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."

Oh Carole

Mother is on some medication to calm her down and lessen her crazies but it doesn't always work and makes Carole very thirsty. She acts like she's in the Sahara and with a sorrow dry voice she says, "Water!". Too bad she doesn't like water and by water she means Pepsi. The look of disgust she gives when she had water is priceless. The idea of us giving her water instead of Pepsi is absurd in dementia-land. We prefer to use plastic cups with lids and a straw to aid Carole and prevent spills. While watching tv with my sweet lady I hear strange whispers coming from her, she's trying to tell me something, and I see she's wants her water. I filled her cup for her and left the room to start making lunch. I return to find drinking from the bottle while her cup sat on the table next to her

Our new baby

Mother quickly forgot about Mask but there was a void in the house. Mother would occasionally mentioned babies so Melanie and I decided that we needed a kitten (more for us). We went to the local Amish farm and caught us a kitten. Yeah, we decided which one to pick by which one we were able to catch. The kitten was a little scared and had been living in a barn so we were a little scared ourselves. We brought the black kitten home and told Mother we got her a surprise. We pulled the beauty out of the bag and Mother reached for her immediately saying, "he's mine?" She was so happy that she was in tears. It brought years to all of our lives. They pure joy that we saw was beautiful. They cat scared kitty was instantly relaxed in the arms of Mother. These pictures explain it all.

Mask

Our beautiful Mask died a few weeks ago. She was 18. Mother loved her baby. Thankfully, we weren't home when she passed. We kind of thought that she was going to kick the bucket because she was actually quite silly. She was Mother with fur!

The morning of her death she kept trying to take a shower with me (the cat was not Mother). This wouldn't of surprised me so much if it had been Mother. She seemed off. I knew her time was approaching so I took a moment and cried it out in the shower. I thought about so many things. Mother especially. I mean, me being a hot mess is one thing but hot mess Mother is another. Then I went to work for 12 hours.

Upon returning I asked Melanie how my baby was doing and she promptly said we will talk about it later. Clearly, we couldn't talk about it in front of Mother. She's already a cry baby. Just takes one thing to get her going and the water works won't stop. Well, it eventually does; thank you Ativan. Anyways, with those words I knew Mask died.

Melanie had the task of telling Mother the news and needless to say Mother was sobbing into the blanket about her baby being gone. So thankful Melanie was there because she deals with the sobbing better. When I deal with it there's about 25 % chance that I'm going to be fighting back tears. I was so worried that she was going to ask about the cat all the time but for once the dementia gods were listening. Mother really didn't ask too much about her after the first few days and now nothing.

I can't believe you did that!

Mother just woke from sleeping and she's gone coo coo! She's crying and she says Melanie stole her dinner from her and ate it. Then she started sobbing even more saying, "I can't believe you did that!" Man, this demented side of Mother is trying to find a way for us to secretly laugh. She's been on a crying spree so we will see. Some dementia days are better than others.

Happy Annie didn't last too long

Mother had a good run going on of happiness but it didn't last. These happy moments I talk of our brief moments of glory out of many longer and drawn out moments of hmmm...DEMENTIA! Unpredictable and well, crazy. She still loves me tons which I continue to share with Melanie and Kendra. Hey, you never know when she'll not like me and turn her love to Melanie or Kendra so I have to take what I can get. Good thing she calls us all Mom and/or Meredith so either way I just pretend. Let's not forget that we in no way even compare to her babies (the dog, Max, and the cats).
Yesterday Mother was upset a lot. I'm really not sure why but she cried a good bit and was worried. She was medicated and all but sometimes she's just overwhelmed. When she stopped crying she kept her grumpy face on and basically sat with her arms crossed. It passed, came back, passed, and came back. She must have been missing me, ha ha. I returned in the evening with a piece of cheesecake from the cheesecake factory for her. She wasn't even impressed. I didn't even get a little sparkle in her eyes when I gave it to her. Sometimes when you bring Mother goodies she gives a wee smile, her eyes light up, and your heart melts. She wasn't one bit excited for it but it didn't stop her from inhaling it. I'm not sure she even tasted it. She looked at it, thought fire in the hole, and devoured it. That's my girl!
Below is my lady wearing one of my work shoes; they are 1.5 sizes too small for Mother but it didn't stop her from stealing them, I mean, one of them.

