I have not written on this blog in so long, I don’t know where to start. I woke up needing to write something. It has been on my mind for a while. I talked to Mom last a couple of months ago. I had arranged to (against the wants of MY family) take Mom to visit her brother and sister in Colorado and then go on to Kansas to see some cousins, etc. She backed out less than a week later. Big shock! But it was also okay. I was a bit worried about making that trip. You never know when she will act out and become a total bi***. But, one of the things she said to me on the phone bothered me enough that I just wanted to put it down on here to get it out of my head. She actually believes me about what dad (ahem) did to me from the ages of at least 3 until 15 or so. But she told me that it was a long time ago and it just didn’t matter anymore. On that she is so very wrong. It was a long time ago, as I am 59 now, but it does matter. It stole my childhood. I can’t change it, I “got over it,” but it made me into a person who still has problems from it this many, many years later. I know I will always have a trust issue because of it. I know this and try to work around it, knowing that it is there. But it doesn’t make it go away. I trust few people. And growing up as a child of sexual abuse made me odd in some ways. I know this. And people who know me well know this also. It’s okay. Lynn, Nancy, and Adam stand beside me.
So, my abuser father died a couple of days ago. Finally, a release. Weird to not have any sad feeling when your own father dies….at all. He was a horrible pedophile and I was his victim. Hopefully, I was the only victim.
It took my family about 12 hours to find my phone number to tell me that he had died. That’s funny, really. There will be no services, no funeral, nothing. Really, I am surprised that they called me at all. I don’t know if they want me to go there or not, but I don’t want to. My children don’t want me to go. It always ends badly when I am around them. For what purpose would I go? Since about 3 hours after I found out, I have been sick as hell to my stomach. This is the first time I am up and moving around in about 36 hours. I have a feeling it is stress… feeling like I should go and knowing that I shouldn’t also. It would be impossible for me to go anywhere right now. Running to the bathroom about every 15 minutes. My body is telling me no.
And I have heard absolutely nothing from any of my siblings since I was told he died. Nothing. So, I guess that decision has been made for me. I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I will be subject to further verbal abuse by my siblings anyway. And why? I am a member of the family, but I have been on the “outside” for so long that I don’t feel like it is my family. I think that they felt obligated to tell me – that is all. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that there was a discussion as to whether they should even call me to tell me that he died.
My daughter thinks all of this family drama lately is about money. Maybe. Not for me though. I have no desires. Would I like to have more money? Sure, but not at someone else’s expense. I could have (could still if I had the desire) sue the crap out of my parents for what was done to me for years and leave them with virtually nothing. I’ve known that for years. Would I? Nope. not my thing. It would be like rape money. No thanks. Do I think my siblings might be wanting money? I don’t know. Control, yes. And we always read to follow the money and life seems to be about that. Two of my siblings think my parents should start doling out money to us. I disagree. They will probably need it to live out the rest of their lives. Would it bother me to never inherit money from them? No. It would be about par on what I have dealt with for many years. I have been the scapegoat for so long I don’t know what it would be like to NOT be.
