So, as is written in my bio, I have the two kids, and the husband, and I've got guardianship of my Mom. Mom is 81, and has dementia issues, and has had for 4 years now, and Dad has macular degeneration, and there's not much more that they can do to help him keep his vision. He has the "wet" type, which robs people of their vision fastest, and most thoroughly. It's very scary for him, and I've been watching him pretty closely, looking for signs of depression, because he can't read the newspaper any more, he can't really enjoy watching TV much, because what he DOES see is jumping around in his field of vision, making it not really that relaxing of an activity. He can't see to play cards, or board games, so he says he doesn't like them. Guess he'd rather be thought of as a grumpy old codger than as "the blind guy". I don't know how to help him. It's frustrating, because whenever I suggest something that might be helpful, it's always too expensive for him. I suggested that we could get a magnifying screen for him to be able to read the paper. Medicare would help pay for some of it, I've got brothers that belong to the Lion's club, they could probably help get him one, but he won't do it. I've suggested other things that might make his life easier, but he won't do it. UGH! Like he's said all his life, you can sure tell an old Norwegian, but you can't tell him MUCH! He's also got hearing issues, AND he's not remembering things like he used to, either, so when you tell him something, he only hears about 3/4 of it, if you're lucky, and then he'll only remember half of THAT, so OY!

We moved them into an assisted living facility back in the beginning of January. They'd actually moved out of that physical building 20 years ago in May, when they were offered the position of Care Takers at the Huntington House apartments by Bob Thompson, the director of the Housing Authority in town. They moved out of this duplex and into Huntington house, and now, we've moved them back there. It had been owned by a good friend of Dad's, and we lived there for Oh, I don't know, 2 or 3 years, back in the 80's. Between then and now, the OTHER half of the duplex had been involved with a fire, and the Woman who owns another Home based assisted living facility around the corner bought it, completely gutted it, removed the dividers between the two halves, and turned it into a 4 bed adult family home. When I got wind of the place, I was SO excited! Took my oldest brother, and we went to look at it, and other than the fact that Mom and Dad have separate bedrooms now, it's as close to ideal as we could POSSIBLY have found! The place is perfect. Or almost perfect. There are a couple of things that might be "better" for them, but really, is ANYplace EVER perfect?

The day we moved them to the new place, Mom fell in the bedroom at the old apartment. Don't know how she got in the room alone, with so many of us there, but she did, and whammo, down she went. Then she fell again at the new place mid-month, and then fell again on the 31 of Jan. That one resulted in a bleed on her brain, and a week long hospital stay, and now she's in a local nursing home for rehab. I try to get there every day, because I know that residents of nursing homes who have regular visitors get better care. I also don't ever go at the same time, two days in a row, so that I'm never "expected", so that I can get a good sense of how she's being treated.

Well, Monday, we decided that since there's a possibility that she'll be going home sometime next week, that we should maybe take her back for a visit first, to see if the caregivers that work there think they'll be able to "handle" her now that she's got even more cognitive issues, etc... so I went to pick her up at 10 in the morning. I got there a little early, but only like 5 or 10 minutes. Didn't expect anyone to rush around and accommodate me because I was early. I'm just like that. When I was coming in, the CNA that usually works in the wing Mom is in said, "oh, she's down in therapy right now." So I figured they wanted to get her therapy done with before she left for the afternoon. No big deal. I went to the therapy room, and she wasn't there. OK, maybe we missed her in the transit, no big deal. SO I head back to her room, and the CNA is about 30 feet ahead of me in the hall, and she says, "Well! Delores! How did you..." at that point, she realized I was behind her, so she quit talking. I get down to her room, and she's on her bed, and her wheelchair is nowhere to be seen. I turn around, and one of the physical therapy workers is literally jogging up the hallway with Mom's chair. At the time, I figured, "Oh, there was something wrong with her chair, they brought her back to her room, took the chair, fixed it, or replaced it, and were now bringing it back to her"

On Tuesday, Mom had a doctor's appointment in Marshfield, with the Orthopaedic surgeon who did her shoulder replacement a couple of years back. It showed that it was dislocated on her films from the fall, so he wanted to look at it, and see if there was anything more HE could do to "fix" it, or at least make her comfortable. She's not in pain, it's just dislocated, because she refused to follow through with her therapy, and there are virtually no muscles holding it in place at this point. the only thing to do would be to re-do the ENTIRE surgery, and that wouldn't guarantee anything. She's not in pain, so they're going to leave it alone. (THANK GOD!)

When I took her back to the home after her appointment yesterday, the nurse and the CNA just casually brought up the fact that Mom had, "the other day", but they MEANT on Monday morning, she had slipped away from PT, "walked" her wheelchair down to the door to the stairway, got OUT of the chair, pushed open the door, WALKED up the steps, Opened the door at the TOP of the stairs, and walked down the hallway to her room, and laid herself down, without anybody knowing she was on the move. I have to assume, after watching her walk, that she HAD to have been unsupervised, and on her own for at LEAST 10 minutes. THAT, to me, is COMPLETELY unacceptable! And when I talked to the ombudsperson, she said that unfortunately, stuff like that happens all the time. And because she DIDN'T get hurt, there's not a whole lot I can do about it. It's VERY frustrating. And there are so many other things that have happened there, like medicine errors, and just generally not for them knowing where she is when I go to visit. One person will say she's in therapy, they'll say she's getting her hair done, they'll say she's back in her room. It's very frustrating!

