Well folks here I am in the ER after a 2 am ambulance ride with rapid afib. I am dealing with tough situations with two of my kids, and housing instability ( temporary) , not just my mother, and this is a lesson in stress management. I did Tai Chi twice yesterday but I guess it didn’t do the trick! We do indeed need to take care of ourselves. I try to pay attention to that but sometimes things just happen that are out of our control. Take care!
@compmom, hang in there. I can sure relate.
I’ll be co-teaching a NAMI class for family members of ill people that starts tonight. I know the class members will assume I have my stuff together and everything is going smoothly. Ha! It’s a hard balancing act. I don’t want to discourage them but I need to be realistic at the same time.
@compmom. Please take care of yourself as well as you can. Hope you are feeling better soon.
@compmom - I’m so sorry! I hope you focus on some self care. I know transitions are very hard for our family members with memory issues but maybe a skilled nursing facility would be the right place for your mom at this point. It sounds like the colostomy and skin care are just too much for the AL to handle. It should not be falling on your shoulders!
@compmom - Oh, I am so sorry! I have no wisdom. You are juggling so many plates. Please take care of yourself.
@compmom know you don’t have time to deal with anything else but glad you are getting sorted out - putting on your own oxygen mask and all that. Sending good juju your way.
@compmom, I know it’s hard with kids and parents who need your wisdom and assistance, but hopefully this unforeseen timeout will give you time to recharge. You do so much for so many and it takes its toll. Feel better soon, sending good thoughts.
@compmom, so sorry to hear your latest news. Do the best you can for the people in your life, but don’t forget yourself. Easier said than done though.
@compmom sorry to hear about the AFib. Hopefully they can give you meds and get you back in order (is this something you’ve had before?)
It’s so, so hard to put ourselves first in these situations. I am sure intellectually you know you have to take care of yourself, but then you have all sorts of things creaming for your attention and it is hard to compartmentalize.
What would happen re: your mom if you were not able to do what you do? This is an exercise I do with myself some times. “What if I was a surgeon and could not just drop everything when the AL called?” “What if my job entailed travel and I had to be out of town for 3 days?” etc
@compmom thinking of you and your family XO
Thanks all. I am out of the hospital and doing fine. I met with the senior center director today for ideas on getting backup help with the colostomy. Here is how ridiculous I can be:
-I told the doctor in the ER that I had to leave so I could change my mother’s bag
-I monitored my daughter’s blood sugars on my phone while in the ER and called her twice about lows while she was sleeping
-worst or funniest of all, I got a call from a resource important in my other daughter’s legal case, and talked to the resource while the nurses were taking blood. I told the resource I could not take notes at that time (nurses had my arm!)and scheduled a follow-up next week
I have housing issues related to my mom, and also the rental market here. I have a winter rental October 1 and am staying with a friend whose house is moldy. She has no cell coverage so I am conducting research for my daughter’s legal case at the AL while my mother reads the same paper over and over again next to me!!
Stress should go down soon. And you never know, the seltzer I drank before bed (against policy for me) may have set off the arrhythmia. We blame things on stress but I have been taking days to chill and do taichi and art and a little bit of nothing. Sometimes we have random physiological issues.
So much @compmom. Reading through, I hope you are not staying at the moldy house and your friend is instead, planning on living with you. My husband’s side of the family is susceptible to mold toxicity. I don’t seem to have the genetics, but my daughter and sister in law have been dealing with symptoms for about 3 years that are improved once leaving their moldy houses.
I’m glad they were able to get your rate controlled. I know you mentioned in the past you have a-fib. Susceptibility is also genetic. But surely stress did play a role in the rapid heart rate. Maybe I need to rethink my seltzer I drink before bed.
Not sure what to suggest but you need some “you” time. No the ER incident doesn’t count… Lol ?. Glad your doing well.
ha ha on the ER down time. Anyone remember relaxing at the dentists when the kids were young? That was my down time and my dentist would tease me about it!
I swear seltzer sometimes leaves a bubble in my chest if I lie down too soon afterward and it seems like there was air in my chest that was kind of pressing on my heart. That may sound strange but wanted to clarify the comment. I may have something with a complicated name that causes me to retain air in my lower esophagus.
So @GTalum , go ahead and have seltzer because it probably won’t bother you!
I am only in the moldy house for a few days. My room is also near the oil tank which must be leaking because there are fumes. Ugh. Tomorrow I move into a place by myself- yay!
I am working really hard on a legal case for my youngest. The lawyer has me doing all the research (saves money) and because it is my kid, I feel some pressure.
I succeeded in getting the hernia belt on today. My mother doesn’t understand it but…made an appointment with the surgeon to discuss options, an appt. with cardiologist, and saw PCP with her today. Ducks in a row for her.
I am seeing my PCP’s NP next week and will discuss my two recent ER visits. If I can I am going to find a therapist again. My mother’s AL director actually sent out a memo on counseling services for family after their annual survey showed a need.
Thanks all!
Here is my vent which will hopefully make you smile at some point. My mom has had a rough few days, according to the nurse at her MC place. She is convinced my dad is having an affair with another MC resident. She is so mad at him, she asked to be seated at another table. She didn’t eat yesterday because she is so “broken-hearted” she told them.
