Life doesn't seem fair sometimes!

January 29, 2014

I feel like my Dad is being taken through the ringer right now!  Honestly, I don't know how much more one man can take in his life!  He seems to be remaining strong on the outside, but it makes me wonder how he's doing on the inside!?  Does he have moments of crying to himself? And moments of wondering what in the world has become of his life?  Certainly this is not what he had imagined his later life to be like . . I'm sure!  

 "Oh, we're really having a lot of fun over here!" is what he has said to me on the phone a few times in the last few weeks.  That is his sarcastic way of telling us that things have been a little crazy over there . . . especially lately!  He is dealing with my Mom, who half the time, is not remembering that he is her husband, and thinking they are not at their own home.  He is dealing with my older sister who has been in the hospital numerous times in the last little while with various problems . . . and a younger sister, a single mother of one little boy,  my nephew, who has recently been evicted from her apartment.  And, on top of that, when I went to pick up my Mom yesterday, to give my Dad a little break, and to allow him to go to his correlation meeting, I found him sitting on the couch in his bedroom, where the sun was shining on him, to find him not feeling well!  He had woken up with a sick stomach and achy body! 

My brother's wife's parents have offered to come to Salt Lake and stay a week with my Mom while my Dad goes to visit my other brother in North Carolina . . to just give him a break, and they are almost insisting upon it, but my Dad doesn't feel like he can do that.  Although my Mom forgets who he is half the time, she also relies completely on him to help her dress, do her hair and make-up, get to her social outings etc.  He doesn't feel that he can leave her!  

My Dad did decide to hire some ladies to come in to the house and help my Mom.  They will start coming in a few weeks and have been highly recommended by one of his friends, who also has a wife living with Alzheimer's!  We're a little worried about how my Mom will take having a few strangers in the house for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week!  Right now she says she doesn't want it or need it!  These ladies will be helping with housework, driving her places, keeping her entertained, and just watching over her.  Eventually they will be helping her with much more, but for now, that's what they'll be doing.  My Dad will be there much of the time, but he feels that this might be best, as her condition is worsening by the week!  

Here is one of the experiences my Dad has had lately . . . he was on the phone a few days ago with some car title people, verifying all of his personal information . . . while my Mom is in the background yelling, "He's a phony, he's a fake, he's not who he says he is!"  She was going through one of her bad moments of not knowing where she was or who this man was that her husband left her with!  The same thing happened to him as he talked to someone else on the phone that same day.  Can you imagine explaining that one to people . . . with a grown woman in the background yelling that he was basically a liar.  Oh, my poor Dad!  I just happened to call them on the phone just a few minutes after that happened and my Mom answered.  I asked her how things were going and she said, "Well, not good.  I am here with this man and I don't know who he is!"  I assured her that it was her husband and my Dad, as I could clearly hear his voice in the background  . . but she did not believe me.  She said, "People probably think I'm crazy but this is not my husband.  It doesn't look like him!  And he's being mean!  He just told me to shut up!"  I guess what happened is that he told her to be quiet and he walked in the other room and shut the door.  She then walked out of the house and went to the neighbor's house and told their great neighbor, Liz, that she didn't know who this man was that her husband left her with.  Liz walked back over with her and verified that it was indeed her husband, Mike . . and she even got on the phone with me and verified to me that it was my Dad.  Thank heavens for great, loving and understanding neighbors like Liz!  There are some good people in this world that we would not survive without . . . through this difficult ordeal!  Thanks to all her great, supportive friends! 

My Mom and I at Costco enjoying a little pizza!

Yesterday I picked up my Mom and took her with me to run a few errands and to take my son to piano lessons.  She was a trooper to drive around in the car with me for a long while!  Actually, she surprised me with how well she remembered me and everybody, and we had some good conversation.  She even talked about my Dad as her husband and not as a stranger!  She laughed at my jokes and even talked about how nice this girl was, next to her, (me) "Mardi . . . that takes time out of her busy schedule to be with her . . and to drive all the way in to pick her up."  She surprised me how with-it she seemed yesterday!  How strange this disease is!!  So unpredictable!  I was so grateful to be able to spend time with her and look at my experience with her yesterday as a tender mercy.  I hope to have many more experiences like that, but have a feeling they are going to happen less and less!  She is such a great lady trapped in this mind that is dying . . and that makes me so so sad!  Life doesn't seem fair sometimes . . . but that's just the way life is! 

Flashing back to 7.5 years ago . . . 

October 31, 2006

Today is Halloween and my day is filled with going to Halloween parades to see my kids in their costumes.  I’ve already been to the elementary school and in about an hour I’ll go to Spencer’s preschool to see his parade.  As usual, I’m dressed as a cat with my cat ears and painted on whiskers and black nose.  That's been my costume for the last handful of years!  Halloween is not my favorite holiday but I try to make it fun for the kids! 