I didn’t go to help to get in anyone’s good graces. I was in that state to help an older woman who was having problems with the people around her NOT helping her. They had her drugged. They had her completely and totally relying on other’s who wanted to believe she was not mentally capable of doing anything. She was still paying the bills. She is the one dealing with keeping them paid, etc. And that was with horrible pain and on narcotics. I have this thing about helping people. Always have and probably always will. If you have known me long, you know this about me. My brothers, sister and parents do not know me. Really don’t. I wasn’t there last time for him either, that long five years ago. I went to help her, as she had asked me to do. What I now see is a pattern. Everyone knows I WILL help. duh. But as soon as I get things where they are a little bit manageable, I am the evil one again. This time was not different. As my kids said, I shouldn’t have gone. But, that is water under the bridge. I was trying to help. I was trying to make sure she was protected and helped as much as possible. But the family only wanted her helped to a point. Just so they didn’t have to hear and deal with her as much. So sad that we treat people this way. I never saw the sister person, but I didn’t want to either. She takes what people say or write and twists it to really odd things. The whole family knows this so it has become a thing to not ask her stuff. Mom won’t even bring subjects up when she is talking to her on the phone because you never know how she will react. She said she just waits for her to bring something up. And then you have to be so careful about what you say and how you react, including voice intonations. And this is normal? Um, no! When I was updating my two brothers and sister each day, I was careful to NEVER ever write an email to just her. I learned this five years ago. haha My dad said something one day about now that the two of you are ok again…. I said NO. We aren’t. When you have to be so careful about every single thing you say or do to someone I want no part. I was only “keeping her in the loop” where Mom was concerned. That is all. Nothing more. I learned after I told her thank you once … and I don’t need or want that kind of negativity or false family crap or drama in my life. My little sister died to me a long time ago. She wanted it that way and made it quite clear that this was how she wanted it. I couldn’t do the tiptoe around her like everyone else seems to do. Nope. Not happening. She is an angry jealous adult who views the glass half empty always. Never the good side. Never. I told my husband many many years ago that I had thought about having a child for her, but was afraid to. She was too angry. Her view of life is skewed from childhood because she has been mad for years that the rest of us didn’t come and rescue her from the abusive family THAT WE WERE ALL TRAPPED IN. I did what I could do. I brought her here summers. I tried to give her the best that I could do at the time. What she has never recognized is that we were all damaged and trying to come to terms with the family and were not capable of SAVING anyone except, hopefully, ourselves. She never ever understood it from anyone else’s persepective though. The oldest child is a druggie/alcoholic who refuses to work. No one wants to spend holidays together. It’s too toxic. She is the youngest and still angry. One moved to the other side of the country and stays away pretty much. One lives in town and I think resents that he has to help out the parents. It doesn’t matter that they helped him out through the years. He wasn’t sexually or physically abused. Mentally? Probably. Just being in the toxic family did that. But we ALL were. Some more than others. Is my abuse more severe? At the time it happened absolutely. What it did to me forever is a not really. We all have the remnants of that mess. The relationships I have with people in my life do not need to be this way, though. I was most upset about cutting ties five years ago, but I was happier in the last five years. The drama and toxicity was gone. No more of the yelling and screaming. No more of the label of being the liar in the family. No more of the constant reminder of the abuser being so accepted while I wasn’t. I had been the innocent victim. I will always be the innocent victim of him. And I can never make that one right, no matter what I ever do. I never had a childhood. I did get the older teenage years during the school year, however. And maybe that is why I made it all out alive. Why I didn’t actually follow through on my suicidal thoughts those so many years ago. And I was rewarded with a loving family today. That is my happy ending!
Ooo. I am evil. Just had a text from my brother who decided it was his job to send my personal emails to my sexual abuser as a child. He was offended by my journal. Oh well. Tough. He is no longer speaking to me. Hmmm. Like I did anything to anyone… As usual in an abusive family, I am guilty of…. What? Writing in a journal? Saying I was tired of being used and will not go back? Oh, I know. Saying anything at all. Not keeping it all a secret. Saying my parents could eat Shi& and die in their own crap. He said he felt guilty for abusing my trust but not any longer. Why? Because I posted in my journal what he had openly sent to whomever he felt like after he had done that? Okay. No big deal. He was already not speaking to me for sending him the email suggesting mom was abused. nothing new. I have been the bad person for years. If projecting YOUR wrongs on me allows you to live with what you did, go for it. I am only responsible for me and what I have done. Not for your reactions or wrongs.
As my children say, I don’t need the negativity. Don’t like my journal? Don’t read it. Offended by it? Your problem and not mine. I have absolutely nothing to apologize for. I originally went to my parents’ house to help my mom. Not anyone else. Not the people who have ignored me for years. Not the people who have had open disdain for my children for years. My brother’s wife doesn’t even believe that my children are HER nephews and niece. This was made clear years ago. When the kids were little and we were spending our own money to visit them, I was reminded of a time when they were about 7, 8, and 11. They disagreed on something. This brother was THRILLED to see them “fight.” Weird, huh? And he actually said something to my daughter to that effect. At the time, she was 11 and told me about it because it was so odd to her that her own uncle would be so happy to see the kids disagree. Yup, they got along really, really well. And that bothered him? why? Many people commented over the years on well they got along: except my family. They always thought it was fake or odd. A normal reaction it was not. She has always viewed that particular episode as an OMG, this adult is weird. As was normal with my children in dealing with my family, she had to act as the adult in this situation. Sometimes you should NOT say what you think, especially to a child. She has never forgotten.
