Month: July 2014

The Joys of Caregiving

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This week I have experienced the joys of caregiving. I have written so many blogs about its trials that it is a pleasure to be able to write about the other side.

I wasn’t so sure about blogging when I started, but I really enjoy it. I sit down to write a blog and I figure out what I am thinking and feeling. I keep returning to Joan Didion’s words: “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” Sometimes I feel as if I am slumping along, with my feelings hovering like a great black cloud over my head, like that character in Li’l Abner, Joe Btfsplk. When I sit down to write, I figure it out, and the black cloud goes away.

This week I moved my mother to assisted living. At the recommendation of her Alzheimer’sDog's Night Out specialist, she has been thinking about moving, but hesitating to do so. The retirement home director advised me to tell her she had to go “because the doctor said.” I couldn’t do that. If it wasn’t her decision to move, she wouldn’t like the new living situation.   I took her to her primary physician whom she loves and respects. He told her: “It is time.” She said, “Yes.”

Still I expected resistance. I didn’t get it. I asked the nurse to take her on an outing and then to play bridge so I would have four hours to manage the move. I replicated as much as possible the two rooms that she had lived in out of her seven-room condo. When I showed her the new place, she said, “It is beautiful. It is so big.” Then she hugged me and said, “You are so good to me.”

I have been praying day and night that I would know the right time to move her, that the move would go well, that she would be happy. Lori told me that she asks people to pray for her, so I asked all my religious friends to pray for me. My prayers have been answered.

 

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Let me be a challenge-adjusted learner

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9781491702178_COVER_FQA.indd            There is nothing I like more than a good night’s sleep. Lately that pleasure has eluded me. I am so concerned about my mother’s safety that I lie awake with my stomach in a knot. She has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s so I know that her condition will get worse. Now she is very confused but still with us. She is living in her condominium – which is large, about 4,000 square feet, with four nurses taking care of her. She can never be alone. The nurses are all kind and conscientious people. Two can redirect Mom when she is upset about something, but two cannot handle her. I receive frequent calls and texts about problems. I visit and call and comfort her when she does not know where she is. She likes two of the nurses but wants to get rid of the other two, which she cannot do. I think even she realizes that, as confused as she is.

Her specialist told her she needs to move to assisted living arrangements because she will be safer where they are trained to deal with the exigencies of Alzheimer’s. She said she will think about it but does not want to go. Finally four days ago, she told me she did want to go because she does not want to have nurses anymore. In the assisted living facility, she can live on her own since nurses at the facility will check up on her. Then the next day she told me she changed her mind. She remembers little but remembered that.

I spoke to her primary doctor whom she admires and respects. When she visits him in two days, he will tell her she needs to go to assisted living. Hoping she will listen to him, I have arranged for her to move the next day. I know it will be very difficult: I will have to move a lifetime into three rooms. Dealing with Mom’s emotions will be worse.

No wonder I cannot sleep just when I need that balm most.

Once again, I turn to Lori’s Lessons. I read a quote from Aeschylus that Bob relayed to me: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, and against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Then I read on. Bob said, “You can be angry about this stuff or you can change yourself to accept it. It is your choice. You can let it bother you or you can accept that it is simply Parkinson’s. Anyone thrown into this type of problem needs to become a ‘challenge-adjusted’ learner. This means you re-examine your assumptions and honestly assess reality and re-make the plan for each new set of circumstances. If you hold to the old plan to confront new challenges, you’ll just compound the emerging problem.” If I substitute Alzheimer’s for Parkinson’s, Bob is talking to me. Thank you, Bob.