Caregiving | The Misadventures of Mrs. B

I need help.

Those three words. So easy to say, so difficult to muster the courage to whisper.

Is it just me? Am I the only person who feels as though I need to handle everything on my own?

It can’t be. Or else there wouldn’t be so many women (and men) who complain of feeling overwhelmed, overworked, overextended.

I need help.

For years, Rob and I have needed help at home.

I need help.

For years, I’ve gotten more and more sick.

I need help.

Every day I leave the house, afraid that this will be the day I can’t control my own body long enough to make it to a bathroom.

Every night I thank God that I made it through that day…even as I dread the next.

Every day I wish there was a way I could make people understand how desperate I feel sometimes. I wish someone could take this away from me.

Every day I worry about what is happening at home, whether things are going to be okay when I get there, wondering what sort of mood FIL will be in when he comes downstairs.

Sometimes I even dread the weekends. Which is funny seeing as how I dread the weekday mornings, too.

I need help.

I’m not sure what form that help will take. I’m not sure how anything can help.

What I know for sure is that for too long I’ve held everything inside and acted as though I had everything under control.

I don’t.

I need help.

I honor myself by acknowledging that I need help.

All I can do is announce this and take a leap, trusting those around me to step in and catch me before I hit the ground.

Have you ever struggled with asking for help, or do you make it a normal practice in your life? Do you feel as though everything rests on your shoulders?

How have you honored yourself in the past week? How do you plan to do so this coming week?

Don’t forget to visit me over at With Just A Bit Of Magic, where I’m sharing a crockpot recipe which has saved our hides many a weeknight. And it’s delicious, too!

Image via Creative Commons

Image via Creative Commons

Sometimes I don’t wanna be the bigger person.

I don’t wanna play nice.

I don’t wanna be polite.

I don’t wanna be good.

I’m not suffering fools too well lately. I feel like my patience is wearing thin in a lot of areas, worn smooth like rocks after the ocean’s onslaught.

I’ve spent years spinning things. Saying things the “right” way. Being as kind as I can.

But right now? Sometimes I don’t wanna be kind.

I know that once I feel better I’ll get back to my old self.

But do I want to be that old self?

There’s something to be said for being kind, and there’s something to be said for being a doormat, too.

There’s something to be said for being good and nice and not wanting to hurt others (and I never want to hurt others no matter how badly I’m feeling), but there’s something else to be said for telling it like it is when the truth needs to be told.

Especially if the alternative to telling my truth, to telling it like it is, is letting my feelings eat me alive.

Feelings don’t go away. They only show up elsewhere.

Maybe it’s not all about feeling sick and cranky. Maybe I’m really at an edge right now, and I have a choice to either step back and play it safe…or to step forward and see what awaits me.

Do you ever just get tired and “not wanna”? What is it you don’t want to do?

What do you do when you’re trying to keep someone out of bed but they don’t remember that they’ve been in bed all day?

Yesterday afternoon RD (Rob’s dad) got out of bed around noon-ish and came downstairs. I fixed him lunch. He ate slowly and we chatted while I got some beef yum-yum (aka boeuf bourguignon) started. And then he went back up to sleep. Without even telling me that’s what he was doing. I followed him up the stairs to make sure he was okay, and he went into his room. Far be it from me to follow him in there in case he’s, ya know, getting changed or something. So I hovered until it was time to run back down to continue dinner. Rob checked in on him when I told him I was shy about poking my head in and confirmed that he had gotten back into bed. Sigh.

He got up around 4 and we had dinner at 5:30. And at 6:15 he wanted to go back to bed!

I mean, what can we do? He’s tired and he doesn’t remember that he’s been in bed all day long so naturally he wants to lay down, even if it’s just to watch TV in his room. We can’t stop him. He’s a grown man and is very much used to doing what he wants to do. It just so happens that he has no context of the rest of the day in which to put his actions.

I knew that his early bedtime would mean that he’d be up at strange hours. And sure enough we got a rude awakening at 4:00 this morning when he tried to adjust his bed (one of those Craftmatic thingies) so he could watch TV…and set off the vibrating massage function.

Of course we didn’t know it was the massage function. We thought the house was about to fall down or construction was being done or something. How that can be considered relaxing is beyond me – I’m surprised knick knacks weren’t falling off of shelves!

Finally the darn thing shut itself off, which is good since neither Rob nor his dad could figure out how to do it – they didn’t even know what was happening in the first place! But Rob looked up directions online and found out why it was shaking the walls down, while I tried to get a little more sleep. I did manage to doze on and off.

Dinner was going to be pork chops which I would prepare this morning. It is now going to be spaghetti and leftover meatballs since there was no way I was getting out of bed until I absolutely had to. What can you do?

What can you do about the entire situation? At least he’ll have physical therapy during the week to get him moving, but that’s only for the next 8 weeks. I hate to say this, but I brought up the idea that maybe we should tell him that he’s going to have a visitor – that’s the only way he’ll get out of bed when Rob asks him to. And within a certain amount of time he’ll most likely forget about this visitor. I just don’t know.

