Author Topic: On Caregiving  (Read 271142 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #100 on: April 15, 2016, 02:08:05 pm »
Mom has been taking the lower dosage of Coreg since Wednesday and she woke up today and had no dizziness!! I am vindicated! (Well, it's actually a little too soon to say.)
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #101 on: April 16, 2016, 02:12:46 pm »
Good news!  Thanks for letting us know!


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #102 on: April 18, 2016, 11:43:05 am »
The latest Mom mystery grew over the weekend. I began to get calls from her saying that the doctor's office called and they wanted to see her right away. She began to get very agitated and seemed to think she was very sick. I probably didn't mask my irritation enough and this made things worse. I didn't believe that the doctor's office would call her on a Sunday. I told her several times that I would call and set up an appointment but I didn't.

So, the mystery was solved when I got a call from the physical therapist on Monday morning, wanting to set an appointment. They HAD called her on Sunday and had confused her and them both.

I had them use my phone number instead of Mom's to communicate, as when various professionals call her she gets the info all garbled and is confused and angry.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #103 on: April 19, 2016, 08:04:18 am »
At least you solved the mystery.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #104 on: April 27, 2016, 11:41:35 am »
Super sleuths make the best caregivers, I'm finding. Once you think you have solved a mystery, it just gets deeper and more gnarly.

My mother has started to call me in the middle of the night and very late at night, very agitated. THis is known as Sundowner's Syndrome and is an ordeal for the person AND the caregiver. Last night's call was from my very disgusted mother saying that her phys therapist didn't show up yesterday morning and she had spent the whole day waiting for him.

So I called the main office and they read me his detailed notes. It is clear that he had visited and worked with her. So, maybe she lost track of time. Her short-term memory is pretty much gone, so that could have been a factor as well.

But the bottom line is, she suffered. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it.  >:(
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #105 on: April 27, 2016, 02:18:04 pm »
damn, sorry to hear that.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #106 on: April 27, 2016, 05:27:23 pm »
Quote
My mother has started to call me in the middle of the night and very late at night, very agitated. THis is known as Sundowner's Syndrome and is an ordeal for the person AND the caregiver.


Yes, it is. I remember times when my mother called me twenty or thirty times a day (or night), only to scream at me for whatever imagined reason. :P

If it gets too bad you just have to protect yourself. An overly exhausted caregiver can't provide the help necessary.
Depending on how often this happens and how often and what times she calls, think about putting off one of your phones (the one she uses). Either put off your cell-phone from, say, 9PM and tell all your contacts to use your landline after 9PM. Or vice versa. Granted that she has help other than you available in an emergency case.
I hope it won't get that bad with your mother, but it's a thought to keep in the back of your mind.

When my mother finally moved into a locked ward the first thing I decided was to not give her a private phone connection. Pure self-defense. Oh, sweet relief.


Offline serious crayons

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #107 on: April 27, 2016, 09:34:54 pm »
I guess I was lucky. My mom never called me. When we talked, it was always me calling her.

Her Alzheimer's involved dementia, of course, but thankfully not mood issues. When I asked if she'd had a good time when my uncle was in town, she said, "He was here? Hunh. He never visited me." Like, yeah right -- that was the whole reason he went there. But she seemed only mildly miffed about it.



Offline serious crayons

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #108 on: April 27, 2016, 10:00:13 pm »
This isn't a caregiving issue because I'm not this person's caregiver, but it's been mystifying and upsetting me for the past two days and since I don't have a blog and don't want to derail someone else's blog, I'm posting it here.

Yesterday, I saw a news item about a mail carrier in my area who'd been charged with DWI. She was in her mail truck, was seen almost hitting another car, then slammed into a stop sign.

Her blood-alcohol content was just under .30 -- that's more than 3 1/2 times the legal limit. It's pretty much "she should be taken to a hospital" level. According to google, .30 can put you in a coma, and .40 can kill you.

It was 11 a.m.

The woman was my childhood best friend.

Same name, including middle name, same date of birth. She lives near where we grew up. A couple of TV stations had the police mug shots. She didn't look good, but it was definitely her. Very haggard, angry. But then, who looks good in a mug shot when they're super drunk and just had a car crash.

It is so weird I can hardly get my mind around it. We were best friends as little kids, then again in junior high. Her family lived next to mine, so I knew the whole family pretty well, including her 5 sisters. Then they moved to a different town. We reconnected in college, lost touch again, then reconnected about 18-19 years ago when we discovered we were living in the same part of town and had sons the same age. She was married, working as a flight attendant, had the one son. She was always extremely responsible, hardworking, frugal, etc. She drank, but just a normal amount.

After we'd hung out on and off for a year or so, she mysteriously stopped speaking to me. No explanation. She moved from our neighborhood to a suburb about 10 miles away without even mentioning she was moving. I haven't seen her since.

The few people I've talked about this with seem to assume her worst problem is the DWI. It's not. She will have a record, may go to jail for a few days, will lose her license for a while, etc. She'll lose her PO job, and losing a job at 59 is a problem.

But if you're drinking heavily enough to have a .30 BAC at 11 a.m. -- you've got a serious, serious problem. Like a potentially fatal problem.

One of the news stories quoted an anonymous friend saying she'd had some hard times lately. But what?? What could have caused her life to go so wrong?



Offline Penthesilea

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Re: On Caregiving
« Reply #109 on: April 28, 2016, 02:12:37 am »

I'm sorry to hear your (former) friend has such problems.

Quote
The few people I've talked about this with seem to assume her worst problem is the DWI. It's not.
[...]
But if you're drinking heavily enough to have a .30 BAC at 11 a.m. -- you've got a serious, serious problem. Like a potentially fatal problem.


Yes, I totally agree.

One of our profs at university called it the difference between drunken drivers and driving drunks. A drunken driver is just that, a person who consumed alcohol but still is driving a vehicle (which of course is dangerous and possibly fatal). A driving drunk is a professional alcoholic who just happens to be driving a car when caught.


If you have 0.3 (that's 2.37 ‰ for Germans, Swedes, etc; I had to google it) at 11 AM you are a driving drunk, not a drunken driver. If you are still able to operate a car at all with 0.3 you are a serious alcoholic. I hope for your friend that being caught and losing her job is rock bottom and a turning point for her, not just anther step on a downward spiral. :-\

I can relate that you wonder what caused her life to derail.