Thoughts

  I owe you all an apology, especially my uncles who look forward to reading a new post and glean through my ramblings for a word of how their sister is doing. My heart has not been on my blog or on writing. I have been struggling with guilt and dissatisfaction ever since Mom went to the nursing home.

  I suppose it's a normal occurrence. It wasn't always easy going to Mom's house twice a day to get her up and put her to bed. But I miss it. There was that emotional connection. It is so impersonal now to go visit her in her hard, institutionalized room. I know she has good nurses. But they don't know mom like we do.

  Mom is a super, super good patient though. She is ever so content to just sit there hour after hour with not a hint of discomfort or boredom. I would be going crazy about now if I were her.

  On Friday the 21st, the nursing home had open house for their new facility. So the kids and I met Angie there and took a tour. The new home is gorgeous. Just inside the front door you see walls and ceiling covered in raw Barn board with a fireplace to bring warmth and a restful welcoming aura.

  The first thing you find beyond the fireplace is a self serve cafe where they will have coffee and vending machines. Mom's room is down a series of wide hallways. The first couple turns take you through soft green passageways and then you find yourself entering a gentle yellow way. Each hallway has it's own private family room where they have comfortable looking chairs and great views.

   Mom's room is not huge, in fact probably a bit smaller then what she has now. It overlooks the courtyard which can also be seen from her dining room on the opposite side. She will have her own private bathroom with a shower. The bathroom floor must have a slight slope because the shower consists of basically a shower head coming out of the wall, a drain in the floor and a curtain to pull shut when you want to use the shower. I immediately thought of the disastrous floods we would have at our house with a system like that. But it should work fine with one old lady.

  There are a total of five beautiful kitchens in the new facility. I wish I would have taken pictures but I guess that can happen later. In addition to the private family rooms they also have very large open living rooms with more comfortable looking couches and chairs and big windows. The whole place just gives you the feeling of comfort. I took one look at the private family room and thought what a beautiful place that would be to come to for some solitude to sit and write.

  So over all I'm feeling much better about mom being in there. Moving day is Nov 3rd. Angie will correct me if I have that wrong. My brain picks up some details fairly well, but dates and times have a way of eluding me. Numbers just slip away, swirl and go down the toilet in the bathroom of my mind.

  I comfort myself with the thought that my mom was never that way. She was always prompt and never forgot an appointment. Meals were always served on time. I am like my Dad, who could function well with just a calendar and you thought twice about asking him to pick something up on the way home from town because chances were high that he would come home empty handed. Don't ask Steve how I do with that.

  I am reading a book on Dementia now that says that if you don't have an ability to do something, like for instance if you are direction-ally challenged is not an indication that you have dementia. The problem is when you have loss of information, not something you never had in the first place.

Dad in the Hospital

    Around midnight on Sunday morning Dad called Darwin saying that he had several bad coughing spells and felt like he needed to go to the ER.

  He insisted that he would be fine driving himself. So he did and he was admitted with Pneumonia.

  We had sickness at our house and so only three of us were going to church that morning. Larita called when we were on our way that morning and wondered how he was doing. I had thought I would stop in sometime after church but she advised me to go to the hospital first. I was glad I did.

   Dad is very independent and never asks for anything really. I look at him as quite capable even at his age. But he was happy to see us and I became more aware that he needs us to be there for him.

   The Dr. came in while we were there and so he was going over dad's medical history. Dad was telling him about his Colon cancer he had 20 years ago. How he'd had radiation first to try to shrink his tumor before surgery. Then after surgery they said they got it all along with his bladder, prostate and some of his colon.

After surgery they advised him to do Chemotherapy and dad asked them why he should if they got all the cancer and they replied that there was always a possibility that it could come back.

Dad said he asked then if they could guarantee that the Chemo would cure him completely and they said no,they couldn't do that, so then he asked them what would happen if he didn't do the Chemotherapy and to that they responded, "You will die."

  Dad went on with his story saying that he decided if they couldn't stand behind the Chemotherapy he would opt not to take it.

The doctor listening to dad's story surprised me with his response,
     " The chemotherapy probably would have killed you.

I remember hearing my dad say many times that God is in control of life, if your time here isn't up you won't die until it is.

     Dad is back home again now. His first stop after they released him was the nursing home to see mom. She is totally unaware of his hospital stay. No emotion whatsoever.

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Happy on Sunday

   We had a fellowship meal at church on Sunday. We sat across the table from my dad. When he got up to leave he stopped and asked me if we were coming in to see mom. I told him we were and he grinned and said, " I'm gonna prep her. I'll tell her you're coming so she can be happy to see you."

  He must have got it across to her because she was smiling big when we got there. She kept smiling the whole time and held my hand. Angie and dad both said she wasn't happy yesterday though.

  I didn't make it back in again this week. On Tuesday we had chickens to butcher, yesterday I painted our bedroom. I intended to go today but didn't make it. So tomorrow I will go.