Happy Annie

I was gone all Monday and returned to the house on Tuesday afternoon to a joyous Mother. I walked in the door and she said, "Oh, honey, there you are. I missed you." I clearly was pumped by this and ran over to give her a hug. I'm used to giving a hug to Mother and not getting anything back. A one-sided hug. I like to put her arm around me sometimes to pretend she's actually hugging me back. Oh was I shocked when I wrapped my arms around Annie Bannie and she hugged me back like really hugged me back. I could tell she definitely put some emotion into it. Now that's how I like to start off my days. I definitely gloated to Kendra and Melanie about what happened. They're totally jealous.

Later in the day Mother and I were hanging out and all of the sudden she says, "Well, are you going to work?" and of course I think she is talking to me so I look over and see her looking at Max, the dog. Then, she says, "Hello, I'm talking to you. Are you going to answer me?" Oh Mother. She just likes to make sure her babies are taken care of. For the first time the other day I saw her trying to give Pepsi to the cat. I was quite impressed because she usually only tries to give it to Max; she's now expanding her sharing skills. Thatta girl.

Little moments

Mother loves her avon and her avon magazines. Kendra will buy her stuff and always brings her home magazines. Mother will carry them around with her for days and show you different things. She has them right by her side and will randomly pick them up and look through them. Today she has showed me the magazine a few times and I ask her what she wants. Sometimes there's not much talking on her end but she loves just being engaged in a conversation.

Yet again Mother picked her magazine up and this time asked Melanie if she would like to look at the magazine (in dementia language of course) and Melanie responded, " No thank you. Maybe later." This did not please Mother at all. She put her frowny face on and looked away. If anyone looked at her face they would have thought that she just received really sad news. Poor girl. I looked at the magazine with her. Those little puppy eyes got me.

After our magazine time I returned to my seat and for about 10 minutes Mother was quiet until she suddenly sat up and said, "Mom? Where are you?" She then turned her head, saw Melanie, sighed with relief and said, "Oh, whoo." Oh, my silly Mama.

On the road

Mother's Mom is in NY right now (in from New Mexico) so we are on our way to visit her. Mother has only asked about it 40083388 times this week. It's the typical routine of her getting fixated on one thing until she forgets about it. We try not to mention certain things like this so she doesn't get worried about it and also to avoid hearing that we didn't tell her about it.

She's pretty excited about it. She's currently resting her eyes in the car. She has a 'injury' right now which is really tuckering her out. She's really not injured. We checked. She just needs some extra attention. Oh, Anne.

Mother never sleeps alone.

As previously mentioned Mother has a spare bed in Melanie's room because she doesn't like sleeping alone. She had been in a real routine of just going straight to Melanie's room but lately she has been sleeping in her own bed; I think it's because she has new friends sleeping with her.

Make over

Mother let me do her make up last night. I do it every once in awhile. Last night was so funny. Every time I asked her to open her eyes she'd close them and vice versa. I thought well if she is playing opposite day with me then I will say them opposite and that'll work, NOT. It was a lot of fun. She had fun and was smiling the whole time. I sat right next to her and it was a really nice bonding experience. 

She was so happy about her new look that she peed on me. I'm not joking. I was sitting there and thought wow, this heated blanket really gets warm and then I realized it wasn't the blanket. Come on, depends, you're not being very dependable. haha.

Meowing Mother is back.

Yup, our little meower is back. Now that it's a little colder both cats are in the house. Sometimes they intiate meowing and other times it's Mother doing it. More often than not she is doing a meow solo. I suppose she might be the cat whisper though especially when I find her like this repeatedly.

Holidays

Wow, time sure has flown this week and I feel like I have so much to talk about...I suppose it's because I'm back to blogging. Mother has been interesting as usual. Holidays are rough not only because of the emotional stress it puts on us all but Mother gets stressed out too; there's too much going on and just all people and movement gets her edgy. We all try to take her out and about as much as possible but this week was busier than ever. Friday our 9 month old niece came over which was great because the grandbabies are a natural way of relaxing Mother and easing her soul. Melanie and I decided to take Mother and Lily out for dinner and to wal-mart. Dinner was great. Although for some reason I wanted Mother to sit on the inside I got her to sit down but then she wouldn't let me in. I tried to scoot her over and everything and she just moaned at me. I ended up being on a third of seat. We go to the same restaurant because she knows the waitresses and it's a comfortable atmosphere. We do go to other restaurants but it does raise her anxiety level with those so we try to limit that. Mother sits grumpily because of the seat incident but as soon as Genine comes over to greet us she lights up.

