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| message board October 2010
Today was worse but better dealing with my grandma. I have to say, I'm making everything work and keeping sane, but I go from thinking one minute that I can make this work to thinking another minute that there's no way I can make this work. That back and forth just keeps going around and around (interesting mixed metaphor, hmm?). I want to keep my grandma here and keep her safe and comfortable. Will I be able to do that? I just don't know - and I hate not knowing things that are the major facrtors around which everything else revolves. The little things can be adjusted as they come, but the big things need to be understood and expected and planned for. This is not possible right now for this central big thing, and that - more than anything else - is frustrating. Posted at 8:38 PM
Yep. Suicide's lookin' better and better. Posted at 8:29 PM
Tired and achy. This seems to be the new normal for me. How sad is that? Posted at 9:46 PM
Waking my grandma up from her naps every five minutes throughout the day is tiring in its own way. Keeping her from sleeping during the day seems to have worked well last night. She slept through the night without a problem, and that's the whole point of keeping her awake during the day. Still, I don't like waking her. I think she needs the naps as well as a full night's sleep, but I can't get by on just three hours of sleep on night after the next either. If this is the only way to make this work then so be it. But I don't have to like it, regardless of its effectiveness. Posted at 4:45 PM
The first six days went unexpectedly smoothly, but the past three days have been hell. If I have another day like today (or Monday) during the next seven days then I don't think I'll be able to keep this up. It's not that I expect things to be easy or go smoothly, but for everything to be as wrong as can be, one thing on top of another, while I have to care for everything all on my own without any respite - there's honestly just no way to do it. Nobody could, even a trained professional. I'm trying not to make any snap judgments in the face of adversity, but if things continue to be this problematic then I don't see how it can be managed. No matter how hard I want to keep my grandmother out of a nursing home, I'm beginning to fear there will be little alternative. Posted at 4:01 PM
Where's a winning lottery ticket when you need one? Posted at 5:59 PM
I got my grandma out of the house and made it to her doctor appointment - despite her making me miserable with every possible thing that could be done to have made getting to that appointment impossible. Wake me up in the middle of the night so I only got 3.5 hours of sleep? Check. Delay breakfast by an hour as I work to get you ready. Check. Poop your pants after lunch, negating the bath and clean clothes that had taken a half hour of the morning not much earlier? Check. Make a fuss getting into the car? Check. The big terrifying concern of getting my grandma down the porch steps was - as it turned out - the least of my concerns. So much more had to be dealt with, and it was beyond exhausting. But it's done - for this time. Posted at 8:38 PM
We are unquestionably a degenerate species worthy of extinction. Posted at 2:06 PM
I wonder if I'll ever have time to read again. Posted at 8:23 PM
The constant stream of people looks to finally be done for the week. Phwew! Hopefully next week, with just one half-hour visit from one person or another per day, no more than one person, should make things less tiring for my grandma and less stressful to me. It should - I hope - be a lot easier, and we may even get a routine going. If things go a bit more smoothly next week then I think I can manage this. It's going to be tiring, though, and I will indeed need to get breaks after a while. Solutions for that simply have to be arranged. Posted at 2:00 PM
Is it depression or just a realistic appraisal of my excuse for a life? Posted at 7:57 PM
Today is Spirit Day. Support anti-bullying . (... or I'll take your lunch money) Posted at 4L51 PM
I've survived another day, but it's tiring. The irony, of course, is that if it had just been taking care of my grandma it wouldn't have been so bad. The morning would have been busy and a bit of work getting her moved about, cleaned up, dressed, fed, and fed again, but that was the least of the day's items. People came to assess physical therapy needs, occupational therapy needs, home health care needs, social services needs, caregiver needs. I swear, those people were just coming one after the other with hour after hour of stuff to review and investigate. Fortunately that aspect of things was just for today, but each of their counterparts will be back twice a week each for about nine weeks, and even if they take half the effort to work with, there will be very long weeks ahead. It almost makes caring for my grandma seem easy - but not quite. Posted at 5:44 PM
This should all prove to be a challenge, not just because of my grandma's increased needs but because of all of the agencies and people I'm having to juggle for her care - that which just finished, that which will shift to the home, and that which requires her to be other places. It might be a lot more peaceful without all of these other people to schedule and work with. Why must everything grow so much more increasingly complicated with my grandma? Isn't her greater need for personal care enough? Posted at 5:49 PM