My visiting teacher, Becky, called me this morning feeling bad that they have not officially visited me this month.  She gave me the message over the phone and then we spent the rest of the time talking about our mothers.  Coincidentally her Mom, who is also very young, 65, is showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease.  She has also not been fully diagnosed, but the signs are all there.  Our stories are so similar, it is amazing.  It sounds like her Mom is at about the same stage as my Mom.  I have known about Becky’s Mom for a few months now but have not dared bring it up to her because of the way I always fall apart when talking about my Mom.  I finally opened up and asked her about her Mom today and of course I could not hold it together.  I’m glad that I finally broke the ice because I think we’re going to be able to help each other through these difficult times.  She also believes that this is and will be the hardest thing that she will have to endure.  We definitely agreed on that!

My parents are just flying back from Baltimore right now.  My brother Steve and his wife Jenny live back there while Steve is in medical school.  Jenny’s Dad gave them a car and he didn’t have a way to get it to them, so my Dad offered to drive it back for them.  They drove three full days to get there and I had the chance to talk to them a few times on their journey.  My Mom seems really good and they both seem very happy.  They said the drive wasn’t too bad and they were getting to listen to a lot of books on tape and CD.  They love that!  It’s one of their favorite things to do while traveling. 

We have not been able to have a Sunday dinner together with our whole family for a long time – at least a month or more.  My parents will be leaving for Malaysia this weekend for about a week and then we’re going to get together then!  They continue to go on these medical missions where they go and teach people about neonatal resuscitation.  I wonder how long these trips will last.  I think they might be getting a little tired of it since they have been doing it for a few years now. 

December 7, 2006

            How much can one family take?  I’m not sure.  This is the question I have been thinking about for the last 24 hours since I talked to my Dad yesterday.  My dad said that he is surrounded by sick people and he longs for some normal adult conversation.  I’m proud of myself because I was able to hold myself together as I talked to him about all the sick people in our lives.  Usually I would be a crying mess! 

So this is what’s happening:  My Dad’s dad, my last living grandparent, just got out of the hospital after fainting down in Mesquite and having to be flown back up to Salt Lake.  He’s been experiencing faintness for a while now and the doctors believe that it might be due to his heart rhythm.  Last week he got a pace maker put inside of him and we’re hoping that it will do the trick!  Matt and I went to visit him a few days ago and his memory is not very good.  He could not tell us anything that happened down in Mesquite.  He was supposed to play in a golf tournament down there with a bunch of buddies, but it didn’t happen!  I can hardly even imagine what frustration there comes when your body begins to fall apart and doesn’t work like you expect it to.  I feel bad for my Gramps . . . he’s such a great guy!  Anyway, so my Dad is dealing with his Dad who is not feeling well and who is not remembering.  My grandpa has always been as sharp as a tack and so we are not used to him being forgetful!

Next, my older sister Paige just got out of the hospital yesterday after being hospitalized for 5 days.  I’m not exactly sure, but I would guess that she has been in the hospital at least 10 or so times this past year.  No doctors are completely sure what’s wrong with her but she has these attacks where she can’t breathe and she’s even had to be intibated (spelling?), where a tube is put down your throat and a machine breathes for you.  On top of asthma, she has even something more wrong with her lungs that the doctors can’t quite figure out.  She’s going in for a bunch of tests tomorrow.  Paige lives alone with her dog Andie right down the street from my parents and spends quite a bit of time with my parents.  

My other sister Cammy, just under me, found a lump in her breast a few weeks ago and has been waiting for the final results of the tests.  My dad was waiting to find out if they were benign or malignant yesterday when I talked to him.  I told him to call me back if the results were negative, but fortunately I did not hear back.  That’s one thing in our favor!

Lastly, my Dad deals with my cute Mom everyday 24/7.  I asked how things were going with her memory, and all he said was that it was very hard.  Although she can carry on normal conversation with most people and can function fine, my Dad said that most of their communication is her asking him questions of things she can’t remember or doesn’t understand.  He feels like sometimes he is babysitting his own wife.  I asked if my Mom is aware of her lack of memory and inability to keep everything straight.  He said “Yes!  She is fully aware of it and that’s why it is so hard.”  My Dad is still holding on to hope that maybe this is all something different than Alzheimer’s and that it will all level off and they can just learn to deal with the memory loss.

I’m proud of my Dad!  In the past I saw impatience and frustration on his part, but I’m sensing now that he is being more patient and loving with my Mom.  I sure hope that is the case because that’s what my Mom deserves!  My Dad is going to come out of all of this a much more caring and patient man!  He is learning things that he could probably not learn any other way!  I’m not saying at all that my Dad has not been a loving sort of guy in the past because he has.  I have always loved him to pieces!  I’m just saying that I believe there are things that I believe he is to learn from all of this.  I guess there are things that we’re all going to learn from all this.  We are going through the refining fire right now and it hurts!

I shed a few tears for my Dad last night while I laid in bed thinking about him.  He’s a strong person and I know he can do it!  We all can!  

My Mom and the cute twinners, Sammie and Cate . . . 2010!

Amongst all this bad news, a few days ago my whole family received some exciting news from my brother Mike and his wife Jennie who live in Boston.  They are expecting their second baby in May, which is not the good news.  Well of course that’s great news, but the even greater and more fun part of it is that they just found out that they are expecting twins!  We are all thrilled for them.  I never even dreamed that our family would have twins.  I guess it runs somewhere in the family.  My grandpa on my Mom’s side had twin brothers.

Christmas is coming too.  We should all be happy about that!