Personal message to readers

I have to apologize for the amount of time I have been away from the blog.  In addition to the issues and activities surrounding my daughter’s problematic pregnancy I have been dealing with the end-of-life issues that come with two ailing, elderly parents.  It has been time-consuming, emotionally draining and devastating to the heart – but at the same time a true labor of love.  We are nearing a point where very critical (and heartbreaking) decisions will have to be made.

My daughter

As those following Just for Chat know, my daughter is expecting my first granddaughter.  She has had a difficult pregnancy.  She was originally pregnant with twins and lost one.  She has since been in out of the ER and we lately finally learned that the problem is an “extremely shallow cervix”, which means she won’t be in labor long.  In fact, the OB/GYN has stated if she has more than one contraction in an hour, we are to be in the ER because she may deliver.  At one point we feared she was going sepsis, or into toxemia.  She has gotten past the really bumpy part of the road and we are nearing 32 weeks.  We feel if we can make 32 weeks then the chances of a uncomplicated birth with little risk of long-term health problems for “Riley Marie” will be a high probability.

My father

My father started showing signs of Alzheimers probably before we detected them.  For some time dad’s far too often repeated stories had become longer and longer because he had begun to recount the stories slower and slower.  But the details (as far back as him being a small boy – and he’s 87 years old now) were always crisp.  But it was like over night that the light switched some 4 or 5 years ago and all of a sudden the words went away.  I remember the first day I got hit between the eyes with this.  He dropped by for something and he started telling me a story about a sunflower that had grown underneath my mother’s bird feeder (where she had sunflower seeds among other seeds to feed the bird).  The whole story was about this SUNFLOWER.  And then he got to the part where he needed to tell me about the SUNFLOWER growing under the birdfeeder.  The sunflower was the punch line, the climax, the finale of the story… and the word was gone.  Not even the word “flower” was there, or weed, or plant…nothing.  The whole main subject of the story was gone.  He just stopped, struggled for several minutes, and started crying.  I finally figured it out and said “sunflower?”  And he nodded his head yes and got his truck and went home.

Dad was diagnosed some time later with dimentia/Alzheimers.  He was started on medicine to try to slow the Alzheimers.  He is now in the advanced stages.

My mother

My mother was a stay at home wife and mother her entire life.  Dad and mom got married when he was 19 and she was 15 (they both lied about their ages on their marriage licenses).  They have been married for 67 years.  They are not two different people…they truly are one person.  My mom went from being raised by her father to be raising by my father.  They had five children, lived a good, hard-working modest blue collar life, and dedicated their lives to God and their family.  My mom does not know life without her protector and provider.

Neither my father or mother finished high school.  They were raised during the dust bowl days and the Great Depression.  Dad stopped working when he was in 11th grade so that he could help provide for his parents’ family.  Mom quit school in 10th grade when she married my father.  Mom started showing signs of possible Parkinson’s in 1995.  It started with an ever so slight head shaking.  She now is showing signs of severe memory loss and possibly perceiving events differently than they actually occurred.  In addition, she has been battling some pretty severe depression in the past few years because she is my father’s primary caregiver.  She has had to “grow up” (which she never had to do before) and has become a very strong woman who not only cares for herself, but for her protector who is now closing in on being the equivalent of an infant.

The situation

As stated before my father is now in the advanced stages of Alzheimers.  He is hallucinating.  He is imagining things.  He is becoming increasingly paranoid.  And he varies from noncommunicative to talking nonsense (very very slowly).  He is (or has, depending on how much I allow myself to admit denial) losing touch with reality.  Events just in the past couple of weeks have brought home that dad is really no longer in the reality the rest of us operate in.  I THINK my mother feels she can no longer care for him (coupled with her mental state is degrading from the dementia/Parkinsons she is dealing with and the constant stress of her husband no longer being there with her).  But, she promised my father she would never put him in a nursing home, and she is committed to that promise.

I have now had to have a talk with my mother to ensure her that she can confidentially call me and let me know when she can’t take anymore.  At that time I will be the one that calls my siblings and lets them know I have determined that dad must go to a nursing home for his own good and that of my mother’s.  (I live 6 blocks from them and am the person they rely on for assistance – in all respects.)

Tonight was the worst night so far.  Things have been very bad for several weeks.  Not only because Dad was showing increasing signs of either imagining, hallucinating or both (speaking of people being in the house who were not there), but because of my mother’s failing mind and the immense stress (which makes her mental state degrade even faster) of Dad’s condition.  Tonight, while I was over there visiting with them, my father all of a sudden says, “I’ve got a question.”

I responded, “Yes?”

He waves his hand at me and my mother and says, “You two.  You two.  Who do you two work for?”

It took me aback so bad I blurted out “the government”.  He nodded his head yes and got a look on his face that said, “I knew it.”  I said, “NO!  We don’t work for the government.  You know who I work for and mom has worked for you and your children for 67 years!”  The sad, sickening, irrational conversation went on for several minutes.

Long story short (like it’s not too late now) is that my dad is gone.  My mother is slipping and soon my siblings and I will be faced with a terrible task of putting my father in an assisted living facility or nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients in order to give my mother a better quality of life and some peace of mind.

It is taking a toll on me.

Because of these personal issues I have not been on much here lately.  I have tried desperately to keep up with Caylee’s, Kyron’s and Eric’s cases.  They are all very important to me.  But I will not guarantee that I will be able to stay on top of things in the coming days.  So I would recommend for up-to-date information on these cases you check other blogs and the major crime-solving discussion boards to keep abreast.

I am about to close the current Eric Preimesberger thread and start a new one, just to keep the discussion on this very troublesome (and exacerbating) case open.  I have started working on a preliminary timeline for Kyron’s case and will get it up as soon as I can.  But I might not have  significant presence in the coming days so that I can deal with the sad business of my parents.

I appreciate all the readers and commenters here.  You truly are an exceptional bunch of people.  If I have lapses of presence/moderation here at the board, I request you continue to treat each other with respect, and stick to the focus of each thread to keep an intelligent discussion moving foward.

My apologies again,

Valhall.

No related posts.

Tags: Miscellaneous, the hinky meter