One day it was a visit to the dentist (me). The next, the doctor’s (me). The next a screaming meltdown (me). I’m having some weird symptoms — head rushes accompanied by a fog that drifts over the lower part of my right eye. Next week I’ll go for a neck sonogram and a blood test and see what they turn up. I imagine it’s just stress. Did I say JUST stress????!!!
I’m making every effort to take care of myself while we try to take care of my mother. She’s eating very well but is still weak. And her ability to focus mentally on anything continues to wane. She wants to talk incessantly because that’s all that she seems able to do, unless she goes into her bedroom and moves things around in her dresser drawers — which my sibling thinks she shouldn’t do (he wants her to sit and watch tv and rest) but I think is better for her than just sitting and sleeping all of the time. When we sit together, she drives me crazy telling the same stories over and over, asking the same questions, confusing situations and people… I’m getting to the point at which I can’t stand spending time with her when I don’t have actual caregiving chores to do. Those I actually don’t mind. I like to be busy.
When she goes to her follow-up doctor’s appointment next week, he will give us a referral for some home care that Medicare will pay for. What she needs more than anything is a companion — someone without the baggage I still carry around who might even find her an amusing and charming little old lady. I have never found her either, and I can’t get past that.
I do try. I really do. Every day if she feels up to it (and the idea always seems make her a little more chipper), I turn on the CD player and spin some of those oldies that a college chum sent me and some slow polkas that our cousin down in Florida sent us, and we do some small dance steps around the living room. I let her lead. She likes to do jitterbug turns under my arm, but much more slowly than they are supposed to be done. She smiles. I smile. She is up and moving and she doesn’t need to talk. The music makes us both feel better. Dancing is the one thing we both like to do.
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The comments I keep getting from blogger friends also makes me feel a lot better. And I also get encouraging comments and emails from non-bloggers who have googled something they were interested in and found my site by happenstance. And, of course, of course, my family. It all makes a difference in helping me keep on keeping on. It really does.
So, thanks to Shelley the Burningbird, and Maria at Alembic, and the divine Betsy, and tamarika, and to all of you non-bloggers who also keep me in your thoughts.
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I keep thinking that I always have the choice to turn around and walk away from all of this. Maybe that’s what keeps me here — knowing that I have the choice not to be. In my mind, I put myself in her place, in her head. It’s scary. Really scary. I keep telling myself that I won’t become like her. I’ve lived a different kind of life, physical, mental, creative. I will not allow myself to become bored; there are too many things I like to do. And I can do lots of them sitting down, if I’m limited in that way. If I keep using my mind, use it so that I don’t lose it, maybe I won’t be stuck someday driving my own daughter crazy telling the same stories over and over, asking the same questions, over and over, and confusing past, present, and fantasy.
Please, please. I hope.

I guess I’ve been a little surprised by the outpouring of support from so many of my fellow bloggers, especially those from the “old blodays,” those I was sure had forgotten about me.
Like prolific Mike Golby so far away in South Africa. I used to read his blog all of the time, even though I often got lost in his erudition. What a warm surprise it was to read his comment.
I wasn’t surprised but was just as pleased to hear from Dave Rogers, with whom I shared a few beers just about a year ago in Albany. He is much more widely read than I’ve ever been, even in the best of my gloryblog days, and I’m sure his mention of my current situation in his own weblog was instrumental in others tracking me down.
I certainly was not surprised to hear from Jeneane Sessum, sister Blogsister, and my very first blogfriend. Jeneane also emailed me the following, which she got from here:
Carers Wish List
I wish:
I could watch a television programme all the way through
I could go to bed when I want to and sleep through the night
I could get up when I want to
I could do something on the spur of the moment
I didn’t have to watch the clock for tablets and toileting
I didn’t have to worry all the time about the person I care for
I wish things could be as they were.
Yes, that sounds about right to me.
In checking out Jeneane’s recent posts (which I don’t do often enough lately), I also noticed on that she was reminiscing
about those good ol’ blogdays when we were all leaving voice mail messages on Gary Turner’s phone over there across the Atlantic, and then he would have them available to listen to on his weblog. Back then, blogging was full of fun stuff like that………
……..to be continued
There are other blogger friends I’d like to link to in thanks for their comment-encouragement, but it’s now 1:30 a.m., I’ve already had to get up and get my mom to the bathroom three times and the last time she wanted to get up and have something to eat so we did. On top of that, I’m still not familiar enough with using this laptop, and so it takes me twice as long to post something from it. I started this post somewhere around 11p.m. Two hours later, and I’m still plodding along.
When I continue, I will share more about my mom and how we danced the Oberek tonight and had some good laughs. She seems to have some strength and energy back. That’s a bit of a surprise.