If I was evil, I would copy and put the TEXT that my brother wrote to me telling me he was not feeling guilty about what he had done. He WAS about breaking my trust before he read my journal. Okay. So what? But the old a tit for a tat isn’t really what we should all do is it? He is cutting off ties with me. Uh huh. Did that one already. Haven’t heard crap from him or the sister since I sent my text to them. Did I put it online? Yup. AFTER he decided that my abuser could read it. And it was MY text, not his. My story. And, again, if you don’t like it, don’t read it. Embarrassed about the family. Get over it. They are what they are. I can’t change the sexual abuser. I can’t change any of it. Believe me, I would have if I could have many, many years ago. Today, it is in the past. But never ever forgotten. It can’t be, unfortunately. And I am not keeping the secret. I have told many, many people over the years. And he is the one who decided that my telling everyone ELSE needed to be told to the abuser. Live with your actions. They are yours alone and not mine. This journal has been up and active for a long time. And it will continue.
For many years, I have wanted to write a book. I WAS waiting until my parents were gone, but why wait at this point? Really. They have already been told what OTHER people deemed was okay to tell them. Well, it’s my turn to be open now. I am tired of playing the stupid, lying older sister. I will NOT be quiet any longer. Period. I will write my book now. Whether it is ever published or not doesn’t even matter. It is something that I have needed to do for a long time. MY kind of therapy. My words. My experiences. My time living as two people as a child in a world that was NOT child friendly. I know it will probably cause me to remember more of the actual experiences. I found that out in the past. I found out odd things like why I can’t stand the taste, texture, or flavor of white toothpaste. He put it on his private parts and forced me to lick it off. Nasty as hell. Gross as hell. I was between 6 and 8 at that point. But I learned why… why I am me in the bits and pieces that I am me. Remembering the rape in an empty building by him. Remembering all of the things I was raped with besides him, including flashlights, etc. Remembering the rage. The midnight visits. The riding around in the car. Being asked over and over why the bottom half of my pajamas were ALWAYS off when I would get up in the morning. (That was before the age of 6, and is remembered all the way back to about age 3). Being told that mom wouldn’t give him what he needed, so I had to. What an ass. What a sick person!
So, one of my little brothers recently decided to forward my email (you can see it in my last blog without names and places) to my abuser. Talk about freaking me out! He didn’t believe it and refused to believe that our mother could have been the victim of abuse, so he gave my email to him to my dad. OMG! Really? He won’t answer why except that it was about time to find out if he should believe me. (many cusswords could be put in here…) So, the a hole abuser admitted to doing SOME of the things, but, of course, not all of them. And claimed it was when he was young and didn’t know any better! That is assinine! Hmmm. Your rapist won’t admit to rape, but he will admit to some other things. And being a young adult is now an excuse to waive guilt on the part of an abuser. What a total load of crap! My dad’s two brothers both (BOTH) sexually abused daughters. My whole family knows that. The fact that he abused me has been openly talked about by me for years and years and years. But I am the liar?!?!? I call complete and total BULLSHIT.
Dorothy is going downhill a little bit every day. Her ability to walk is quickly diminishing. She falls so easily and refuses to use a walker. She doesn’t recognize that it is an ongoing problem, this walking and falling thing. Last week, she fell at the store. She couldn’t get up at all. It was closing time and I had tried to help her but she wanted to do it herself. Then, the fall. I turned around and she was on the floor and couldn’t get up. Three times I tried to get her up. It’s fairly easy but she refused. She wanted Lynn to get her up and insisted I couldn’t do it. I had her about 12 inches up each time and she would stop and force herself onto the floor. I don’t know if she was scared to get up with me or was just wanting Lynn. So, I called Lynn at work and he had to leave and come in and help her up.
