escape yourself and gravity

I'm viewing this last episode of CM through a very personal lens.  The short story is, I found the concept unbelievable, even though I loved watching Hotch, Rossi, & Prentiss in particular.

( Spoilers and long, rambly thoughts )

Wow, that's a lot of tl;dr and a lot of personal crap.  And I know it's just my own experience.  But I've done a lot of talking with other people in the same position as my dad, and my experience is common among the three of us.  If you guys have had experience in this, I'd be interested to hear it.  Maybe there's an angle I'm not seeing.



On a different aspect of the episode, did anyone see the Weed Eater Gube got his head caught in?  Because I think some lawn care professional must be missing it.  >.>

I guess they're transferring Gedna to a transitional place that specializes in geriatric issues and behavioral problems. I thought an Alzheimer's unit would be properly equipped to deal with behavioral problems, since that goes along with Alzheimer's a lot of times.

Dad is all depressed again. This day just keeps getting better.

Realized today I haven't posted about Gedna for a while. For you recent flisters, Gedna is my Grandma Edna, and she's been suffering from dementia for some years now; last February we moved her into assisted living. She's still in the assisted living facility, and we're honestly surprised they haven't recommended she be moved to the full-time nursing home side yet.

Dad and Uncle took her presents at Christmas, all warm clothes, because she's always cold--she keeps her thermostat at 80 and is still wearing a sweatshirt and a sweater all the time. She apparently didn't understand why they were giving her presents, or that she got to keep them. Didn't grasp the concept of Christmas at all. Last Christmas she was still living on her own, of course, and she gave us all $100 each. Dad is in charge of her finances and apparently asked Uncle if he should give $50 a piece to the three grandkids, but Uncle said not to. *shrug*

A couple of weeks ago they told us she's going deaf, but we're not sure if there's any point in getting her hearing tested. We're not sure if she's cognizant enough to really take the hearing test, anyway. Mom pointed out that they give the three-year-olds hearing tests at the preschool at our old church...but Dad said he wasn't sure Gedna had the capacity to understand.

Apparently this weekend she began 'expressing herself violently', which is to say she was at dinner and said, 'I've always hated that kid. I oughta kill him.' Or something to that effect. Apparently it upset some of her table partners, who are some of them quite mentally bright seniors who just are physically frail.

The hardest part about this whole thing isn't watching her decline myself. Frankly I have never felt any emotional attachment to her, partly because she moved away when I was so young, and partly because she was always manipulative and bossy, and partly, quite honestly, because my mother never liked her. I still think it's sad to see someone lose their mental faculties so completely, and it's terrifying knowing that there's a very good chance I'll lose my father to Alzheimer's when he's old. The worst part is watching my dad have to deal with all this. Particularly since we're dealing, at the same time, with Uncle's divorce from the horrible bitch, as well as the Uncle being out of a job. I adore my father, and he's prone to depression in the best of times, let alone when he's taking care of his father and worried about his little brother.

Our stray black cat got hit by a car and killed today. My dad's depressed about it. We tried for months to lure her inside, and she always came up, every day, for food, and would even let us pet her sometimes. But she never let us get close enough to actually pick her up.

In other news, Saturday is Gedna's move-in date for the assisted living place. I'm looking forward to having her settled, so maybe Dad won't be quite so stressed out about that.

Not much else going on.

Things with Gedna have been getting worse. After seeing the neurologist a couple of weeks ago, she was scheduled for more extensive testing. Dad and Uncle went up to see her last Saturday, to break the news about having to find a new place to live, and having to stop driving and such. One day this week she drove to the Legion and the grocery store, sending her sisters into a panic when they couldn't find her. Friday Dad took her to lunch and was about to take her to the testing when she got sick, so they had to reschedule. Today we're under wind chill advisories with the temperature around 14 but the wind pushing it lower. Dad told Gedna to stay home, stay inside and keep warm... and her sister-in-law found her down at the IGA, her car filled with things like blankets, food, and stuff.

