With me, it's the TV. My mom is so sick and weak with kidney disease that TV is pretty much her only source of entertainment. That wouldn't be quite so bad if she still understood how to work the remote, but dementia has erased that ability. If she isn't able to watch TV, she usually just goes back to bed...then ends up in a state of delirium from depression and too much sleep. So now I am the one in charge of her entire world of entertainment.
Before I started staying with mom, I was used to a different life, where I mostly listened to music or enjoyed silence. I'm not really a TV person. When I did watch stuff, I'd be that person who binged a season of whatever on my days off, or watched movies with friends, and then didn't watch anything for days at a time. Now I have to babysit the TV every day, every time my mom is out of bed.
If there's a timer system on mom's TV or service provider that lets you schedule channel changes, I haven't found it yet. Plus there are a billion channels but not a lot of stuff mom can watch. I'm really grateful for streaming services. Being able to work the On Demand is my new superpower. I upped mom's bandwidth to unlimited just to accommodate her watching. I now keep a notebook with a list of what's on which channel, and how long it is, so that I can plan how long I can be away from the remote. I've even taught mom about binge-watching (for selfish reasons - so I can put on Netflix and know it will go straight to the next episode without me). I'm thinking about getting a wireless HDMI setup so I can try running stuff from my laptop (preferably in another room!).
What about you? Is there something you now have to be in charge of that you never expected would be part of your daily life when you took this on?
I wonder if I will grow a beard when I'm old and have nobody to monitor the hairs for me?
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Yesterday I gave mom her weekly shave and spent a little extra time on the nose hairs (a forest is growing there), I'd like to tame the eyebrows but that would be cruel! I also cleaned her eyelids and put in some eye drops (shh, don't tell), cleaned her teeth, lotioned her face and arms and readjusted the headrest on her wheelchair (it takes tools, how do they keep knocking it cockeyed?).
He's getting gift cards. Too bad if it's lazy. I know he'd prefer them anyway. :-P
I tell him no, I just hide things under you when you're sleeping because I'm mean that way, hahahah.
The day I can no longer find something to laugh about, that's the day I will start crying.
Also: Closet organizer (or Dad ends up wearing the same 2 shirts over and over and over again), music curator, pedicurist, manicurist, ear cleaner, and nose hair trimmer.
#1 washing her entire body
#2 I had an 18 page list of things I did for her
#3 Helping her make fudge when she cried about it
#4 290 more things
I also never expected to become the Puzzle Lady. I got a couple 12-piece jigsaw puzzles for my mother plus a couple slightly harder ones, trying to get her to be social with other people while doing the puzzles. I discovered that helping the other MC residents with the jigsaw puzzles was something I liked to do, and sometimes I succeeded in getting my mother to interact with another resident. So I kept buying puzzles and now have several dozen of them. And now I'm the facility's unofficial Puzzle Lady.
Joke - why does god make so many american 'operation events' happen in out of way places? - answer .. someone has to teach them geography!!
Not funny at 3am - but funny at 3pm.
to Wittm1 - now that is unique! And I thought it was bad when we played, "where the heck is the hearing aid today?"
The other surprise was the obsessive hiding of Oreos. I just found another one last week. They are stashed in the most unexpected places, one here, one there. I could be finding them for years to come.
But I appreciated the reminder to keep things on the lighter side so here's a couple of stranger things.
My mom is now in a Memory Care facility and every day before I leave I make sure to "report" that mom has done her daily BM so it can be charted. For some reason she waits to go until I'm there. It cracks me up how the staff is so appreciative of hearing the news. And I shake my head in wonderment that this is what my life has become.
Second, believe it or not experience was the time I had to kill the imaginary bugs crawling on the wall when mom was hallucinating. I was grabbing tissues and smashing invisible bugs right and left. Even stomped one on the floor for good effect. It was a bit surreal but from reading I'd done I decided it was better to just go along with it and it calmed things down right away.
As always, especially with leftover turkey in the fridge, I'm thankful for the wonderful people on this site who make the weirdest and hardest things manageable because of their advice and support and good humor.
I would get up at 3 or 4am just to have some "me time" on the computer or reading. Then I would begin the day by emptying her catheter bag, cleaning bowel movement, giving insulin shots, and stage 4 wound treatment that nurses taught me to do for the wound she developed in the first NH rehab. Then I would prepare her breakfast tray and wait for the aide to come give Mom a bath, wait for the nurse to come, then the lunch tray, empty catheter bag, nap, and dinner tray, and get Mom ready to sleep for the night. All the while watching for UTI's and delirium and learning everything I could about any medical conditions encountered. I never in my wildest dreams before pictured myself doing these types of things, but I am deeply grateful for all the training I received and developed an even deeper respect for people in the care and medical professions. Despite the rough decline, I am now glad my Mom found peace and that I was able to get her to her final destination. Sometimes we do things we never thought we could do when actually faced with the situation.
@Windyridge - duct tape and WD40 are often all I ever need, ha ha! Hey if your mom is busty, you might consider going to a plus size store for some things, like Lane Bryant in the US. The staff in those stores are usually used to working with women of all ages and body types, and if they don't sell it, they will know where to find it (especially when it comes to bras). You can even order online, and usually you can just return it to your local brick and mortar store if it doesn't fit. I've started ordering some specialty things for mom online too - like hip protector pants - because it's much cheaper than going through the local medi-supply place. (Edit: sometimes it's faster too, because the medi-supply place often has to order stuff in.)
But I’ve bout given up on trying to buy her clothes. She’s a large busted lady, things have moved now, and nothing suits her. She has some old, old blouses and slacks and that’s all she’ll wear. I’m contemplating patching her old stuff with duct tape at this point.