 Mother hasn't been able to read for years now nor make decisions so she doesn't pay much attention to the menus. Sometimes she will pick it up and try to figure out what to do with it. As the disease progresses instead of letting her pick what she wants you have to give her choices, then once that doesn't work you lower the amount of choices, then you just kind of pick what she wants and hopes she agrees. Even if she doesn't agree we know she will like what we get because we know what she likes. Some weeks she doesn't like things she liked weeks before but she can be easily persuaded.

Mother gets her food and because she is grumpy starts moaning again when I cut her food for her. Definitely have to make those proportions sizes smaller; we don't want our lady choking now, do we? Shoot, sometimes we catch her eating things with the butterknife or scooping butter or sour cream into her mouth. You know what? The best way to explain this is to say we have a 56 year old child. After awhile Mother finishes her food and instantly gets anxious. "Where are we going? When are we leaving. I want to go." She forgot that we ordered her dessert so once again we get to watch her face light up with joy when she sees her whipped cream covered piece of cheesecake. But, of course, as soon as she is does she is ready to go. She is the boss! So off to wal-mart we go.

I'm not sure why we decided to press our luck with Mother but we did and we paid for it. We were walking around and Mother was bitching up a storm. She was so irritated and just wanted to go. She didn't want to see anyone and well, there were a million people there. We let her push the cart for a little bit. Who knew in such a short time her cart skills dramatically declined. Not only was she going slower than ever she was not staying the group. She'd just be moving along and then stop. One time I called over to her (a mere 10 ft away) and she flipped out. She march over to me and said she was going home. I felt so bad I wasn't sure what happened and why she was so upset. I calmed her down a little bit and stayed close by her. A little bit later I was talking to Mother and she flipped out again and then it dawned on me. Through the fragments, jumbled words, and reactions I had figured it out. She was embarrassed. She didn't want people looking at her. It was really like she didn't want the people to see her like she is. It was a feeling that Mom was feeling about Mother. Once I figured that out I made sure to stay closer and keep her very distracted by the goodies we found.

Oh how I wish that was the end of our trip. Minutes later Mother has a panic stricken faced. I know exactly what is wrong...she has to go to the bathroom. Ah, public bathrooms with Mother are the worst. I mean, not like going to the bathroom at home is an easy task for her/us. I volunteer to take her to the bathroom while Melanie continues to shop and watches over Lily. Uff, taking care of one adult-sized child and infant is no easy task. I lead Mother to the bathroom and as we near a stall she pulls down her pants. We aren't even in a stall yet. I'm thinking ok, now, just make it to the toilet. Pleasssssssse, make it to the toilet. To my pleasant surprise she made it! And then, I realized that I couldn't get the door shut. She wouldn't move her legs and the way she was I couldn't close the door. Even better, right? People are coming and going and I'm in the front of Mother blocking her out and trying to coach her through some stomach pains. Yes, Mother was having some stomach issues in the bathroom. She groaned and I was like oh my, what next? If  only someone hadn't been in the handicap bathroom. I definitely could have gotten her in there. After a very stressful 10 minutes Mother is feeling better and we leave.

After shopping around for a little bit Mother had a second bout of stomach issues. Oh great, I have to go through this again? Thankfully I was able to get her into the handicap stall and take care of business. Minutes go by and I continue to coach Mother through things. A bunch of younger girls came in laughing and joking around and Mother started to laugh with them. She even tried joining in the conversation but it wasn't comprehensible to them. Needless to say after this issue we immediately checked out and left. Mother was irritated and couldn't deal with it. I just wanted to avoid further unnecessary emotional stress for Mother and us.

Keeping track of her babies

Mother is still in love with her babies, all million of them, the cats, dog, and grandbabies.