So Dad and I are going up to take the car keys away.

Dad took Gedna to see a new neurologist yesterday. It didn't go well.
She was angry with Dad for tricking her into seeing a new doctor, and
rather fractious the whole time. A sample of the sort of conversation
the doctor had with Gedna goes like this:

DR: What's the date today?
G: The 18th.
DR: What month?
G: February.
DR: Do we have any holidays coming up?
G: Christmas.
DR: So what month is this?
G: ....?

The upshot is that Gedna has been diagnosed by a new doctor with severe
Alzheimer's. The doctor told Dad--but not Gedna--that she
shouldn't be driving or living on her own. Not a surprise, but Dad and
his brother D are actually going to have to do something about it now.

___

I think that acknowledging this has made it worse. My heart's been acting up all morning, and it is icky. I have made an appointment with my doctor for Monday morning, and have found out that Mom is on Thyroxine, which is for hypothyroidism, which can be related to this, so I have something to tell my doctor when I see her.

Now if I can just find out about assistance in paying for it, I'll be golden. I just can't ask my parents for any more money. They've given me so much money since I lost my job last year, and even though I'm currently paying every bill but one, that one bill is the $500 debt-consolidation loan payment. So they've probably given me over $10,000 in the past 18 months.

I hate this. I absolutely hate this. I have been working since I was 16 years old, and I babysat for years before that (yes, despite my loathing for children). From the time I turned 16 until I turned 18 I had summer jobs, because Mom & Dad didn't want me working during the school year. When I went to college, I got a part-time job and had a part-time job with more hours in the summer for every semester of college except the one where my car had been totalled right after I quit a job because he wanted me to change my class schedule to fit his work needs.

After graduating from Purdue in May of 1998 I worked 30 hours a week until January of 1999, when I got my first full-time job. From that point until April of 2006 I worked full-time constantly, except for about a month and a half between the Linden job ending and the Frankfort job starting.

Now, that said, I confess that I don't like working full-time. I frequently joke that I was meant to be an heiress, and I definitely enjoyed the time I spent drawing unemployment and just working around the house. But the thing is, I have always paid my own way. I don't like taking money from my parents. I don't like having to approach my dad for money to cover things. I mean, the man dropped almost $600 on tires for me this summer and about $250 for brakes, as well as covering all my regular expenses.

To be honest, I didn't like turning 30 while unemployed, but I'm not liking my 31st birthday much better right now.

The good news is that there's a full-time job opening here where I've been temping, and it's a pretty high-ranked job, but D--- (who supervises both me and the open position) has told N---- that she would consider me an inside applicant for the job. It's crappy hours for most people, because it's weekend night-shift. For me, who voluntarily stayed up until 6 am and slept until 1 pm or so, during the unemployment months, the hours would be ideal. (Of course, I still haven't managed to catch her when she's not busy to talk to her myself.) Those hours are what may give me a fighting chance at the job. Very few people are actually going to want to jump into that job. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Regarding my birthday, Mom's been telling me I have to decide what we're doing. Well, in the meantime she's apparently been prodding at Dad about a plan that she has. So I told her what idea I came up with, and she said she couldn't tell me what she has in mind. So I said she gets to pick. Which means I have absolutely no idea what we're doing tomorrow or this weekend.

I did get a birthday card from Gedna, with $20 in it. She wrote my first and last name, and then "I love you" but didn't sign it. So I thought that was pretty good. But then I found out that she called Dad this weekend to find out if she'd missed his birthday. I would have thought he'd told her no, she sent him a card back in August when it was. But this week he got a card from her in the mail that said, "I hope your birthday left. Love you. Mom." And had another $20 in it. So he netted $40 out of her Alzheimer's this year. (Then again I suppose that makes up for last year when he didn't get a card or a happy birthday at all, when he took her out for lunch on his birthday.)

*sigh* Life sucks a lot of the time doesn't it?