She skinned her elbow and then swore she was okay. But the next day, sometimes she was limping. Of course, that is true on almost any day. It’s amazing, but she can be limping and then not limping a few minutes apart. Sometimes I wonder if it is a play on Lynn for attention. She seems to do it around him more. And he babies her much more than I do anyway. I think she needs to do what she can as far as walking and unbuttoning etc unassisted and we help as she needs it. I want her to maintain the few abilities that she still has for as long as she can. Lynn just wants it to be easier and faster. That’s a guy for you! LOL
Since that fall, she is complaining sometimes of her left side hurting. Again, it isn’t all of the time. Just occasionally. And I couldn’t find anything wrong. Not visible bruises, etc. She goes back to the doc in about a month and I would imagine we may do some serious talking about helping with some of the hallucinations she is dealing with every day.
She talks to the television. She talks to the pictures in the newspaper. She talks to invisible people and also sees cats and dogs, etc. on weird places in the house. She is concerned about those people and animals and, of course, really believes that they are real.
I am still frustrated with the Alzheimer’s dementia type caregiver groups and their advice. The answers to helping all revolve around allowing the person to live where they are at or in the moment. But Dementia is not Alzheimer’s. They are totally different and Dorothy’s moments aren’t what I hear about normally with the diseases. She fixates on work, money, and her son when he was 14 or so. You can’t pull her from those fixations. She isn’t in areas which make her feel good and she won’t quit, no matter what. You can’t put on music for her, you can’t talk to her when she is fixated, you can’t write to her and have her understand 99% of the time, and she is redirectable. So much of the advice for these situations assumes that the person can hear. She can’t most of the time. I say that because there are instances where she appears to be hearing, but they are rare and getting rarer each week.
The puzzles don’t seem to be working any more. Even if I sit down next to her to work on them, she doesn’t get engaged in them any more. They just frustrate her and she will take them apart and hide them. 🙂
She is “invoicing” her newspapers almost every single day now. Which is fine. They are somehow in her mind her job from Sears and she will spend hours putting them together, examining them, and then demand that they be given to someone specific. Sometimes you can convince her that you are doing that and sometimes not. So weird.
She finally quit hitting me. One time during the holidays, I had had enough and flat out told her to quit hitting me or anyone else. It was NOT okay for any reason ever and I would not put up with it. For some reason, that stuck. I wish that I knew why, but you just can’t get inside her head most of the time to find anything out. And reason just isn’t there most of the time, at least not as we see reasoning. I’m sure it is to her.
I still say that the days are harder on Dorothy than on us. And some days that is saying a lot. It really has to be horrible to be so confused most of the time. Unlike people with Alzheimers, who go backward, Dorothy’s life is mixed up. The disease attacks her memories randomly. When my grandmother was this way, you could ask about her childhood and hear the neatest stories and find out more about her young life. Not so with Dorothy. She has it all mixed together and she hasn’t the recollection to talk about her younger life. The closest we can get is when she thinks she is 15 or so and is talking about a party she will attend. But you only get to listen. Asking anything results in it all stopping. Like she knows on some level it is all wrong. Who knows. Often still her brother is alive and living as an adult and he died when she was around 14 so I don’t know how she has managed to make him an older grown up adult in her mind.
Most of the time she still wants her husband, but most days now, she doesn’t seem to remember his name. Just the husband guy. Sad. They were so unbelievably close.
She still looks at pictures but seldom knows who anyone is. She even took the pictures that I got at Christmas in cards, etc and believes that they are people she knows. I guess it doesn’t matter since she knows none of her family anymore in pictures either. Nor her grandchildren most of the time.
I hate this disease. It’s awful. The only thing good about it that I can say is she has never been able to remember that LD is dead. That part is good and that is the only good thing.
Wow! I can’t believe how fast this year has gone. The last month I thought life would drag along with Lynn being home from work, but it hasn’t. I’ve really really appreciated how much help he has been the last two weeks with his Mom. The first two weeks after the surgery were hard but Nancy was here helping and it made such a difference. Dorothy has been doing okay. She is too used to Lynn being around all of the time, so I think when he goes to back to work in two weeks it will be so hard on her. And then, the kids will come back for the holidays. I think Nancy will be here around the 14th, so the adjustment will not happen until this coming January, I think. In the meantime, she will probably feel rather out of sorts. But then, the holidays rather do that to most of us anyway. Hopefully, it will all turn out just fine.
