The only thing constant is change

As life so often does, duties and responsibilities change. My mom-in-law is experiencing some challenges that are influencing the way we who love her are spending our time. She has fallen a number of times in the last few months and is having memory/cognitive challenges too. It seems that the dementia contributes to the falls and the falls, in turn, affect the dementia. So, from my journal:

January 18, 2011 Tuesday Mildred’s (Night five)

She is sure she can dress herself, except when she tries, she can’t. I suppose if there were no one to help, she would eventually get something on her body. She tries to walk with a coffee cup and it slops and drips across the floor as she totters and sways to a chair, reaches to set the cup down and it wobbles, coffee sloshing against and up the sides of the cup, sometimes managing to crawl out. She begins a turn to sit down and doesn’t quite rotate enough to align her bottom with the bottom of the chair, drops heavily onto a corner and tries to right herself by pulling on the walker, if she happens to have it close.

I can do this. The assorted feelings that arise are surprising me. I feel as if I am wasting my time, yet, I felt somewhat at loose ends before she became such a time consuming part of my life. For several weeks I came twice a day, mid-morning to help her dress and have breakfast and late afternoon to help with supper. In between I went on with the things I love to do, yet they were just different versions of what I am doing now. I slept until about 8 because many nights Mark works late and I don’t want to be up earlier and awaken him. Coffee and a book or the computer until he stirs or until midmorning; by then I am dressed and head out to the post office and other business errands.

Here I am up about 8, make coffee and stay quiet until I hear her walker move, then hover until she makes it to the bathroom and back to bed or to the lift chair in the den. Once she is settled in the chair, I take her a cup of coffee that is so weak the bottom of the cup shows. She drinks the coffee colored water and sleeps for a couple hours before she is ready to make the trip back down the hall to the bathroom and to her bedroom to dress. This is not a quick trip. It takes a while to accomplish. Then she baby steps back to her chair for her preferred breakfast, a cookie or a piece of deli cake. Some mornings she feels like coming to the table for breakfast, mostly she stays in her chair and I serve breakfast on the lap tray Gaye brought down. Yesterday, breakfast was bacon, apple sauce, and a deli cookie. She told me last night, after she’d eaten half a bologna sandwich, egg custard pie, lemon cake and a coke that she was eating a lot because “everyone told her to eat a lot so she could regain her strength.” I offered veggies and or fruit, but she didn’t want any of “that.” After she ate, she was miserable because of reflux. If you make it to 85, I suppose you should eat what you want no matter how Innutritious it is or isn’t.