The balance is shifting

I can't say I wasn't warned that things would get pretty evil before this journey ends. I heard it from friends and I learned it doing my research. The reality is, you just aren't ever really prepared to come in and find a pile of feces on the kitchen floor. Or urine in the kitchen garbage can. You just can't believe that you actually have to position mommy so that you can wash her behind and put diaper ointment on a rash. Well, actually, you only have to do those things once to become a believer.

Yesterday, mom talked non-stop about her friend Ed. She's become convinced that somehow they got married this week and that they have an infant. She claimed that she didn't get any choice in the matter, that Ed just took it into his own hands to marry her and now feels free to just order her around and make her do whatever he wants to do. I'm convinced that she has been confusing Ed with Mike for some time now, and is not happy that when Mike does his "drive by visits", he simply tells her they are going for a ride and that she doesn't have any choice in the matter. That's sort of what hd does. Then he feeds her some fast food and drops her off after a couple of hours. It confuses her and makes her angry and agitated. On top of that, when I got there, she didn't have any underpants of any kind on, which tells me that Mike is not doing the things that need done if he is going to be part of this team. We'll address those things this weekend.

Anyway, the balance between good times and bad times is definitely shifting toward many more bad times than good. I spoke with Mike this morning for the first time since he left. I apologized for the harsh words I had said, and he told me there was no need to do so. Well, there was, on my part at least. We need to become better organized as a family if we're going to make any decisions together. After I spoke with Mike, I called Tom, because I couldn't remember what my shift was today. He said that we were all three of us suffering from Sometimer's Disease. Sometimes we can't remember our shifts, sometimes we can. That made me laugh, which is something none of us are doing much of anymore.

I guess I can end this post on one of the better times. While mom and I were driving to the downtown mall last week, I saw that she was fumbling in her purse and that she had fished out some sunglasses. When I glanced over at her, this is what I saw, and had to take a picture when she got out of the car. More later friends.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong, or, the week from hell.

Hello friends, I thought I'd share some of the latest happenings from Momville. Brother Mike and I exchanged some really harsh words on Saturday before he left for a job in Alaska on Sunday. He had not said anything to me in advance of accepting this month- or six-week-long project, so I was more than a little unhappy.  My harsh words were "Why wait till tomorrow, why don't you get a flight out tonight and don't ever come back?" His were "You're blowing this situation way out of proportaion. Just hire somebody to take my place while I'm gone." Anyway, he is gone and Tom and I are going to have to keep things together until he gets back. Then we're going to move forward for placement for Shirley.

On Tuesday, I finally introduced the Depends line of underwear. Mom was pretty unhappy, but she finally agreed to wear them, and just in time, as she has begun to lost both bladder and bowel control. It embarasses her no end, but it is what it is.   

Wednesday, Tom arrived to find her lying sideways in her bed and in excruciating pain. She was crying that her back hurt, couldn't sit up or roll over without shrieking "It hurts, it hurts!" so we did the only thing we could do. We called 911 and the paramedics transported her to the local ER. 4 hours and several painful ex-rays later, the doctor said nothing was wrong with her, wrote her a prescription for high caliber Ibuprofen, and sent her home. In order to be sure that it didn't happen again, I decided to spend the night at her house. Talk about nightmare on Elm Street.

Mom went to bed at 8 and insisted I do the same. I was warned not to be bringing any men into the house and not to be going out anywhere. So I retired to my room with a book. A short time later, I began to hear her talking and crying to herself and to God. It seems she thought she had done something to cause her friend Ed to leave her. She was begging God to please let her have one more chance, that she would do anything if she could see him again. I could only take it for so long before I went and got her up. We sat on the couch wrapped in an afghan, she had some warm milk and I got her calmed and reassured that Ed would certainly be back.

At 11, I awoke to hear her shouting my name and coming down the hall toward my room. I got up, calmed her again, got her toileted and back in bed. At 3, we repeated that scenario. At 4, I awoke to hear her talking out loud again, and she was saying, "God, how am I going to get that woman out of my house? I am going to have to call the police! I want her GONE NOW!" What can I say? I got up, got dressed, gave her a hug and came home to fall into my own bed with Butterball. I won't be spending the night with her again any time soon.

So to end this whiny post, all I can say is that when Power of Attorney Mike returns from his working vacation, we will be finding mom a new home in a place that can offer better care than I can give her.  She deserves the best.  That's all for now, my best to you all.  I'll leave you with a picture of my parents in a far-away time . . .