couple hard days

Bot do lots of days really stand out in my memories over the years. Days that were just really difficult to be a caregiver. Days when i needed to just worry about me. Days when i had needed that simply have to be set aside to continue on with the daily routine of caring for grama. Several years back i lost a dear friend to suicide. Hands down this was one of the most difficult things i had ever faced. I had never been thru something like that. I had known people whe committed suicide, but never a dear friend. I was wiped out emotionally. I absolutely couldnt function. I cried for days. I think for me because it happened the way it happened i had a really hard time moving past it. Well Grama still needed to be cared for thru all of this. My mom took her for an afternoon. I could barely speak when she got home. The sadness was just overwhelming. Grama knew and very much loved my friend, but was just to far into the disease at that point to share it with her. She knew something was wrong, and kept asking if i was alright. It brought on a whole new realm of sadness to me that i couldnt share this with her. We couldnt talk it out, or she couldnt help me thru it. I was like a shell of a person for days. I remember another time when i had surgery on my wrist. Just a minor one carpal tunnel. Well i arranged for grama to stay somewhere for a few days. It didnt work out. She was home that evening. The next day she had an accident, bathroom wise , in her bedroom. I remember welling with frustration over just feeling so alone. Changing her sheets with one hand, showering her with one hand. I felt selfish for not wanting to deal with her. Caring for someone who has all these special needs is a real mind trip at times. The emotional rollercoaster you ride never ends. It is so unlike dealing with any other person. Their mentality is that of a child. Their reasoning ability is basically non-existent. But yet there is this constant innappropriate behavior, mean-spirited remarks, and endless devious behavior you are dealing with. our ability to swallow most of it, ignore it or try to deal with it must be huge. You simply have to ignore a great deal of it. Arguing with someone who has alz. is very similar to arguing with a sign post. You are not going to get the person to understand any sort of reason. They loose that ability. You really have to keep it simple. For instance if grama tells me im full of bullshit, i tell please do not talk to me that way. She says why, or i will talk to you however i want. Then my reply is always, i do not cuss at you or use that tone of voice with you so please dont use it with me. Now dont get me wrong , her immediate response 99 percent of the time then is oh bullshit. But 1 percent of the time she will say ok im sorry. But sometimes if grama gets that she has upset me she will back off a little. Then there are always the days i could probably make a little money off of her by throwing her in the ring with a big name fighter. She could kick anyones but. She wakes up ready to go at it , and goes to bed the same way. Unfortunately we had a couple of days like that this week. She would not take her pills. Each session was a battle of who is gonna win this one. Fortunately gabe, my 16 yr old is very good with his grama and can do pill battle for me if i need him to. There are times i wonder how much longer we will be able to get her to take them. There are a few rules about the pills. You hand her one at a time. Never more than one. You watch her swallow it. You do not walk across the room to pick something else, you do not answer your phone, you watch her swallow it. You do this until each pill is gone. And when you give her the last one and she says its down you hang out for a minute to make sure she doesnt spit it out. Grama could have her own traveling magic show. She can dispose of her pills in more sneaky ways than you could ever imagine. To this day i dont know how she does it but i find them in many many unlikley places. Then there is also the more obvious way of disposing of it when she yells im not taking this and then spits it across the room with her milk. On these occassions i typically remove myself from whatever room we are in and immediately count to 100. So i will end today on a funny note. When we were going to her doctors apt. the other day we drove past the liquor store. She read the word liquor out loud. Then she said i bet thats where they go to get their booze. Funny hearing the word booze out of my 91 yr old gramas mouth. So i asked her who they was. She said you know all the alcholys.