#caregiver

Lisa

Apr 24, 2019
5 min

spring has sprung

Blogging is not something you should feel you have to force yourself to do, really, I try to think of it as like writing a periodical circular letter to friends and fam, and taking care to do it in such a way that anybody who wanders in can make sense of it and enjoy whatever excuse for a yarn I am spinning. (Bad metaphor, I know, considering I don’t even spin yarn, but, whatever. LOL) It’s not even that I have to force myself, it’s just that sometimes things just…pile up. I

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I survived the pen show. Or it survived me. Whichever.

Lisa

Apr 12, 2019
8 min

I survived the pen show. Or it survived me. Whichever.

Actually, I survived to get to the pen show. Aunt Peggy didn’t have a fever with her bout of illness, which was the main reason we concluded it was food poisoning. But while I was writing that blog post last Thursday talking such a good game about that, I was feeling progressively sicker and sicker, nauseous and with ominous rumblings in my lower segment. I barely got it posted before I had to run to the bathroom. Don’t worry, I’m not going TMI; just suffice it to say if the

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Lisa

Feb 24, 2019
7 min

The Call

Wow. I just read the last update I posted. Last Saturday, wasn’t it? It feels like a year ago or more. I have to sit down and really think, send my brain back in a time machine, to last weekend, to before everything rocked and changed one last time. Monday morning, I woke up deeply and unaccountably depressed. There was literally no reason for it, other than a weird and unpleasant dream about being served with a legal judgement for $54,700 (really, brain? You have to be that

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Lisa

Feb 16, 2019
5 min

going with the flow

Hello y’all. Things are—well, I hesitate to say improving, but sometimes, just having knowledge is an improvement over not having it. The MRI showed that mom had a stroke. It was one of the first things I thought about when I was first notified about her sudden decline, and when I got to the ER that day after New Year’s, I did a quick and dirty bedside screening. It didn’t show the obvious indicators I was looking for, but the thing is, not all strokes present that way. The a

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Lisa

Jan 30, 2019
2 min

quick update on mom

Been a long past couple of weeks, so thought I’d catch up with a quick post. Mom is still in the hospital and not improving. Every time I’ve gone to see her, she has been pretty much out of it. The case worker is staying in touch with the staff at her facility, which is great. On Monday, I got the call I was expecting. The doctor and care team want to meet with me about placing a permanent feeding tube. That tells me they don’t expect her swallow to recover to her previous ba

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Lisa

Jan 12, 2019
5 min

caregiving never ends

Yeah, late again. New Year’s Eve was fine, very relaxing, but the day after New Year’s, things began to come unwound. Place K called to tell me mom had become unresponsive at the breakfast table & they were sending her to the hospital. Cue dropping everything and racing across town. (Thankfully, the hospital is almost within walking distance of her place; not so thankfully, the whole thing is on the opposite side of the county from me.) She was better by the time I got there,

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Lisa

Oct 21, 2018
5 min

as fall falls

Making stuff! I love making stuff, as you know. This time of year, I’m gearing up to make ALL THE THINGS. With gifting holidays approaching, plus secret pal swaps, and cool damp weather making me want to curl up with yarn or whatever. Add to that the resurrection of my writing muse, and of course the fact that I have my life back now, and my creative juices are flowing like maple sap! I’m discovering new ways to craft, or rediscovering old ways I hadn’t pursued in a while. Th

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Lisa

Oct 1, 2018
4 min

trees, squees, and pains

October! Time for fall, cool breezes, changing leaves, football, and pumpkin spicing all the things. Except around here where it’s still 80 degrees. (That picture was taken a couple of years ago.) It did get cool and rainy for half a day last week, so I got to break out a lovely plaid flannel I found at Goodwill and gave a loving home to, for like, three hours, before it got hot again and I had to take it off. LOL. Fortunately, it was open over a cute babydoll t-shirt that is

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Lisa

Sep 15, 2018
5 min

not Dragon Con part 2 (yet)

I was going to update a couple of days ago, but last time I didn’t mention that my right hand was giving me some grief. The night before I came back from Atlanta, the thumb and forefinger started to ache, sometimes get numb, and sometimes actually feel colder than the rest of the hand! I took some Aleve, but that only helped a little. My wrist and the pad of my thumb started to throb like a toothache. It was so irritating, I started laying it off to one side when I was on the

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Lisa

Jul 6, 2018
4 min

finally, a holiday

It’s been a good while since I actually had a holiday. As in, a day off, spent in enjoyable activities with family and/or friends. For the past two years, of course, I haven’t really been able to leave the house much, with mom or without. The last time I tried to do a family holiday, we drove to my cousins in Hendersonville for Thanksgiving. It was in 2016, I think. By the time we got there (it’s about an hour’s drive, all told) mom was tired and cranky. I rushed into the hou

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Lisa

Jun 24, 2018
4 min

champagne night!

