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Even if, as a child, you were a fan of The Brady Bunch, imagine being strapped down in a chair as an adult and forced to watch the same episodes over and over and over again for what seems like... the rest of your fricking life. Greg's raging hormones for a cute girl in his class. Marsha's election for class president. Jan's feelings of inferiority because of her popular sister. The drama nor outcome never changes. You know the ending because it never changes. Heck, you know the beginning and the middle as well. Yet you are forced to witness it every day for what seems like the rest of your life.

That is what being a caregiver to an elderly parent with Alzheimer's is like. It never f........... ends, does it? You never even get a break to catch your breath. And then, when your friends complain about their lives, you secretly want to tell them to screw off, because their problems seem small compared to the life you live, right? And 90 percent of the time, their problems are in their heads versus ours, which stare at us every single day, totally lost in space and totally dependent on us to survive.

I guess I'm not in a very good place tonight, eh?

Steve

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great to hear from you again dunwoody. your a bad m - f and you know it. its just hard, we know. quit sympathy whorin, you dont have a lack of self confidence. your just frustrated..( kiddin ya man )
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Sounds like steve and I are having a similar night....and capn is single handedly trying to keep us afloat. You're a hell of a man sir.
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im sorry, im just having a good day. i made my mom beef and noodles with broccoli and cauliflower and ,a little ranch dressing for seasoning and im pretty damn popular around here tonight. nevermind last night i was trying to murder her. this crazy shit has to be taken a day at a time. cant necesarily agree with the girl last week who said great foreplanning is the key to success.
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Foreplanning????? For what???? how to stick my head in the oven... can I kick the chair out from under me......Is this plastic bag going to be tight enough.... because caring for someone with Alz is a crap shoot moment to moment....
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Tonight my mom wanders out of bed totally naked. OK, yeah, as her son is she trying to kill me? It's a miracle I'm not shooting up Heroin every night, but it's still early.
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dunwoody, id love some skag but only quality stuff, hook me up man. lol. women shirk clothes more quickly than men. id dunk your mom dude, the elder know how to put that shit on you. the teens, ( YAWN ) .. kiddin again. maybe, id probably break some of your moms bones. c'mon woody im kiddin.. ( fingers crossed behind back ) .
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Bless you. We all need more patience and kindness, don't we? Perhaps our fate will be like our parents with dementia/alzheimers... They are rather cruel diseases for those of us around them, but for our loved ones, I think there is a kind of mercy in it all as they leave little by little and have no idea what is happening to them.

Caring for a loved one who is terminally sick is really, really, really hard and exhausting... but at the end of the day, it can change us to be more compassionate and empathetic people, if we allow it. I certainly am better for serving my Mother when she is unable to do anything for herself - as hard as it can be... heart wrenching and painful indeed.
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For the last few years (10 years since diagnosis... 20+ years prior to that) mother lived in loops of memories. I get the reference to the Brady bunch. With mother it was talking about the same group of subjects REPEATEDLY for HOURS on end! As she progressed in her disease the subjects shrunk from 10 to 1 or 2. IT DROVE ME INSANE!!! Believe me... insanity was really within reaching distance!

Now I would KILL for the chance to let her drive me insane again. I miss her so much, and wish I had been a better, more patient daughter than I was. As I sit here writing this I have tears running down my face. There was NOTHING I could do to help my mother while she was living, and now it's too late to do anything else.

I spent the last two years of my life trying to do everything for a woman who neither cared nor realized I was even there. Alzheimer's is the most horrible disease I can ever imagine!
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heck will be booze and loose women woody. if you have rare skills you will end up with a pretty cushy position. all others will pack hod..
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You did a great job and she knows NOW. Thank you for using your past to support our present. People are going to read that today and try a little harder to be patient, or hug their loved one a little tighter when tucking them in to bed tonight. I will be one of those people.
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