Dead weight

Mom had a good brunch this morning — one egg over easy, a piece of toast made from Arnold's potato bread, about 4 ounces of apple juice with her morning meds, and about 6 ounces of an 8-ounce BOOST® drink. She refused to even try to sit up in bed to eat it, though, because she said she was hurting too badly. So, I stood beside the bed and fed it to her, bite by bite, as if I were Mama Bird feeding my baby bird. It was good to see her eating again, even if it had to be fed to her instead of her feeding it to herself.

There is no doubt that we need a Home Health Aide to assist in changing Mom each day. Whenever she wets her Depends® disposable underwear, it is always a two-hour ordeal — literally, no exaggeration — to wrestle Mom's pajamas & wet Depends® off her body, put on a clean set, and get her off the bed long enough to change the padding & sheets underneath her. No matter how we try to roll her over or lift her, she complains that the pain is so intense that it is "killing" her. She begs Dad and me to leave her alone and let her rest, but we have no intention of leaving her lying in pee-soaked clothing on a pee-soaked bed. It isn't sanitary, it isn't humane, and has to be cleaned-up and changed. She refuses to help in any way, so it is like lifting a dead weight. It is freaking ridiculous. So, on Monday, I am requesting the Home Health Aide, whether she likes it or not. It simply has to be done.

I got four of Mom's pills in her at suppertime, but she refused to open her mouth for the last few, or for any food whatsoever. She kept saying things like, "Give me a minute" and "Don't rush me!" but never complied. So, all the food & drink she had today was what she had at brunch. Sheesh. 

Then one of her brothers calls and Dad hands the phone to Mom. She looks at it for a moment like she doesn't know what to do with it, puts it to her ear and says nothing. Dad lets her know that the cordless phone is turned on and all she has to do is say, "Hello." She snarls at Dad, "I know what to do with a phone!" She finally greets her brother, pauses a moment while he asks about her, and then she says, "Oh, I'm doing okay." 

The doorbell rang late in the afternoon and a lady from the church (Ellie Gardiner) had stopped by with a big container of soup, a sleeve of crackers, and four slices of homemade pound cake. Wow! I already had supper going, so I will fix the soup for our lunch tomorrow.

Now some snippets of Life with Dad...

 Dad lost his dentures. He told me this morning that while I was at the pharmacy yesterday getting Mom's discharge prescriptions filled, his dentures were bothering him. So, he took them out, wrapped them in a paper towel, and placed them on a table in the hospital room. Since I wasn't there to see him do this and remind him of them when we took Mom home, he left them behind. I immediately placed a phone call to the nurse's desk this morning in hopes that housekeeping had found them when the room was cleaned, but we never got a call back saying they had been found. Dad says he can't afford a new set. 

 Dad woke me up this morning coming through the living room on his way to church. I told him it was Saturday, not Sunday. He was embarrassed that he had the days wrong, but our days have been so mixed-up lately with Mom in the hospital, that it's no wonder this happened. Heck, if my watch didn't tell me what day it was, I might have had it wrong, too.

 Dad has the annoying habit of waiting until I in the middle of something to want my help with something else. For example, he knew I was in the kitchen late this morning, preparing lunch for him and me while Mom was still asleep in bed. I was prepared to fix something different for her later when she woke. However, within five minutes of my having lunch ready for Dad and me, he goes into the bedroom, wakes Mom from her slumber, and then announces to me that Mom is ready to eat right then! He does this sort of thing so often that I decided to teach him a lesson. I immediately halted our lunch and began to prepare Mom's, take it back to the bedroom, and feed it to her while letting Dad know that I would finish fixing his lunch in an hour or so after Mom had been fed. 



A happy little butterfly, perched on the side of a white rose in a flower arrangement sent to Mom.




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