Mom’s first care plan meeting went well. I walked in and the first person I saw was the dietitian I worked with almost daily when I worked at Place K! It was actually funny once the meeting started, because she was asking me questions about mom’s diet needs and swallowing and such, almost as though mom were a patient of mine. To be honest, sometimes I do find myself having to detach from daughter-mode and go into something like therapist-mode, to have any kind of objectivity.

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Lisa

Jun 7, 2018
3 min

reclaiming my life (a little at a time)

I’ve spent a good chunk of every day since my last post dealing with mom things. Monday I had to take her things, as I mentioned at the end of that post. She did know me. Tuesday I had to ride on the facility van with her to an ortho doctor to check out the fractured bone in her foot. (That went well, thankfully; I grabbed a couple of suckers at the checkout desk and we sat in the lobby and happily sucked on them until the van returned.) Yesterday was a brief family meeting.

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Lisa

Apr 25, 2018
5 min

art, rats, and wrestling kisses

The family has been trying to keep me away from mom, for fear seeing me would agitate her more. I’ve been torn about it, because while of course I don’t want to get her wound up, I miss her! I really do, even though there’s not much ‘her’ left there. When the hospital called that she was ready to move back into the psych unit, though, I was the only one available. I took a deep breath and went into the room. Mom looked a bit disheveled, needless to say, though no more or less

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Lisa

Apr 18, 2018
4 min

the deed is done, and then not

It’s happened. Sort of. Kind of. Not really, to be honest, which is why I haven’t been able to blog in so long. Mom was scheduled to move into Place K last Wednesday. I set her up for several days beforehand, telling her how her doctor wanted her to go to rehab, et cetera. Remember though, when I said I was concerned about how cognizant—or not—she would be on the day itself? Well, she was confused as all get out for days prior. On Wednesday morning, she had one of her outburs

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Lisa

Apr 5, 2018
5 min

transitions

Operation Place K is moving along. I had a brief but intense freak-out on Monday when I called mom’s doctors to make sure they were sending the needed paperwork K had requested, only to discover one is out of town this week. After a small panic, I realized it was not, after all, the end of the world, and the move could wait till his return. So I breathed deep, talked with his nurse and the contact person at K, and shuffled family members (willing, thank heavens). As it turned

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Lisa

Apr 1, 2018
3 min

"shall I ever look down..."

Okay, I did it. After my last blog post, I called and set up an appointment for a nurse from Place K to come and evaluate mom for memory care placement. It’s just gotten to be bigger than I can handle. She needs more professional care, people trained to know exactly how to help her, plus, she’s bored! Yesterday she asked ‘wonder what Peggy does all day?’ Really, under normal circumstances, she would know her sister works part time, takes care of her new great-grandbaby a lot

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Lisa

Mar 19, 2018
4 min

weasels are eating my brain

Facebook saw fit to remind me the other day that it had been a year since I started blogging! How is it that time can seem to fly by, and at the same time feel like an eternity? I guess it’s the same way that I feel totally alone in my situation, and yet I’m never, ever alone. The past couple of weeks have been—odd, to put it mildly. I started writing just now and then noticed I haven’t written since my meeting with an elder care lawyer. The one near me is about to retire, bu

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Lisa

Mar 4, 2018
4 min

what color is Friday?

Place K was as nice as I remember it being; very clean and neat, with pleasant staff who interact well with the residents. The lobby’s been fixed up since I left, and other areas are slated for upgrade soon, according to the lady who showed me around, but it’s not run down by any stretch. The lobby was just really—businessey, I guess you would say, with flat chairs and glass wall through which you could see administrative and secretarial offices. Now it looks much more homey,

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Lisa

Feb 24, 2018
4 min

pulling up big girl panties

Not much to report this go-round. Group home visit cancelled; mom’s sitter was sick again, poor thing. So it’s been another week with minimal breaks. Uncle David came by so I could run to the grocery early in the week; bless him, 45 minutes with mom has him tearing out what’s left of his hair. Aunt Peggy came by later in the week so I could make another quick dash. She and mom often end up at odds, but this time it was pretty calm. Aunt Peggy was pleased they had actually bee

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codebreaking again, and begging the wind

Lisa

Feb 18, 2018
5 min

codebreaking again, and begging the wind

Mom’s slept pretty well the past few nights. The only problem with that is increased wrangling during the day, which makes it darn near impossible to get much of anything else done. It took me 4 hours the other night to get one 1000-word article done for work, because she would not stop talking. Now, I ought to be able to whack out a thousand words in an hour or two at the most, even when it involves research. But I have to sit on mom’s bed because she hollers every 10 second

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The Rose of the Wind