boxes boxes everywhere

So, I went through 4 boxes of my parents' stuff tonight. Two boxes of fabric scraps - truly little tiny scraps and worn out pieces of fabric and old nylons and ohmygoodness what were they thinking?!?!? And a box of wrapping paper used and saved since we were small children, which also contained 3 open boxes of heavy duty aluminum foil - were they planning on aliens trying to invade? And a huge box containing other boxes including wands to long gone vacuum cleaners, warranties of anything they ever owned in their lives, checks from every checking account they ever had, the record player we had as small children...

But I still have half a garage full of boxes. I still can't get a car into the garage.

They are predicting snow by the end of the weekend and perhaps a significant snowfall before the election...
I have a paper due Monday which I am stuck in the process of writing. My kids need my attention and I promised them something fun this weekend. My mother is not doing well and was in tears earlier today because she feels the staff people aren't being nice to her. And the cars have to go in the garage before the snow flies.

But here I am blogging. My excuse is that I did a lot of work while everyone else was watching a movie tonight...

Heroes

I think I like Heroes because it is so totally unrelated to reality. Reality is too painful -- One wants to escape.
Anyway "Heroes" is intriguing and confusing and has so much potential. Although I have been disappointed before. Like "Lost" seemed to have that same potential and then it just got so convoluted and rather boring. So I know Heroes runs this risk. After all we had "Twin Peaks" which just imploded - at least in my mind. Good television is so hard to do!
I mean I watch lots of mediocre TV because it's vaguely entertaining and requires so little that I can work on other things while watching it. And most TV is really mediocre or sometimes just really bad. (the really bad stuff is the bulk of TV- duh).

But I hold out hope for "Heroes" - let's hope they don't let us down...

don't take it personally

mantra for the day:
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY!

I am having one of those days where every thing goes wrong, and I have to keep repeating to myself, don't take it personally.

Cat in Tree

The news keeps running a "teaser" about a cat stuck in a tree and asking audience members to call in with their ideas how to get the cat out of the tree. B keeps saying to just leave it alone and it will come down on it's own. While I am not 100% convinced that is the case, I am not clear how this rates news coverage. It's kind of like the old "Dog Bites Man = not news" thing...

but hey - it's not like there's anything else going on in the world - no hurricanes, fires, wars, or even book reviews or thought-provoking discussions!!!

How we spend our time...

So there was an article in the paper about some guy who blogs every hour (I think I remember that correctly) and how he manages his life around blogging. I can't imagine having that kind of time. Obviously I am lucky to blog every few weeks at this point!

I am on the other hand getting through the boxes in my mother's new apartment slowly but surely. Some of the stuff has been broken but it is hard to know whether the movers broke it or whether it was broken ahead of time.

And then there are the conversations with my mother about her stuff.

She can't unpack the boxes herself - it is too much of a strain physically and emotionally. So she'll ask me if there is anyway she can help... and occasionally I'll try different strategies. Like on Tuesday I was trying to fit books into her book case and there were 2 I thought had no significance - I'm not sure how they made it this far (with all our culling) so I asked her if we could remove them and donate them - and she insisted that she wanted to hold onto them a little while longer & look through them.

These 2 books that my father had bought at a used book sale at some point and which were not in particularly good shape or of particular interest... but she couldn't imagine letting go of them.

Then today I finally got to the one record cabinet (I know, who listens to records any more) but I found that the record cabinet had been broken by the movers - which made me really angry. It was a nice piece of maple furniture, and they had really broken it in a major way - but you couldn't tell until you tried to open it. But her reaction was "oh, well things get broken."

I know that the records and music mean more to me than to her - they represent my father in many ways to me - and I am not ready to let go of those memories yet. It also allows for some entertainment other than TV when I spend time there. But it was one of those moments when clearly we were on 2 very different pages.

Hmmm... think I'm feeling stressed?

The idea that I forgot to use my June free monthly movie coupon from Blockbuster almost brought me to tears - I think I might be feeling a little stressed!

evaluating a life - part 2

So at any rate I think about my life and evaluating my life, and I think that I feel the same way about my own life. But there are many days when I am not so confident about it.

evaluating a life

So riding in the car the other day my mother said to me that she wouldn't change her life a bit. That maybe someone else might have questioned the way things unfolded but that to her looking back it was a good life.

And what more can one ask?

stuff and more stuff

So today one of the kids I worked with asked me why I had so much stuff. I was trying to clear out some drawers in my office because I am going to have to start sharing an office in the fall. And I thought, it's obvious even to people who see me in such a limited setting, that I hold onto way too much stuff - all because I might need it at some point.

But I have to start sorting out my parents stuff within the next few days, and that is preoccupying my energy at the moment. I am tempted to rent a storage area to deal with it and create some time to be able to move forward... although I suspect that is just procrastinating about the inevitable!

life is what happens when we're busy making other plans.

I am sad and tired - kind of a continuous state for me these days. I realized that there is very little I have control over in my life at the moment. And that other people are stirring the pot with their own ends in mind (talk about a mixed metaphor) and there is very little I can do to change the outcome. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other - own that I haven't been at my best and keep striving to get better.

What makes it hard is that when I'm depressed I tend to think I have never been at my best and wonder exactly what it is I think I'm doing.

wow the hospital made a mistake?! no way!! (heavy sarcasm)

Taking care of an elder means that you have the distinct honor of learning just how screwed up our medical system is. You learn how little doctors really know, how arrogant they can be, how little vision they have and what poor decisions they make. They are just lucky they don't have themselves as physicians.

