MIL Chronicles – June 2019
This edition needs a bit of a preface. As I look back at that sentence whilst writing
this I realize this is just going to be a big long story. As you may or may not know, if I am to do
something fun for myself there always seems to be a monkey wrench. I asked Big if there is a Sable gene that
does that and no one told me before “I do.” Surgeries, falls, booboos big and
small all happen when I am going to do something I want.
With that. Since MIL
has gotten so much worse over the last couple/three years, Big and I haven’t
been able to go anywhere for a vacation or break. You see, when you are a perfectionist, like Big
and not afraid of a thing called hard work, like Big, relaxing at home really
isn’t a thing that can be done. Every
moment not accomplishing something is a minute wasted. Now if you know me, you know I can waste a
minute and feel zero guilt. Zero. What this equals is the relaxed/chill Big only
really happens on vacation and away from obligation. It’s been almost 4 years since we have been
able to go anywhere together. One of us
has always needed to be home for MIL.
Her comfort level (and anxiety disorder) will not allow for her to trust
anyone but the two of us. So there it
is.
In mid April of this year, MIL decided that all of the pills
she was taking were only keeping her alive and she was tired of it. Ok….well, don’t take them. It’s her choice, right? NO….I didn’t look at the big picture. What this equaled was her being fluid
overloaded 3 days before I had to leave to go to my older daughter’s
wedding. So I said take her to the
hospital and let’s get her into some sort of rehab. Big says why this is what she wanted. YES, BUT my upcoming trip isn’t
optional. If it were, I would still
go. It isn’t. It’s my daughter’s wedding! I’m leaving.
So we will have to figure out what goes and make it happen. This was Sunday. Tick Tock MF.
I’m leaving on Wednesday morning at the ass crack of dawn!
So to the hospital we went, revoked hospice services, did a
little song and dance about her having improved so much that we wanted to take
her off and now that she was fluid overloaded we would like her to get back
some of her strength. She goes to the
hospital and then is sent to a casual rehab (vs. aggressive rehab) here in our
little town. Beautiful place and as luck
would have it with every stage of these shenanigans over the last 4 years, my
contacts have been around to be able to watch her and help us keep an eye out
for her to be sure she is taken care of.
This time is no different. She
ends up in a place where a good friend moonlights on the weekends. Perfect.
Needless to say, I went to my daughter’s wedding. Zero guilt.
Lots of fun for my family and all of us while together. We almost all live in the DC area, but we
went to Northern Kentucky to spend time together!
On the way home I started to not feel all that well. That quickly escalated to a stomach virus
that wasn’t my best traveling companion I have ever had, but I had my best
real travel companion with me in my sister who took care of things, me and took
over driving! Thank goodness.
When I return, I go to see MIL in the facility she has been
in for about a week by the time I see her.
She shows off by doing fantastic over the top fits of accomplishment
like remembering people’s names. She
wanted to show Big the gym area and did.
She did laps around the gym. They
had her standing for 6 minutes at a time in one spot! She did great. After 3.5 weeks, she came home. Then she did what she does best and she SAT
THE F*CK DOWN. All the way down. Completely.
Totally. All day and night. Within 2 weeks she was exactly as she had
been before her stay in the lovely rehab place.
Big has been telling me forever that he thinks she has dementia. OK…we’ve had her checked multiple times, we
are told no she doesn’t. Then she really
starts to get confused after she came home from rehab. Telling the same story over and over. Asking the same question multiple times in
the same discussion. Completely making
up stories about people being in her house that have never been or discussing
someone who has been to the house once by way of asking how many times that
person is going to keep coming over. The
second weekend in June there is to be a walk/run fund raiser for my
company. I’m signed up. The next day is to be my younger daughter’s
college graduation. **I should note here
that Big was not able to come to my older daughter’s wedding because someone
had to be here with MIL.**
We are ready to walk (well me, Big was gonna just suck it up
and try to make it through the socializing, humidity and bugs. He doesn’t do bugs) and he calls home to check
on MIL. She’s in a lather, spilling
things, dropping things, etc. Things
like this, they are manufactured crises on MILs part. The idea that both of us are more than 10 minutes
from the house….together….for about 5 hours gone, she can’t. Everything goes sideways. So, before the walking can begin we bid our goodbyes
and head home. The following day my younger was to graduate. Because of
the sideways things, Big doesn’t go to that either. He’s not happy about these two things.
NOW fast forward to the weekend of May turning to June. I am supposed to be attending a bereavement
camp for children that is hosted by my company.
I am supposed to be there all weekend.
The weekend before I make arrangements to have my car serviced. I get up that Saturday morning, talk to a
good friend for a while as I drive to the dealership and then go to drop off
the car. I literally get out of my car
and the phone is ringing and buzzing with test messages. It’s Big.
MIL has fallen. She is in the
kitchen, landed on her ample ass and doesn’t have her phone with her. We should note that she has a travel pouch
that she is to have her phone in and around her neck at all times when she is
walking around. So of course the phone
is on the table and she can’t get to it.
Because why would you keep it around your neck? Crazy talk.
ANYWAY…look on camera’s, she’s on her ass. Big tried to call her and didn’t get an
answer so he looked on the camera and there she is.
I get back in my car and start to race home. About 2 years ago I had the bright idea to buy
a lockbox and put a key in it inside the garage. I’m thinking, if there is an emergency and we
aren’t home the fire department won’t have to break down a door and add to the million
things I already have to do. We even
call and file the garage code and the lockbox code with the county. So as I drive home, thwarted at every turn
with red lights and terminally slow and inept drivers, I call the non-emergency
number.
