Nothing too dramatic has happened since the last time I
wrote something. She Who Must Be Obeyed
has her good days and her bad days, but mostly they are good these days. I have a few random thoughts that I figured I would
share today.
When she misplaces her purse, I’ve gotten better about
“where to look first”. She has three
places where she misplaces it – either in her own closet, in one drawer of our
chest of drawers, or between the mattress and the box spring of our bed. If I can’t find it in any of those three
places, then I resort to using the Tile GPS finder-thingy. Having the Tile device, and knowing where her
“hiding spots” are, has been a great stress reducer. It’s unfair for me to say “hiding spot”
because that implies intent, but I don’t have a better phrase at the moment. Every now and then she will have a new spot,
like in the garage. Why the garage? Our washer and dryer are out there. Since she likes to have her purse with her,
sometimes she puts it down while she’s out there and then forgets to pick it up
and take it back in the house. Luckily
for us, the purse and everything in it hasn’t disappeared outside the house –
not even in the car. She misplaced her
keys the other day, or so she thought.
As it turns out, they were attached to one of her belt loops. I had an extra set made anyway, and I bought
another Tile for the key ring. We’ll need
the extra set soon, anyway.
Why do we need the extra set of keys? Because I think I finally found someone to
look after Carol if I should have to go out of town. This is important for us because she still
sees and hears things the rest of us don’t see/hear. This makes her somewhat afraid for her
safety, so I started to look for an adult caregiver. The social worker that paid us a visit gave
me a list of places to choose from.
Almost all of those choices were in either Pensacola [45 miles away] or
Panama City [66 miles away], which doesn’t do us any good. But there was one company that is local, and
they are part of a nationwide, certified adult caregiver. Here are some of the services we’re looking
for:
Offer Companionship
& Conversation Provide Respite Care
Monitor Diet &
Eating
Check Food
Expirations
Assist with Evening
& Tuck-In
Provide Medication
Reminders
Aid with Reading
Stimulate Mental
Awareness
Assist with
Entertaining
Answer the Door
Reminisce about the
Past
Play Games &
Cards
Monitor TV Usage
There are more services that these folks offer, but
seeing these items on their list makes me breathe a little easier. That is the good news. The bad news is that I have to pay them out
of pocket. Our insurance doesn’t cover
it, which I expected. The price? Twenty-one dollars/hour for a minimum of six
hours in any given day. The boys and I
are going to have a talk about staying home to look after their mother on their
days off from work when I’m away.
When the social worker visited us, she told us how to get
a durable power of attorney. At first I
thought I was going to have to deal with a lawyer to do this, band pay the money
that goes with the service. As long as
Carol is still lucid, I don’t have to deal with a lawyer. The social worker told me that all I need was
the durable power of attorney form, that she needs to sign it in the presence
of a notary, and that we have two witnesses.
I asked her if my sons could be the witnesses, to which she responded
‘yes’. Now I have the durable power of
attorney. I’ll scan it as a pdf document
so I’ll have it with me wherever I go.
I’ll probably file it at the courthouse as a “just in case” thing should
something catastrophic [like a hurricane or fire] happen to us.
What have I learned so far?
1.
Patience
– this is still a work-in-progress. This
is a big one since I’m impatient by nature, but I’m learning. Sometimes Carol will be telling me something,
and I haven’t the first clue what she is talking about. When that happens, I’ll telling her I’m
having difficulty following her and I’ll ask her questions about what she
means. Sometimes she can’t find the
right word [that’s why we had the speech pathologist], but eventually we get
there.
2.
Don’t
argue – Carol will occasionally tell me about the “tree people”. Instead of telling her that they aren’t
there, I just tell her that I can’t see them.
That way I take that off of her and put it on me. I ask her if the people try coming into the
house, and so far the answer is “no”. She’ll
be getting new glasses soon, and maybe “tree people” sightings will decrease
when she gets the new glasses. However,
sometimes she’ll tell me about something she thinks she heard from them. I’ll ask her what they said, and try to
reassure her they don’t mean her any harm.
3.
Don’t
mess with the routine – Carol doesn’t react well to sudden changes to
anything. We were already somewhat used
to this because our oldest son Greg has Asperger’s Syndrome [high-functioning
autism].
4.
Get out
of the house – Carol sometimes feels like a prisoner in her own home,
especially now that she doesn’t drive.
Whenever I have to go somewhere, whether it being grocery shopping or
getting food for take-out, I take her with me.
She likes to get out of the house.
5.
I “stress
eat” – this is another work-in-progress.
This one needs a LOT of work.
6.
I need to
pick up the guitar again – even if it’s only for 30 minutes a day, I need
to get back to this for my own sanity.
7.
Don’t be
afraid to ask for help – the folks at work have been very understanding
about our predicament.
8.
She’s not
giving me a hard time – on the contrary, she’s the one having the hard
time. There is a difference, and it’s
not her fault.
When my sister-in-law Lisa was here in June, she told me
that Facebook’s chat feature has a video chat capability. We checked it out briefly while she was
here. We finally put it to use over the
weekend. It did us all some good. Lisa told me that Carol sounded and looked
better than she did when she visited us.
It was good to hear that feedback since I’m too close to notice the
changes. I texted my father-in-law today
about this good use for Facebook. He replied Lisa had told him about it, so
sometime in the near future we will have a video chat. I hope these chats become a regular
thing. Carol hasn’t seen her folks in a
few years, and none of us are getting any younger.
Carol’s next visit with the neurologist is October 29th. After that the next big event is a trip, just
the two of us, in November. We’re going
to get out of Florida for a week and visit Lisa and her family in Wisconsin the
week of Thanksgiving. I cashed in some
Delta miles and the trip will cost me a whopping $22 dollars to get there and
back. November can’t come soon enough.