Thanks for listening.

Ok, I know that we're ALL proud of our kids, or mostly so, anyway. But someone once said that how your kids act when AWAY from home is the REAL measure of how "good" a job you're doing raising them. And today, I learned that I'm doing a pretty darn good job! The 4 year old had his eyes tested at school, back in January, and the letter came home stating that he needed an eye exam. No big surprise there, 90% of my family wears glasses, I'd have been MORE shocked if they said his vision was perfect! SO I make the appointment. The first one was scheduled for whatever day it was that they cancelled school because of the cold, and the doctor's office called and said that SHE couldn't make it in, so it was changed to today.

On Sunday night, I was watching all the "Jon & Kate Plus 8" episodes that I'd missed, and the one where a couple of the sextuplets need to go to the eye doctor came on. I thought nothing of it, until AFTER the kids were crying and upset by the doctor visit, and then I realized... "OH NO! We see the eye doctor on Wednesday! CRAP!" So I spent Monday and Tuesday doing damage control, explaining that since he did SUCH a good job at the Dentist, and that was a WHOLE lot more of a "big deal" than an eye appointment, (thank GOD they didn't do a glaucoma test... ACK!) he'd have NO problem with this. Apparently, some of it sunk in.

He marched in there, sat in that chair, and was SO good! He got a little bit unnerved by the drops, but even when she had to do a second set of drops in each eye, he just put his head back and let her do it, without fighting at all! It was AMAZING!

Then we got to pick out glasses for him. He's going to be SO darn cute in those little buggers! And I can't wait to see if her predictions of maybe him settling down some after he gets his glasses, and he can maybe see things up close, maybe he'll mellow out, and start enjoying some quiet play, instead of the current entertainment choice of chasing the pets, and trying to make ME insane.

Maybe? That'd sure be cool!

I live 2 lives. In one life, I'm Wife, Mom, helper, volunteer @ church, etc... and it's a pretty cool life I have. Yes, we could use a bit more cash in our coffers, but who COULDN'T, really, so it's overall a pretty satisfying thing to be me, in my "first" life.

The other life I lead is that of guardian for my Mom. And we're rapidly concluding that Dad's not MUCH better off than Mom is right now, either. Anyway. January 5, we moved my parents to an assisted living facility on the West side of town. The physical building was actually where my parents moved OUT of when they went to live where they have been living for the last 20 years, and it had been purchased, and converted to a 4 bed assisted living facility. It's as close to "perfect" as we could have asked for. I'll be forever grateful to my Mom's social worker for being "Johnny on the Spot" and calling me when she had toured the place back in early December. I was absolutely FLOORED when Dad agreed without hesitation to go look at the place, and then I about fell on the floor when he said he'd like to live there! It was like... HOLY COW! Three weeks prior to hearing about this place, he had told me in no uncertain terms that if I just "stuck them" someplace, he'd never forgive me.

We had been looking for some place for them to go for almost a year now. Dad had very specific issues about what was acceptable and what wasn't, and his criteria were pretty incredible. The funding was available, and there were beds available at "community based" facilities, which meant that they were, for the most part, someone's home, and they had 1 or 2 extra bedrooms, and had the certifications for having elderly people live in their home with them. That wasn't going to work for Mom and Dad, OR our entire family. I mean, there are 7 of us kids, we're all married, and have at least 2 kids, the grandkids are now getting married, and there are currently 4 great grandbabies, and soon to be 5, so going to visit in someone else's home would be so incredibly awkward for everyone, it just wouldn't work.

There's a new facility that opened up, and it would have been PERFECT, except that there was no funding available to help pay for any place that had more than 10 beds... so scratch THAT idea... Then this place opened up. It's got 95% of what Dad wanted.

Ok, I'm rambling now... Anyway, we got them moved in on Jan. 5. Mom decided that she needed to leave some DNA in the old apartment, and somehow, despite the fact that there were 8 of us in that cramped little apartment, she managed to get into the bedroom alone, and fall on her head, and bust her glasses, and bleed all over the damn place. Then on Jan. 13, she got up in the middle of the night, and fell again, because the stubborn old broad refuses to ask for help. Then last Thursday morning, the CNA on duty was helping Dad get all of his "night gear" off, she heard the alarm that said Mom was getting up, headed that way, and by the time she got across the hall to Mom's room, she was on the floor, bleeding profusely, and had another knock on the head. I went over there a couple of hours later, and the CNA on duty said that her blood pressure was being all funky, way high, then way low, go back up, etc... and then while I was there, you just couldn't wake her up! She was SO lethargic! So I called her doctor up at Marshfield, and he suggested I take her to the ER, which I did, and they did a CT scan of her head, and it revealed a small bleed on her brain, and they were going to transfer her to Marshfield. woo.

So now she's been up to the hospital since Thursday afternoon, and they won't release her back to the assisted living facility, but insist that she go to a nursing home. It sucks. Mainly because I am the one who has to sign the papers to put her there, and I hate that! I guess I should just be very grateful that she's not coherent enough to KNOW that I'm the one who signed the papers... ugh.