Friday, July 14, 2017

Living with Mother (ALZ)

Okay,I decided this morning that I would try blogging to give me an outlet for dealing with issues that arise because my mom (who lives with my husband and I) has Alzheimer's Disease. No better way than to just start with this morning. Like most of things life throws at you, all you can do is one day at a time.

Crazy morning. Mom gets up and I am bound and determined to avoid the morning fussing she usually wakes up with. Most mornings she barely gets her bedroom door opened and she is wanting to know if they are ever going to serve breakfast in this place. I hear her door and I immediately get up and pour her a cup of coffee and put it on her tray that sits in front of her place she likes on the couch.

She has an old coffee cup on her tray that she hasn’t put in the sink. I tell her that is an old cup she left on her tray from yesterday and didn’t put it in the sink and not to drink that.

I turn away to fix her some breakfast (she loves pancake on a stick…. mostly because of the syrup she eats it with but it does get protein in her so I always have them on hand.) I hear her pouring coffee on her tray. She is pouring the new cup into the old cold cup because… she is trying to warm it up a little. She doesn’t want cold coffee. I go through the story once again about that cup is yesterday’s cup and not to drink out of that. (I know! At that time, I should have just gone and picked the old one up and thrown it away. I didn’t.)

I’m busy making sure she has enough syrup for her breakfast so we can avoid the morning fussing. (Remember that?) So I sit the breakfast on her tray (feeling pretty proud of myself that I didn’t get to hear that you have to wait forever (sometimes 5 minutes) to get breakfast at this place. Those men (not real ones, just those men who live in her head) are always complaining about the injustices they have to endure at this place.

I sit down at the computer to reward myself with a game of solitaire. Then I hear her in the kitchen. I ask her, “What are you doing Mom? Do you need something? She says, “I’m just trying to warm this coffee, it is cold.”

In my head, I am screaming. I take a deep breath so I won’t be screaming out loud. I try once again to explain that it was yesterday’s coffee. I tell her not to drink it. Then she is furious. “This is not yesterday’s. It was just poured earlier this morning.” (Keep in mind she hasn’t been up for than about five or six minutes.) 

I get up (perhaps a little more abruptly than I should) and I take the old coffee off of her tray and throw it away and I say, “Yes, this was yesterday’s. Is the other too hot? Do you want me to put a little cool water in it?” She says she does so I add a little cool water to it.

By this time, I actually want some breakfast. (Possibly stress eating) I go to put my breakfast sandwich in the microwave and she is looking at me with puppy dog eyes. “What’s wrong mama?” She says… (wait for it!.....) “Are they ever going to serve breakfast in this place? I heard some men saying they would like some food.”

I tell her that she just had a pancake on a stick. I ask her if she would like another one. She says yes…all the while busy using the old stick and her fingers to mop up all the syrup and licking it off of both the stick and her fingers. At this point, I am just praying she washed her hands sometime this morning…which I highly doubt.

After her second pancake on a stick, she has finally gone to a peaceful quiet. (If you can call, searching her pockets every 45 seconds peaceful. {She is looking for her cigarettes})


I try not to give her a cigarette until she asks for one because I keep hoping with everything else she has forgotten that someday she will forgets she smokes.

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