She doesn’t know who Lynn and I, thinking we are just two people who help her. She is constantly asking for her Mom (died 31 years ago), her Dad (died 41 years ago), her brother (died 73 years ago), her husband (died 3.75 years ago), and her son, whom she just doesn’t recognize about 8 out of ten times right now. Her Alzheimer’s is so odd. When my grandmother had it, she progressively went backwards in time. You could ask her about the area of life that she was living in and earlier and hear the most wonderful stories of people and the times in her life then. Dorothy is not that way. Originally diagnosed with Dementia, her memory is spotty at best throughout her life. She usually thinks she is between about 12 and 55 years of age, but can’t answer or talk about her life then.
Mostly she is very very paranoid and fearful of everything, thinking that someone is always out to get her or the things or people she loves. It’s sad. She has a lot of hallucinations, seeing people and things that are not there at all. And, unlike most people, she is not re-directable most of the time. She fixates on the same things over and over and over, hour after hour, and day after day. The only way to get her to stop is to give her the book we made for her.
That book has pictures of people and times throughout her life that we found in her things, with some explanations of who is in the pictures. We even have included grave markers for her family, as that is a big concern of hers. It also has passages written throughout it about her life and what is going one, etc, including that she has Alzheimers, lives with her son and daughter-in-law, what her grandchildren are doing, and so on. Sometimes that helps her to calm down. We think it is because her generation generally believed that things that were written down were true and factual. I don’t know. It’s just nice to have something that sometimes helps.
When she loses it, though. there is not much of anything that we can do. I think I’ve written that the doc said she could give Dorothy medications that would make her anxiety lessen (she already takes two different ones) but the next level of meds would make her a blithering idiot, unable to walk or do much of anything. We had a home put her on those once when we were out of town and the results were horrible. It took a month to get her off of what she should have never been put on at all and we don’t want to have Dorothy so out of it all of the time. She barely walks well now. She falls so easily now.
A few days ago, she fell while I was helping her take a shower. And I couldn’t get her up by myself. THank goodness Lynn was there. And he isn’t supposed to be doing stuff like straining but when your mom is down on the floor you do it anyway. I took the brunt of the weight and just had Lynn support her arm and elbow and help give her balance so that she had it on both sides. But she shouldn’t have fallen. Didn’t appear to break anything, but gosh, she could have. She gets so stubborn about picking things up from the floor and her balance is so off. She would not lean at that point on something or me and she was down before I could stop her. So sad. And this is the handicapped shower that Lynn had installed to make it easier on her. It wasn’t in the shower, though. It was out and after the shower was over. And she didn’t even slip. Just lost her balance. Sigh. After the broken wrist, I hope that we can avoid more broken bones. That was hard on her.
I saw that an 83 year old woman from Tyler yesterday was lost. They issued a silver alert and thankfully ended up finding her an hour later. The city also did it’s first red alert where telephones were automatically called and the city workers were ALL looking for her. It makes me sad that more people don’t put the GPS trackers on those people who are having problems. Most people think it won’t happen to their loved one or that they are okay right now and that they’ll do it later. But in Wood County, I saw this happen and there was a woman who wandered off and they’ve never found her. It would be horrible to not know what happened to someone or to know that they were out thee somewhere, lost, confused, scared, and lonely. We are around Dorothy just about constantly and we still have the bracelet on her. She had it on in the last lockdown unit too (memory impairment they call it) and I was so glad. She got out of the unit once that she had lived in before. Those places are only as good as the people who work in them.
I am not looking forward to January. Lynn will be back at work and Dorothy will be here at the store with me every afternoon. It is getting harder and harder to lock up and get her out of the door before the alarm goes off that we set in the store. We’ll see what happens. Right now, we are looking at hiring a student to stay with her in the afternoons. We don’t need a nurse, but just someone who can make sure she is safe. Perfect job for a college student or a nursing student. It’s in the thinking stages right now.
One of the local home health people told me that I need to go through a service so that the person is trained in dealing with older mentally off people, but I don’t think that they are any better than, say, a nursing student who can study and keep an eye out for Dorothy too. We’ll see what ends up happening.