  Isaiah salvaged a broken down side table from one of dad's sheds and brought it home. I wish I had a before picture, but I don't. It needed a missing piece and one leg was leaning in. It had dark old varnish.

  He painted it black with chalked paint, (not chalkboard paint) we made our own chalk paint by adding Plaster of Paris. Then he Modge Poged a map on the top. Looks kinda cool!

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Maybe Not Feeling So Good

I took Angie with me yesterday when I went to see mom. We realised that she had company when we walked in. Marvin and Londa were there. They had come to go to the sale barn just up the road from the nursing home, and stopped in to visit. Marvin said he just bought 40 calves.

   Pop said they brought mom's lunch to her room and fed her in there instead of taking her to the dining room. When the nurse came in Angie asked her about that and the nurse said they thought mom might not be feeling well. She had thrown up twice in the night.

 

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Visitors, a new room and a guest book

Mom has had a lot of visitors lately because of a funeral bringing relatives from out of state.

  I met my sister Larita there one morning. It was great to see her again.

  I didn't go to the funeral because Steve wasn't home to go with me and I didn't want to go by myself. Its intimidating to go to a funeral where there are a 1000 people who know who you are but you can't place them because you haven't seen the bulk of them for 30 years.

My relatives have this secret or maybe not so secret delight in asking if I know who they are just so they can watch me squirm. So I have decided that next time I'm not going to sweat it out.

  I'm just going to say, "You tell me who you are and then we will both feel better.

So after my mom got so many visitors the nursing home put her in a room of her own, which is way nicer! It's much more pleasant to visit her in a room with more space and we don't bother a roommate.

We got her a guestbook and its fun to see who has been there.

On Sunday our son Matt and his wife Kaitlyn went in with their little boys. Mom was very happy to see them and smiled a lot.

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Court Hearing

  On Monday Dad and I were scheduled to be at a hearing for guardianship for Mom. Since we never had a POA done while she still knew what she was doing and could still sign her name.

  I had never been in a court room before so it was very interesting. Very formal and slightly intimidating.

  But mostly I was interested in the building. Such beautiful wood, ornate carvings, massive stone columns and stonework. I felt like I was stepping back in time and would be sure to encounter fine gentlemen dressed in formal wear and elegant ladies dressed in beautiful dresses that though they are ornate and beautiful would sufficiently cover.

  As I sat there with Steve waiting till time to go in, I was drinking it all in. There was a beautiful staircase with lovely carved banisters. It was so delicious! Then I noticed someone had commited a crime. I really hope they are doing jail time for it.

  I noticed that over the top of a beautiful wooden door was an ordinary piece of fake wood paneling. Whatever! It looked like an imposter to me. I looked around at other doors and spyed another one with a square of ugly plywood. How could anyone do that? I wondered. I finally located a door that was original and found that there was actually supposed to be a square of glass above the doors instead of those ugly wood fillins. I complained bitterly to Steve, but he was only amused at my annoyance.

  You can't tell me the county can't afford a few pieces of glass to keep that building beautiful!

Inside the court room was awe inspiring. Huge rounded ceiling, wood everywhere, carved banisters,  beautiful tall windows with carved wooden doors that closed over the windows behind the Judge's seat.

I was glad I was only in there for a guardianship hearing and not something I was in trouble for. My mind went to the last judgement and I thought about when we shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ to receive for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

There's something about seeing a Judge that makes you think, ......and why do they wear black? Just a thought. This guy was nice though. He kept pulling on his beard when he was thinking. I guess it's OK for judges to wear beards. There was pictures of previous judges on the wall dating back to most likely the early 1800s. They all looked very sober and intimidating.

  That was my morning in court. We got the guardianship taken care of and I got to see the inside of a court room.

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Inside of Mom's Head

    I wish I could understand what goes on in the Grand Central Station of my mother's body. I know she knows us at least part of the time.

   If I didn't believe it was impossible I would think she's getting even with us and giving us the cold shoulder. It just isn't Mom at all to treat us so impersonally!

When I walk into her room I say Hi to her and she just looks at me like, do I care who you are?

   I was in her house last week. It was empty and dark. I walked through the whole house just thinking and looking. I missed my Mom. She just was not there. I saw her coat hanging on the hall tree and got this irrational urge to go give it a huge hug and hang on till I felt better. I didn't though, because I'm not impulsive. I knew it wouldn't help and if anyone walked in it would have looked very strange to be hugging a coat on a hall tree.

I have a mind image of Mom in the kitchen, wearing a cobbler apron and whipping up a cakemix, or maybe Potato Salad.

But my mother sits in the nursing home. Dosing in her chair and not caring if I'm there or not. My Dad and I sit and talk about almost everything. We talk about mom, about life, about God and about the coming election.  We are a comfort to each other I think.

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