I think it's going to be hard to get back into the swing of caring for my grand a, not because she'll need more care now but because I've gone five weeks without directly taking care of her minute to minute throughout the day. I've been doing this eight years, but I've adapted fairly easily as things have declined because it's just been by increments. Tomorrow, when I bring my grandma back home, it will almost be like starting from scratch. That's going to be hard. So I'm hoping that things will go fairly smoothly, because even if they do it will be tough, and the first week will take a lot out of me. That's what I'm hoping. What I'm expecting is not as optimistic. I hope things aren't hellishly complicated, but it will be tough. I just hope I'm ready for it all. Posted at 3:21 PM
What is there to possibly do at 4:30 in the morning in Sandusky, Ohio? My neighbors often wake me up in the morning when they slam their door closed. The door is on the side of the house, and as our two houses are just a dozen feet or so apart and two stories tall, there is a sort of echo chamber that amplifies the loud "thunk" of the door closing, and that is made even more pronounced in the still quiet of the night. Usually the noise from the door doesn't happen until 6:30 or even 7:15 - which is still earlier than I want to wake up - but today it was at 4:30 and 6:30, and I couldn't get back to sleep either of those times. I've been tired today, and as much as that would be unwelcomed any day, it is even more so unfortunate since I don't expect to have any days that I can sleep in late for weeks - if ever - and I'm concerned about my grandma possibly waking me up during the night as well. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep through the nights without problems and all of this will be useless worrying, but even if that's so I'm disappointed not to have had a decent night's sleep last night. It's hard to believe that I used to sleep through tornados and cat fights and all sorts of things before I came here to care for my grandma. Those were the good old days ... Posted at 1:58 PM
And as if I didn't have enough concerns to worry about with my grandma, the care center, the roofing billing, the neighbor's new fence, finding a way to get a wheelchair ramp, new medications, neighbors hassling me to give them gossip, roofing nails in the drive from another neighbor's house, having no end of trouble getting enough sleep, and passing two months with the same unending migraine - I also get to add BACK into the mix the stress of a completely uncertain future as my mother announces she may put my grandmother into a nursing home at any time, but might not, and she's going to try to see that someone else can stay with my grandmother now and then so that I can look for a job in cities I can't even drive to and back during the few hours someone would be here to care for my grandma and for job searches and interviews with companies that could never have a prospective start date out of me since I'll never know when my grandma would no longer need me and I would thus be able to start work. I don't need any of this shit. Taking care of my grandma has its own level of stress, but it all pales in comparison to the rest of this asinine bullshit. Posted at 7:45 PM
This just keeps getting more impossible with each passing day. Why is everything stacked against the elderly unless they are completely homeless and destitute (at which point they're probably beyond being able to arrange getting help anyhow)? The only positive thing about this is that it gives me hope that I might be able to survive after retirement age after all, even with my horrible economic situation. Of course I have to survive another twenty plus years to get to that point, and of course the Republicans will probably have killed all Medicare, Social Security, and other elder care provisions by that time - but heck, I'm going to hold onto this little shred of watered-down hope as long as I can. It's more hope than I've seen for my situation in the past five years, so what do you expect? Posted at 6:50 PM
This is looking more and more like I'm falling into an impossible situation. I'll do everything I can to take care of my grandma, but every time I turn around it seems like the odds have just been stacked up even higher against me. Posted at 6:36 PM
I really need to update this website. ... but also really need to find a reason to live. Both look hopeless. Posted at 7:26 PM
I hate my life. Doers anything good, pleasant or worthwhile ever happen? Posted at 8:27 PM
10:10:10 10.10.10 Posted at 10:10 PM
Worst. Migraine. Ever. ... and yet I visited with my grandma, making the pain worse, and I answered the phone to talk with my mother, making the pain worse ... I'm not a masochist, really. Posted at 11:19 PM
I'm exhausted from today's tasks. Just think how whipped I'll be once she's back here needing constant care. Posted at 10:57 PM
