Time - Not on My Side


I have spent the last two months running.  Not in the physical fitness kind of way, but being so busy that I feel like I never sit down.  My feet hurt from walking all the concrete hallways of hospitals and rehabs multiple times a day.  My back aches from leaning over beds, helping people up, helping people down, and changing adult diapers multiple times in a day.  It's getting better, but I still end each day so tired that the first half of my night is spent in my chair because I passed out when I sat down.

Keeping up with work has been interesting while keeping up with the demands of parents-turned-toddlers.  It's either VERY early in the morning or late at night.  I can get in a full day here and there.  A couple of weeks I've actually made all my hours without having to take some time off to do parent stuff.  Thank goodness for a couple of holidays popping in there when I didn't have to use leave.

My house is an absolute wreck.  Paperwork everywhere, as well as fur and bits of cardboard.  The dishes get washed every couple of days (yay, dishwasher!).  I need to vacuum and spot treat where my late dog decorated with bile in her last few days on earth.  I miss her desperately, but I don't miss the mess that came with her illness.  Yesterday, I managed to clean the toilets and sinks in the bathrooms and get the dishes done before I needed to head off to do parent stuff.  One of these days I will get it all back together, but I don't know when.  Normally, this would drive me up the wall, but I'm too tired to care.

The yard is starting to feel abandoned.  It's now getting too hot to work out there except in the very early mornings, and my mornings have been taken up with work or parent, or in the case of the last two weeks, tremendous thunderstorms that render the ground mushy and the grass too wet to cut.  I'm hoping to get to it tomorrow morning.

And lastly, I don't have time to write like I'd hoped to.  Documenting this journey feels important, so I have a list of words to remind me of topics I want to write about:

  • Organized thinking
  • Aphasia
  • 62 years
  • Puppy Daycare
  • Setting up her room
  • Going through the box room
  • Pee
  • Wills and surrogacy
  • Hoarding
  • Rehab/Medicare/Appeals
  • Getting into Assisted Living/Memory Care
  • Wound Care
  • Daily Maintenance 

I hope that as Dad gets back on his feet and we settle into a less intense routine with both Mom AND Dad, that I'll have more time to do this because I feel like there are things that need to be said.  To get it out of me, and in case anyone else out there needs to hear it.  I wish I'd known more about how this was going to go before it happened.


 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casualties

Image
I had lunch with my dad the other day and we visited a bit.  The subject turned to British murder mysteries.  He's watching one now that's caught his interest as am I.  I can't remember what his was, but I've been watching "Unforgotten on Masterpiece" by way of PBS Passport.  They are on season five now, but I had never seen any of them, so have been bingeing.  Because season five (that's currently airing) features a completely different detective, I realized that something had happened to DCI Stuart in season 4.  What it was, I didn't know.   She'd gone off on a medical leave at the end of the case in season 3.  In season 4, she had a boyfriend and was back on the job for 6 more months until she could hit her retirement.  Her father had dementia (early stages).  The case at hand didn't seem to be offering up any potential murderers to be coming after her, so what happened? We left the discussion there, as I had to go take care of M...
Read more

Ho-hum, ho-hum - TORNADO!

Image
  It's been pretty quiet and perhaps even boring around here lately.  I continue to take Mom to her weekly wound-care appointments.  Her toes are healing up nicely.  Her shin hurts and she wants a big puffy bandaid on it all the time.  It doesn't hurt anything, so like a toddler asking for a dinosaur bandaid, Mom gets her puffy bandage changed once a week.  She has dubbed her wound care doctor "Doctor Sweetie Pie", which tickles him no end.  She can't remember his real name, so Sweetie Pie it is. The home put on a Mother's Day luncheon that was pretty spiffy.  Dad and I came and lunched with her.  Nothing too fancy (but the appetizer was amazing).  I cut up Mom's chicken and salmon for her and she ate almost everything except the asparagus, which Dad helped with.   I did not go visit her on Mother's Day.  I figured that after all the brother visits, she'd be exhausted.  John and Mary went and facilitated video calls with A...
Read more

Midnight Calls

Image
  It's never a good thing when the phone rings at 12:30am. I'd tumbled into bed with my full compliment of cats around 11pm.  I was tired.  It had been my first day back at work after two weeks and there was a lot that needed to be done.  After a nine hour day, I had some spaghetti for dinner, watched a little telly, then went to bed. My phone buzzed at 12:27.  I looked at it and didn't recognize the number.  There are a few places around here that have phone numbers one off from mine, so I figured some drunk was probably trying to get a hold of Capital Hitch.  I put the phone back down.  A minute later, it buzzed again - same number.  Okay, this might be something, so I answered. It was Beverly at the home wanting to know which hospital we liked for Mom.  She was having symptoms of a heart attack and the EMS had already loaded her up.  I gave them the information and dragged myself out of bed, dressing in the same sweatpants and sh...
Read more