Life has settled back down some lately. Lynn had his surgery about 2 1/2 weeks ago and is up and doing fine. He can’t do anything strenuous or lift anything – or even work, so it is driving my hyperactive husband nuts. But it is so much better now. Nancy came and helped us get through that first two weeks and it was wonderful. It was really hard that first week, but she made it so much easier.
Dorothy was harder to handle than normal, but we are just assuming it was because of the change in our normal routine and Nancy being around. She didn’t know who Nancy was most of the time, but she doesn’t know who Lynn and I are most of the time either. Lately, she often thinks I am her mother when I am watching television on the couch. One day she tried to feed me a drink and asked Lynn to bring a paper towel to her so that when the drink dripped she could clean it up. Most of the time now, I recognize the look on her face when she thinks I am her mom and stand up and walk over to her. Then she seems to realize I am not her mother and she starts looking around for where she went to. is interesting, to say the least. Sometimes, it tries my patience, but most of the time I see it for what it is: her confusion.
She often doesn’t know that Lynn is her son, but doesn’t like it when he isn’t around her. While he is off work for the six weeks of recovery that might work, but I think we are going to have some major adjustment problems when he goes back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday week. We’ll see.
She is sometimes getting harder to handle at work. Two days ago, she was leaving. Period. I was checking out some customers, so it was rather a pain in the rear. But they were very understanding, as both have relatives with Alzheimers too. Whew. I got her to sit down until I could take her outside to walk for a minute, but it was a trying few minutes there.
We have had a jar of peanut butter disappear in the house. I don’t know where it is and Lynn and I have both looked. We realized it because she left the lid from the jar on the kitchen counter. I keep wondering where the open jar is and keep looking for it. She is able to bypass many of the childproof features on the cabinets and drawers when she is in the right mood, so who knows. Peanut butter is one of her favorite things to eat and we give her it on crackers almost every single day because of that. It’s a great protein and she eats it always with not a single fuss about it.
One day last week, we took her to the local WalMart store. It is normally a good place to get Dorothy to walk around but not on this day. She ran to the bathroom 3 times. She had poo on her shirt and all over a stall. She had worked at cleaning it up before I knew it and that is how it got all over her clothing. Gross. So, we went home.
Later, we realized it was probably Fimo Clay that did it. She ate a ball of ice cream made of fimo clay the day before. Non toxic, thank goodness. I had been making mini banana splits that were doll shaped and they were on the kitchen table (which she does not eat at.) I guess they looked too good cause she ate it. It was not a good afternoon. I had to give her a shower shortly thereafter, of course.
And one day while Nancy was here, she went to the bathroom and used the floor instead of the toilet. Again, she worked at cleaning it before we knew it. IT was a mess! It was all over the walls, the floor, the sides of the commode and her clothing. And she had put some of the clothing on a hanger in her closet before we found out about it. SIGH. Lynn cleaned up and we started washing clothes and, of course, gave her a shower. Don’t know what happened but we try to watch her more closely when she ambles off toward the bathroom. Normally, though, she doesn’t even remember where it is and we are always asking her if she needs to go. SIGH.
Again, poor Dorothy. She kept talking about that poor woman who had to clean up after her, thinking she was in a home and not AT home. Just some of the yucky things we are dealing with. But I still maintain it is harder on her most of the time than us. And so does Lynn, thank goodness.
I hate that the home she was in taught her to sit on her butt in a chair all damned day. And do nothing. Part of what you are supposedly paying $4000 a month for is activities, etc. They really don’t exist like you think. Mostly, it is whatever is easier on the aids who are working. They often locked them out of their rooms for hours so it was easier to deal with the residents too. SHAME
Yesterday was her hair day. She got it permed too so the appointment was longer. (YAY) But afterward, she got mad because Lynn wouldn’t take her to the bank to pay for it. So confused. When we gave her lunch at the store, she was refusing to eat because she was so mad. It was like a petulant 4 year old was there instead of Dorothy. Then Lynn added ketchup to her plate and she was fine. It’s sweet and sweet is her thing. But Lynn had to take her home about a hour later because she was so antsy. I am getting him to bring her up like normal each day, as the puzzles and the change of scenery seems to make her more functionable. Plus, at home, she doesn’t want to do anything at all, including putting on clothing most of the time. That’s okay, except she sits in a recliner all day and then her ability to walk is diminished. We are trying to keep that small ability to shuffle around there so that she doesn’t become unable to walk. That day is coming but the movement is important while she can.
