Quote:
|
Originally Posted by chrisinhouston
I wake my mom up and remove her covers which she doesn't like.
|
That sounds just like when I get my kids up in the morning!!
It's a tough row to hoe, and it sounds like you're doing yeoman's service. I'm not there yet. My parents are in their late 60s and 70s respectively, but they're active and in good health.
However, when I was in high school I saw what my parents with through with my dad's mom and it is sobering. By this time Grandma Dallas was in her 80s and did not get around as well as she used to, and was not always clear on what was going on--at other times, of course, she was sharp as a tack. Her older brother had made his fortune in the western NC textile industry, and had bought two houses next door to each other for Grandma and one of her sisters. At some point they got into the habit of taking turns sleeping in each other's house so they wouldn't be all alone, and this worked out pretty well.
Once her sister died, my mom & dad tried very, very hard to keep Grandma in her house, but it was an uphill battle as she declined. I remember them taking turns going over to her house to get her bathed and ready for bed, and I think at least occasionally staying overnight with her. (There was no room to move her in at our house.) As you can imagine, on top of two jobs and three kids (my brother was off on his own, my sister & I were in high school), this arrangement was doomed to failure. They tried paying live-in caretakers for a while but it proved impossible to find anybody competent who didn't cost an arm and two legs.
Ultimately they threw in the towel and moved her into a nursing home. This was a decision that nobody was happy about, but I think it was pretty clear that we just didn't have the resources to have her stay in her house and take care of her properly. But, after a period of adjustment, things went well and she was very happy for a while. For those keeping score, this summer corresponded to the one from the TMI thread where I was writing computer software for my school. At least one of us went to visit her almost every day, and I remember our pleasant surprise the first time Mom and I went and found she was not in her room--she was sitting out in the lounge talking to two other people! It also helped that her church (of which she was a founding member) did Sunday School classes for the residents, and the teacher was one of her nephews.
Sadly, this period of relatively good adjustment came to an end when she got up in the middle of the night without ringing for a nurse (typical--Grandma was as independent and stubborn as they come) and fell and broke her hip. She lived another couple years after, dying just short of 90, but she was never the same after the broken hip.