, trying to get the small, medium, and large rollers onto the right spots. Celebrating the success of doing that right. 

OK, this has been a long post, but overdue.  Pictures next time I promise.