Lynn had his surgery for the hernia yesterday. It was a very long day. He was both dreading and looking forward to getting the surgery done. Both reasons are rather obvious…
Nancy came down to help us out, which was just wonderful. It would be so hard to do any of this without Nancy. Doing the store, taking care of Dorothy and Lynn after the surgery would have just been so hard! She is so sweet to come down for two weeks. It will get us over this “hump” time.
Yesterday, we left before Nancy and Dorothy had to be up, as Lynn had to be at Mother Francis at 7 am for the surgery that was scheduled at 9:15. Of course, neither of us slept very well so the day would have been tiring no matter what. But we got there and waited for his turn. Had a great parking place since not very many people were there yet. They took him in at about 9:30 in the morning. After getting his happy meds, he was totally out of it and I went to eat some breakfast in the cafeteria. It was nice as the hospital nurse calls as they begin the surgery, as they end the surgery and when he wakes up in recovery. So great that you don’t have to sit in the comfy waiting room all of the time. And it was comfy, with free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and fairly comfortable chairs.
They began the surgery at 10:00 am and he was done at 10:45. Recovery was supposed to be an hour or so, but Lynn was awake 15 minutes after the surgery. Amazing, but we are both alike in that we would so much rather be at home. It’s much more comfortable at home than anywhere else to us. They told him he couldn’t leave until he went to the bathroom. We were out of the hospital 15 minutes later. About an hour after the surgery ended, we were driving home. … WOW!
In the meantime, Dot was giving Nancy a very hard time. She woke her up early and didn’t know who she was. Nancy kept telling her that she was her granddaughter but Dorothy kept telling her NO she was not. Nancy pointed to her pictures and Dorothy told her she didn’t look like that girl. Nancy made her breakfast: cheese egg, etc… her normal and Dorothy refused to eat it. She kept calling Nancy a nurse. Then Dorothy was taken by Nancy to get dressed in her bedroom. Dorothy and she picked out clothing and Dorothy insisted on dressing herself. Later that day, I found out her undershirt (polo) was on backwards and so were her pants. I told Nancy this was normal. Then Dot dressed and packed a purse to leave. She included PJ’s, etc. and demanded to go. She stood int he middle of the living room for a long time. Later, she began looking up telephone numbers so she could call Lynn and tell him to come and get her.
We arrived shortly thereafter and had driven through a Chinese drive-through for lunch. We passed it around and everyone ate. Even Dorothy. So, I guess she just didn’t want to eat food from the “stranger.” Who knows? She is so paranoid anyway. I thought I was a pessimist!
Later we took Dorothy out with us. She needed the exercise and Lynn needed the sleep. We went to a local store. Dorothy started picking up trash on the floor. I got her to hand me the first piece and I put it back. SHE GOT SO ANGRY. She slapped me. And started screaming at me. I grabbed both of her hands because she had managed to slap me another 5 or six times while she was screaming at me. I just kept ssying Calm Down. Calm Down. She wouldn’t, of course, so I handed my purse to Nancy who had walked up at that point and told her that Dot and I were going to the car. Ooh, she was so mad! We walked out to the car and I put in her. I then leaned forward to her ear so she could hear me and told her that she had just scared the SHIT out of Nancy. THEN, she calmed down. Whew. And we took her to another store a few minutes later and she was sort of okay. Shortly thereafter, we took her home and put her in the living room with Lynn. sigh. Nancy and I went back out for about another hour before we came back.
Dorothy was hard to handle all day long. That anger never really went away. She didn’t remember why, but she knew she was angry. And there was no redirecting her anger. It was just there. It manifested itself the entire rest of the evening with a variety of different hallucinations, including men who were at the door, etc. So Sad. Such a long day it was…..
whittikerjourneys 