But don't get me wrong - I think the geriatric specialists that I have had the chance to interact with are really sharp and have some good skills (medical and social). And in general I really like the ER staff. It's the floor docs who boggle my mind. Partly because they have the longer responsibility. ER docs respond to a crisis and they triage and move on. Your personal physician (or team) have the chance to deal with a range of problems over time and develop relationships and see the big picture and the details. The floor docs are seeing you at a time when you are very at-risk (otherwise you wouldn't be there) but it is probably not an acute crisis. They have to make the decisions which guide the direction all of your treatment goes.

It's like if you are a researcher, all your biases effect everything from your choice of subject matter, to your hypotheses, and the methods you use to research it.

But this is someone's life, and they don't have the luxury of reading a different research article or changing physicians. And if you fail to even contact the doctor who manages the on-going care and knows more about the situation than you do, how can you expect to do a halfway reasonable job?

Mother's Day

"Some mothers get to go to brunch for mother's day...we get to go to the hospital ER."

Sheer Exhaustion

I am afraid that I had not counted on how physically draining this process would be to support my mother through finding a new equilibrium. I am not sure if this is due to how emotionally difficult the whole thing is or if it is due to not sleeping enough. Or the fact that life was busy before I added in a time-consuming daily piece (phone calls and being there physically to walk her through certain rountines). I continue to believe that I will not have to do the walking her through daily routines piece forever - I think it will begin to click into place for her. But the question remains, will it click into place quickly enough.

I am distrustful of putting aides in to help her re-learn it, because I think they will opt to tell her what to do (it's easier and faster) than making her think about it. But all that does is require their presence on an on-going basis. And that won't work, for many reasons. Firstly, the longer that goes on the more brain matter she loses and the harder it becomes for her to fight her way back to an optimal level of functioning. Secondly, it is expensive, and although many people have offered to send money to help, the amount of money it would require to continue would be ridiculous. Waste of money - because it is not time-limited, it is indefinite with no end in sight, the only out down that path is when she moves into assisted living.

So, since I see small progress each day, I will continue down this path.

Marji

April showers bring snow in May

Well, maybe that's not entirely accurate, but they are predicting snowflakes this week...

My mother came home a couple weeks ago, but with 24/7 aides... which I ended today as I decided they were turning her brain to more mush than it would be otherwise... I am finding it stressful personally, but I believe it is her only chance to have any level of recovery and be able to continue to live in her apartment. I think she will need aides for some period of every day, but I think that needs to be limited and have some clear goals. So I will be looking into something which will meet those ends, starting Monday. (and until then, all good energy sent my way is wonderful).

The whole process is very difficult and emotionally draining. But I suspect that I just need to change my mindset. Maybe meditate on it for a while... After all, this is just life, isn't it?

Just to prove my life is not totally lost, I took the boys to see Horton Hears a Who today. It was surprisingly enjoyable. It struck me as an interesting message in these times, metaphorically speaking.

Eldercare continuing saga

Well, I've got a cold & nasty sore throat. I think it's that pattern of when the crisis subsides slightly the body becomes vulnerable to illness. But the sun was shining today - so I really don't want to complain. I am trying to work hard on being mindful and focusing on the lens I use to view the world.

My mother is still in the skilled nursing facility. I hope to find out what the plan is tomorrow. I wish that there were case managers for the elderly who could help to navigate the system. I know that there are case managers for the elderly, but they seem to be much more limited than would be helpful. What is needed is an advocate who knows services at a number of agencies, talks with you about them and helps arrange them and make them happen.

People say they are case managers and they ask what kind of services you are looking for, and then they give you a list of phone numbers so you can call and look into the programs. Or they say they are case managers, but they can only help you look into programs at their agency, and they are not interested in helping you if you are already receiving some services from another agency. It just doesn't make any sense to me as a consumer.

Hmmm.

New Adventure

Well, I decided I needed to do something new and different - for a whole bunch of reasons - so I applied for and was accepted into the social work PhD program at MSASS. I start in the fall. This should be interesting. I am looking forward to it. I hope to keep working at my current job, if I can work that out. Wish me luck!

life, death and ???

Well, in the 1 1/2 months since I last blogged, my father has died and my mother has been in the hospital twice and is now in another nursing home trying to recover and get home again. It's been quite the roller coaster ride. We (my mother and I) were with my father when he died. It was an interesting experience. Sad, yes. But knowing the journey my father was on to get to this point, I really think he was ready to move on and he wanted us with him when he did. I know that it felt unreal at some points the following week, and that I have been so busy that I really have not been able to reflect on any of this as deeply as I will in the weeks to come.

Some of my awarenesses so far: life goes on & that his death isn't even a blip in the flow of the world. I would be driving in my car and I would think: he's dead... yet no one around me even knows and there is no pause in most people's pace. And every day, hour, minute, and second some other people die, and the world keeps right on running. This isn't Star Wars - there is no disruption of the force. I don't even know how to properly express the awareness - it's a sense that is not verbal - it's like trying to use words to describe how my grandmother smelled - they truly are inadequate.

Freezing Cold Winter Arrives

Well, the typical winter weather continues (at least for the moment). Every time it arrives in either a snow storm or freezing cold temperatures, then it disappears again making it look like global warming is definitely active in North America.

News reports say that it is unlikely that Lake Erie will freeze over this winter. Seeing one of the Great Lakes frozen over (at least partially from the coast) is really awe-inspiring. The frozen waves... the vast expanse of fresh water frozen like a small pond... but not this year.

But the weather and wind outside today made skin & lips feel frozen for sure.

Looking forward to summer and purple pedicures and wearing Birkenstocks & going barefoot... (can you tell it's freezing cold outside?)

New Year's Resolutions

Ok! New year & new resolutions... be grateful for everything.