Before I tell you what is next, over the last 2 weeks
leading to this day, Big and I have been discussing she has to go
somewhere. We can’t take care of her anymore. I said can’t because of her care needs, not
can’t because we are just done. I mean,
that too but really we can’t. Thursday
before her fall we went to an Assisted Living Facility less than 2/10’s of a
mile from our house. It’s awesome. I volunteered to move in and leave Big and
she here in the condos. Oddly, no one
took me up on it. ANYWAY, she falls this
day and it’s early. This is the day we
were to take her over to the ALF to have her look at the place and get a
tour.
So after I get on the phone with the non-emergency emergency call I give my info and tell them of the
garage code and the lockbox code. Before
I can get to her I can see the fire department has come in and they have her up
and on her rollator. They have her call
me to let me know she is ok. For those
of you keeping track, this is fall #4 with NO broken bones.
So the captain of the rescue team, whose name wasn’t Captain
Obvious but it sure should have been, said you know she probably isn’t safe to
be alone. No. Shit.
Sherlock. I blocked the rest of
his Charlie Brown’s teacher voice out so I don’t throat punch him rather than
to be gracious and say thank you. I kept
it cool and was able to avoid having to throat punch him.
So in cahoots with the lovely young woman who had taken us on
the ALF tour, we are making believe that we are looking at two rooms (we are)
that have never been occupied and will be fresh and new and she will get to
reside in one of them. Blatantly untrue,
the place has been open for 3 years.
They just need to get the one in the room out so we can move her
in. Luckily she is gullible as shit!
When can we move in, we say?
By June 15th for sure they say. OK!!
That’s super. Big now switches
from we have to do something mode to full on dread of cleaning out her house
and getting rid of everything. Estate
sale to come….
So MIL has been in her best performance mode of poor me and
I don’t want to be here alone and my stomach hurts and I gagged once and, and,
and. The requisite torture for us to
endure for considering putting her somewhere.
Finally, Big tells her she’s going to need to suck it up because if the
nurse who will come to examine her from the ALF says her level of care is
greater than they can do for assisted living, they will decline her. Then he tells her she’s going somewhere. The very fancy ALF that we have her believing
is part of the Country Club compound OR a nursing home. It simply isn’t possible to keep her home any
longer. Oddly, she started feeling
better.
Every night either myself or Big go to MIL’s house and clean
up the mess that has accumulated all day, get her house ready for the next
day. Set out the things she needs for
breakfast, get her water ready for her tea, blah, blah, blah…you get the
drift. We typically flip flop days
according to who is getting off of work later.
We have switched roles, he and I.
He is calm and trying to deal with her and I have hit my limit and want
to jump off of our balcony and just end it all.
The ladies at my work all have work phones. ALL of them have the same ringtone on their
work phones. It happens to be the one
that I have for MIL. Every time a phone
rings in the office its that same damned tone!
My shoulders bunch, my eyes start to twitch and if you are close you can
see the beginnings of a growling lioness.
Like ready to eat the poacher of rhino’s lioness. Bless her. Had to change that tone!
We don’t get to go into the ALF by the 15th. The person in the room MIL will be in is
moving to their memory care unit and the family is dragging their feet moving
her. This is my version of events. I feel certain they are just like us and
their lives are just Washington DC suckfest like all the rest of us. So the new date is 6/28.
Flashback: we have had a number of times where we have lost
power and MIL has been stuck in her recliner (electric lift recliner) and we
have had to get her out of it. She blows
through a 350# weight limit chair about one per year. Turns out they aren’t meant to be in 22 hours
a day. Who knew? Anyway we now get to last night…..
It’s a Wednesday like any other. I get to MIL’s and she is sitting in her
recliner with it all the way up to lift her out. I figure she’s getting up. NOPE.
The controller does nothing. It’s
a road to nowhere. The chair is dead.
Laz-y-Boy doesn’t have in any stock here in
Gainesville. That’s not a thing. We bought the extended warranty as it turns
out! Yeah us! The warrantee requires multiple hoops to jump
through. None of them equaling a quick
fix. Luckily her very expensive tempeurpedic
bed that adjusts is still here. Here are
the options. By options I mean one
option. I help her in and out of the
very expensive bed meaning I sleep here because she can’t get in and out on her
own and she has to pee about every 10 minutes ala diuretics. How will I accomplish this, you ask? Well, my younger daughter just moved and for
some reason brought our air mattress home.
So I go get the air mattress and set up in the bedroom. She in the bed, me in the air. Last night was night 1. Tonight is 2.
Tomorrow will be 3. Saturday she
will have a new chair altogether and then we will have a spare because 22 hours
a day in said chair.
Big comes over to take care of MIL tonight. She has had to sit upright all day moving
from one chair to another in her sitting room.
She says to Big that she hasn’t had a nap all day and she is just so
tired. He says, well how do you think Debbie (*twitch*) is doing today, she was with you up and down all night and she has to
work. AND there was a traffic accident
on Rt. 15 and it took her 2.5 hours to get there. She says to him….well for her it was like she
was camping. He says yes, camping, a
vacation really. One where she doesn’t
sleep and has to haul you in and out of the bed. Camping.
So tonight is night 2 of camping. I just have to get through 3 days of camping
and about 14 days, moving things, pitching things and getting her in the
joint. In.
Ask my kids. Camping
is my best all time thing. Best. It’s off to the air mattress I go.