The worst part is, and I hate to say this but I’m trying to be as honest as possible…Life is just easier when he’s in bed. I know it’s not good for him, he needs exercise, he needs to be on a regular sleep schedule. But when he’s upstairs he’s not wandering around, trying to ‘call the office’ (when he doesn’t remember the #), pressing the wrong buttons on the remote and messing up the TV, looking around the fridge for something he swears I told him he could heat up for lunch. Or asking uncomfortable questions about his parents who passed years ago but who he swears he just spoke to on the phone earlier in the day, or about where his briefcase and laptop are (they’re at the office so the work can be done, but of course he doesn’t understand this…or he does one minute but not the next).

So as much as I know it’s not good for him to be in bed, I have to breathe a sigh of relief just the same. It’s not the proudest I’ve ever been of myself, that’s for sure. But I just don’t know how else to handle this right now. My biggest hope is that the therapists give us some guidance because I know I can speak for the two of us when I say that we’re lost.

Oh, here’s another one I just thought of: How do you convince someone to shower when they’re convinced that they already took not one but two showers that day??

It’s fiiiiiiiinally Friday!

This has been one of the longest and most challenging weeks of my life to date. But it’s gotten steadily better along the way. Monday was just a mess of a day, and you can see here that I was not feeling very hopeful or happy in the aftermath. But as the week has progressed things have improved.

We’re still taking it one day at a time and trying to stay cautiously optimistic. It’s easy to take any positive signs as great progress and get all wrapped up in them…only to be crushed moments later. So instead we’re saying “He had a good day today”, rather than looking long-term. And I can happily say that there have been several good days this week. Has there still been confusion? Yes. But unlike Monday we haven’t had to beg or cajole him to do the things he needs to do, like taking his medication. We’ll see what today brings…

Tonight we’re going out to dinner! We’ll stay local – I found what appears to be a really super Italian place not too far away from the house. And Rob’s brother will hang out with their dad. It will be nice to get out – and I know Rob is just dying to. As tired and worn out as I feel right now (and oh, I do), I know it’s that much more difficult for him. He’s been keeping up with therapists and social workers all week, not to mention friends of his dad who are calling and asking questions, and family members. Plus a mountain of paperwork. Oh…and his dad.

Tomorrow, family comes over to visit and Rob’s aunt and I are cooking a feast between the two of us! Including my signature chocolate cake.

Pictures will be taken. Oh yes.

OH! Speaking of food…a slightly humorous story to end the post…

Yesterday I dragged myself up off the couch (where I was laying instead of working out…oops) and prepared a pot roast. It was glorious, I tell you. Seared to perfection on all sides, resting atop thick-sliced onions, surrounded by diced carrots, bathed in stock and red wine. Sprinkled lovingly with thyme and other spices. A tear nearly came to my eye, it was so beautiful. I left it to rest in its crock pot, promising to come back later in the day. And all morning I dreamt of how I was gonna tear into some pot roast when I got home. I even mentioned it to a friend at work and she expressed jealousy. And rightly so.

Then I got a call at 12:30 telling me that I didn’t turn the crock pot on.

I cried a little bit. Chalk it up to exhaustion.

The end.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

I’ve been clenching my jaw lately. This is evidenced by the fact that my jaw aches much of the time. Unless there’s something else that could be causing it that I’m not thinking of – anyone have any ideas?

I can’t imagine why I’d be doing this aside from the fact that this has been a very frustrating time and it only seems to go on and on in the same vein. I know that “one day at a time” is the approach to this, I really do. It’s the only way to handle life without feeling completely overwhelmed – it’s the only way to survive sometimes.

And yet, there are moments when it seems as though there’s just no end to it. It’s practically impossible to not look at the future and for the present to not color that view.

Yes, we hope for the best. I need to hope for the best. And to pray for it. And I ask for the grace to carry on. And I revel in the love that Rob and I have for each other at any and every opportunity. But there’s still that nagging, whining voice in the back of my head. There are times when the most off-the-wall thing comes out of my father-in-law’s mouth and I’m just washed over with this cold feeling because I have no idea where we are or where he is.

Sometimes it’s shock, sometimes it’s disappointment. Okay, 9 times out of 10 it’s disappointment. I know that as time goes on we’ll train ourselves to not get our hopes up when he’s having a good day or even a good conversation. Because if the stretch of time I spent with him yesterday is any indication, what he says or remembers or understands right now has no bearing whatsoever on an hour from now. And it’s toughest when you’re talking to him and he has this “A HA!” moment and you’re all “Yeah!” and wanting to pump your fist in the air…and then that off-the-wall thing comes out and you’re completely baffled all over again.

You know the image that just came to mind as I typed that? Trying to put a slightly-too-small fitted sheet on a mattress. You think you’re all good up until you get to that fourth corner and then WHOOPS!. One of the other corners pops off as a result. You fix that one and think you’re okay, until you look and see that yet another one came off. And on and on. You just never have enough sheet to cover everything.

That is sort of how this feels.

And at the end of all of this is the overwhelming notion that this is NOT ABOUT ME. It’s about him. He’s the one going through this illness. Not me.

And yet I am. We are.

One day at a time.