With me, it's the TV. My mom is so sick and weak with kidney disease that TV is pretty much her only source of entertainment. That wouldn't be quite so bad if she still understood how to work the remote, but dementia has erased that ability. If she isn't able to watch TV, she usually just goes back to bed...then ends up in a state of delirium from depression and too much sleep. So now I am the one in charge of her entire world of entertainment.
Before I started staying with mom, I was used to a different life, where I mostly listened to music or enjoyed silence. I'm not really a TV person. When I did watch stuff, I'd be that person who binged a season of whatever on my days off, or watched movies with friends, and then didn't watch anything for days at a time. Now I have to babysit the TV every day, every time my mom is out of bed.
If there's a timer system on mom's TV or service provider that lets you schedule channel changes, I haven't found it yet. Plus there are a billion channels but not a lot of stuff mom can watch. I'm really grateful for streaming services. Being able to work the On Demand is my new superpower. I upped mom's bandwidth to unlimited just to accommodate her watching. I now keep a notebook with a list of what's on which channel, and how long it is, so that I can plan how long I can be away from the remote. I've even taught mom about binge-watching (for selfish reasons - so I can put on Netflix and know it will go straight to the next episode without me). I'm thinking about getting a wireless HDMI setup so I can try running stuff from my laptop (preferably in another room!).
What about you? Is there something you now have to be in charge of that you never expected would be part of your daily life when you took this on?
I also never expected to become the Puzzle Lady. I got a couple 12-piece jigsaw puzzles for my mother plus a couple slightly harder ones, trying to get her to be social with other people while doing the puzzles. I discovered that helping the other MC residents with the jigsaw puzzles was something I liked to do, and sometimes I succeeded in getting my mother to interact with another resident. So I kept buying puzzles and now have several dozen of them. And now I'm the facility's unofficial Puzzle Lady.
#1 washing her entire body
#2 I had an 18 page list of things I did for her
#3 Helping her make fudge when she cried about it
#4 290 more things
Also: Closet organizer (or Dad ends up wearing the same 2 shirts over and over and over again), music curator, pedicurist, manicurist, ear cleaner, and nose hair trimmer.
I tell him no, I just hide things under you when you're sleeping because I'm mean that way, hahahah.
The day I can no longer find something to laugh about, that's the day I will start crying.
He's getting gift cards. Too bad if it's lazy. I know he'd prefer them anyway. :-P
Yesterday I gave mom her weekly shave and spent a little extra time on the nose hairs (a forest is growing there), I'd like to tame the eyebrows but that would be cruel! I also cleaned her eyelids and put in some eye drops (shh, don't tell), cleaned her teeth, lotioned her face and arms and readjusted the headrest on her wheelchair (it takes tools, how do they keep knocking it cockeyed?).
I wonder if I will grow a beard when I'm old and have nobody to monitor the hairs for me?