Baby girl turns 58 (from April)

Mother turned 58 on April 12th so we tried to celebrate as much as possible with her. Celebrations tend to be short because of Carole's normal bedtime of 7pm but we did manage to party until 8pm on Sunday for her birthday. Friday, the actual day of her birthday, Melanie brought Mother down to my restaurant for birthday Margaritas. Afterwards, they went for birthday sundaes! The first two picture are of Mother insisting she have a cigarette and then insisting Melanie and her go out to lunch. Usually she's not asking for something crazy so we cave in and let our girl have what she wants. Sometimes with the dementia anxiety a cig is a great life line to calming that lady. For her birthday she had a nice night with Melanie. Sunday we had a wee get together for Mother with her babies (grand babies and cats included) and lots of cake. I'm bummed I wasn't able to get a picture of her in the birthday hat, but she did wear it for awhile.

Dreams

I know I haven't been feeling emotionally stable these days but I've been making progress until my wonderful dreams from last night. My dreams started with a nice trip to Spain, where I lived for a year, with Melanie and Kendra which was fantastic because I miss Spain so much. We were staying at this different type of hotel and I started to notice that the people staying there were a little off and my dementia radar went off so I went to talk to the jefa (boss lady) about it and sure enough we were staying at a dementia house the integrated tourists with the demented as a therapy. At that point I volunteered to stay their and aid the patients but before I could get a response I woke up. I was a little shaken by it but soon returned to sleep. 

My next dream ended up being very related to the precious dream. I went to the local grocery store with Trisha, a childhood friend, and bought some snacks and what not and when I walked out the door I saw a Mom standing in the parking lot about 50 ft away. After over a month of not seeing her Melanie picked her up for her first day pass out of the nursing home and surprised Mom with a visit to Dutchway, the grocery store/restaurant. It was also a surprise for me. I jolted across the parking lot; I was already sobbing uncontrollably. Before I could even reach Mother she had her arms out ready to give me a hug, a hug I've been waiting for for years. I embraced her and she surprisingly wasn't crying and she said, "it's ok. It's ok." After that we just cried together, embracing each other. I woke up with so many emotions. It was amazing to feel her hug and hear her say that but then again it was just a dream. Clearly, I was a little emotional today but I'm trying to be thankful for the beautiful moment we had in my dream and maybe, just maybe, I'll get my hug the next time I visit. 

Changes

Well, it's clearly been a long time since I've last posted but it's never too late to start up again. There have been a lot of changes since my last post. Of course Mother has changed a lot. Things just get worse with dementia. Once you hit a "terrible" moment in the disease it is soon made into a normality until a much worse moment happens. Welp, we were well aware that it was beginning to be very hard for us to continue taking care of Mother so we started looking into nursing homes almost a year ago. It certainly wasn't an easy task to do. After looking at many different homes we found the perfect home for our special lady. After going through the process of getting her enrolled we were put on a waiting list. We were told that since we were caring for her by ourselves and full time that they were going to put us at the top of the list so we were full of all sorts of emotions. Sadness, joy, and guilt to name a few. Weeks turned into months and the emotions and feelings became empty. The waiting game was too much. It was too long so at that point I couldn't feel anything but frustration. The emotions that I has once felt about her leaving subsided. It didn't seem real until that Tuesday morning when I was at work and received the group text from Kendra to the siblings letting us know that they had a bed for Mom and she would be going to the nursing home on Monday. My heart sank. I immediately lost my breath and began to cry. I have no idea what emotions I had felt at that time. I was so sad and so happy. I was trembling and not sure what to do. I was I going to look at my Mommy when I went home to see her after work knowing what I knew? We certainly couldn't tell her. The next 6 days were very, very hard along with the two months leading up until now... 

For you, Mom.

My firsI recently celebrated my 27th birthday and I really wanted to get another tattoo for my Mother, well, for me as well. It does help deal with the heartache and I hadn't realized that I've gotten tattoos for my Mom at times where Mother had changed in some way and I was having trouble dealing with it. The first one I got was several years ago before I really started really becoming a big part in a Mother's caregiving. It's simple. It's the Alzheimer's symbol. Second was about a year after and was when it really hit me what this terrible disease was and what it was doing to my Mom, my beautiful, sweet, and caring Mom. I chose to get forget me not flowers. Not only was it a way of reminding me not to forget who she was but it was neat to see that France uses them for their Alzheimer's symbol. This week I got my third one and by far my favorite one. I wanted to really to really have part of Mother with me so I decided to take one of the videos of Mother saying "I love you", record it and produce the sound wave of it. I also took a card I found that Mother signed and got her signature traced. It really felt so many emotions seeing the beauty that resulted. She can't write anymore and she won't be able to speak eventfully but I have preserved what I can. 

My first two. I do realize it's a terrible picture. It's really not all crooked like. I'm not a good self photo taker. 

My new one

More babies.

Just an update Mother has a new addition to her babies and it's a butterfly. She gives them lots of love and attention. We definitely get jealous. 

Here she is telling the dog she loves him/her. 

The only one missing is Max

Miracles do happen

Well, kind of. Little everyday miracles like this: 

My beautiful lady was zonked out on the couch when I got home from work so I stayed with her and Melanie in the living room watching tv. Soon a loud noise woke her up and she was babbling dream nonsense at us walked of to the cat pointed, turned around, walked herself upstairs, went to her bed, took her sandals and laid herself in bed. This may not seem like much but for us it was like we looked at each other in disbelief and thought "did that just happen?". It was amazing. Blew my mind. Maybe when she she was sleeping walking and whilst sleeping walking she is dementia free? Haha, just kidding. She's still wild but I was so proud my baby girl on this night. 

I'm alive. I really am. I made it through a terrible week. Well, it was terrible at the moment but now just another little bump in the road. It was one of those weeks where I thought that someone was play a sick joke on me, testing my patience and my sensitive soul. Though it was a very tough week there were some good moments that kept me going and half-smiling.

Saturday night we had Karen's (future sis-in-law) bachelorette party which meant that we were all going to have a night out without Mother and that the boys were going to have a sleepover with Mother. We had to be ready by 330 at the latest and it felt like it took years for us to get ready especially with the constant sound of Mother trying to rush us. Don't get ready before Mother because when she is ready to go she is ready to go! Melanie, Kendra, and I started our normal routine of getting ready which involves one person being with Mother at all time while the other two do their thing. At the same time Mother is switching which person she is with she switches which stations she is at. Melanie will shower her, Kendra will dress her and I will groom her or whichever order suits us best.

This day Mother was very antsy and it had felt like I already had a good dose of Mother this week and I was just ready to leave the house so her repetitious anxious demented ways were testing my patience. Silence is golden; it really is. To distract her I made sure to take extra long brushing her hair and pampering her. I even gave her a back rub. She really loves back rubs. Melanie and I our convinced that she takes advantage of our back rubs. But they are very therapeutic for her. Any sort of touching really. Kendra loves to hold her hand, Melanie her back, and I rub her cheek a lot. If one doesn't soothe her another usually does. Well, that a sedative and Meredith bunny. The rubbing didn't occupy her long enough. We were trying to do our finishing touches and Mother had collected 4 purses and was pacing saying, "Come on, are you ready? I'm ready. Let's gooooooooo." There was so much repetition that we took turns answering her. Several rushed minutes later we were out the door. I made sure to go upstairs and get Meredith bunny for her because I knew she'd be happy to have her for the night away from home. Of course when she saw the bunny she said, "Aw, there's my baby."