After what was indeed great improvement in my grandma's ability to stand and walk during her first two to three weeks here, I am now told that she isn't showing any signs of improvement, and she will get only one more week of therapy in the rehab center. I've made arrangements for her to come back to the house two weeks from Saturday, and once that happens there will be a whole new world of even more increased attention required. I'll have to take my grandma from room to room whenever she needs as well as do all of my other duties (cleaning, cooking, driving, laundering, scheduling, accounting, yard care, etc.). And I expect my grandma to drive me crazy will millions of unnecessary trips to the bathroom. It's left to see just how this works, but I don't see the prospects looking good. Posted at 7:01 PM
Believe me, I don't care about your fiber. Posted at 9:24 PM
The idiots next door hired a batch of different idiots to replace their roofing. Where do you suppose they park their dumpster and throw all of their crap? And without asking? And did they come back and dump more there even after I told them they had to go and they cleared it away? OF COURSE they did! This and other incidents with these still fairly new neighbors have left me with the utmost contempt for them. Not only will I not be going out of my way to help them as I would with most neighbors, but they can also expect the police on their doorstep the instant they do something that I can get them on (today's incidents would easily have constituted trespassing and destruction of private property (they've crushed and ripped apart a yards and yards of plants that line our driveway). As it is I already think I'm being too passive about this - it deserves a real wake-up call, and I'd be thrilled to deliver it. Posted at 8:03 PM
My mom left early this morning, meaning I'm back to just me in the house. And even around visiting my grandma, running errands, cleaning the house, doing three loads of laundry, and doing some computer updates, I still had time to get well into the first book I've read at all in four weeks. It's nice. Now everything is clean and organized, and around a fairly regular schedule of visiting my grandma I should have plenty of time to work around the house an d yard and still relax with one good book after another. That should have a huge impact on relaxing me, and I look forward to it. Finally I may get some quality me time. Posted at 9:55 PM
My sister and niece left for home today, and my mom will leave early today before returning to visit and support my grandma once again. Part of me is glad to have the prospect of time to myself and a schedule of my own making, but part of me will miss the added support with my grandma. She will probably miss that additional support as well. It would be easier to appreciate having a little space if it wasn't going to be so long until anyone comes to visit my grandma again. My mother won't be back until mid-November at the earliest, and my sister (with my nephew and niece) won't return until after Christmas. I'm not sure what my grandma a will make of that, and she is likely to be home by Christmas unless more serious problems develop, but it will certainly place a lot of stress on me to keep up my grandma's spirits and encourage her to keep working to stand and walk on her own again. It's already be stressful, and while I'm getting more used to things and less over-stressed, this will still be draining. So I'll miss everybody as they're gone, even as I try to enjoy some quiet time to read (and maybe even write!), and some time to try to get more sleep. Hopefully this will work out for the best, but as a rule stress does not treat me well. Posted at 9:16 PM
In European format, today is 02-10-2010. Fun with numbers! Yay! Posted at 9:04 PM
The headache rages, and meanwhile my sister and niece are in town, partly to see my grandma, partly to tour our old school system and attend an all-years reunion. I not only don't physically feel up to attending any of these things, but mentally I don't have any interest either. The bad memories equal or outweigh the good (depending upon which school you visit), and with rare exception there are few people I care to ever see again in my life from those years. My sister had a notably different experience in school than me (which is to say she had a good experience), and she had friends who stayed in close contact with her throughout her life and were always interested in her life. That contrasts starkly with my experience, where 5 made outrageous efforts to maintain contact with people for years, was interested in their lives, but never had any return of the same things, to the point that when, during and after my breakdown I wasn't up to contacting people, I heard nothing from any of those people for years. The few people I made efforts with after those few years were polite but self-interested and always promised to "get back to me when they had more time" but - of course - never did. None of that even gets into the merciless teasing,, name-calling, and bullying I received in school when I wasn't otherwise shunned and isolated. No, I don't really have any interest in seeing these people or reliving these memories. I can repeatedly stab myself with a rusty nail some other time if I'm so inclined. Posted at 7:23 PM
Journal, by Paul Cales, © October 2010
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