So I went over to visit. She insists that he no longer lives in their room (his bed is literally three feet from hers) and that he doesn’t sleep there. My dad has cognitive issues too, so unfortunately I can’t give him strategies to manage this situation. He is just flummoxed over his wife being mean to him.
The funny thing is, he is so devoted to her, he follows her around like a puppy dog and when she is out of sight or out of the facility for an appointment, he is frantic that he can’t see her.
I can’t figure out what is really behind her anxiety. They have always had a strong marriage and pre-stroke she never said anything like this about dad. I wonder if she feels abandoned because she is in MC and has given up so much independence?
I agreed to let them have a psychiatry consult (she already has a geriatric psychologist) in case there is something else they can do to relieve her anxiety.
I have to smile about it otherwise I will cry 
My mom also thinks my dad is having an affair… with his sister. If his sister brings him to visit (my dad doesn’t drive), they have to enter and leave separately otherwise my mom gets very upset. I have another friend whose mom thinks the same thing except her dad has been dead over a decade :(. I’m not sure why but it seems common in people with dementia.
One of my closest friends called me out of the blue, to tell me that her husband had been visiting a house of prostitution, and was having sex with a 19-year-old prostitute. I was horrified, because this man had always, always been the epitome of staunch, upright Christian man. I got my office staff who live in the area my friend (Y) had told me about out searching for said bad place; they thought they found the house. This went on for quite a while, until her stories started getting too far-fetched. I started to call her on some of the outrageous stuff, but she was firm in her beliefs. We didn’t talk for a while, I got busy, so I called her around Christmas; she said she had company and would call me back the next day. She didn’t, I forgot (and I really, really didn’t want to hear any more terrible tales about her late husband; he died of Alzheimer’s during the several months this conversation was going on). Then I tried to call and the number had been disconnected, so I got in touch with one of her kids; she had had a stroke right after the first of the year, and had died.
I talked to her daughter and told her that I felt so horrible about not having called Y but that I couldn’t handle the stories about her father. Daughter reminded me that her mother had had Parkinson’s; I had forgotten it because it came on late in her life. She said that the Parkinson’s had caused her mother to think these things, and that she was so sad her mother had died a bitter, angry person.
This long story is just to show that when a person with some kind of mental dementia starts with what seems to be an outrageous story that is very real to them, it can easily also be attributed to a physical issue.
Wow. Someone needs to write a book with some of these poignant stories. I agree sometime they make us laugh, and cry at the same time. Some don’t even do that.
My mother’s colostomy hernia is soooo HUGE. I think her entire intestine is pushing up in those few square inches under the stoma. Anyone else dealing with this? PM me!
With dementia, she doesn’t understand what it is and calls to ask me “what is this big thing”? She doesn’t understand the hernia belt either and we got in the first argument for a long time. I hate to say it, but a little negativity in our interaction got her to wear it, and she forgot we had argued.
At this point I realize i have to replace the emotion that lingers, even when she doesn’t remember the discussion. So I spent extra time with her, shopping, putting flowers out and ordered some clothes and she was happy again.
And agreed to the aide putting the belt on this morning.
Surgeon on Monday. Might be hospice on Tuesday!
My heart is behaving but now along with my mother’ MD appointments I have a few of my own. I am sensitive to meds and have low bp so there is really no point, but I have to go through the hoops.
Fall is here. I love cool evenings with tea and a blanket and a book. Hope you are all doing okay wherever you are.
My mother tripped on a chair leg, fell, and broke her hip at around 8 this morning. She called me, I called 911. Got to her building just as the ambulance was rolling out towards the hospital. By 5 PM she was in recovery after surgery to put a pin in her femur. By 6:30 PM she was settled in her room and lovingly kicked me out to get some dinner and rest.
It seems (my head is still spinning) they were able to get her through with sedation and spinal as opposed to general anesthetic. She’s always trying to talk doctors down, though, and today was no exception. Anesthesiologist is explaining the options and mom asks well how about a local? I blurt out what, like for a dental filling??? And the doc says “The surgeon is going to drill a hole in your leg. And shove a metal stick in there. No local.”
Also very helpful, though thankfully not applicable today, were the questions about resuscitation and life support that hospital staff went over with her. She emphatically and distinctly said she doesn’t want “to live on a machine.” I want to do right by her if it comes to this kind of decision, and I bless her for any clarity she gives me.
So DH and I went by her apartment and did a sweep. Made sure the stove was off, perishables stable, grabbed her file box with account info and other sensitive paperwork, got checkbooks, wallet, jewelry, insurance cards, brought all that to our place. I plan to go over her fridge thoroughly and purge, use, or freeze anything that won’t keep. Empty the trash. Check her mail (I have keys to apartment and mailbox). Any other suggestions for stabilizing things there while she’s in hospital and rehab?
OMG, @ houseChatte! I am sorry to hear that news. All I can think of is the standard hospital things. Take a notebook and keep notes because things get muddled after long days and stress. And don’t hesitate to be a squeeky wheel if everything isn’t done in the right order.
@compmom hope your heart settled down and you are out of the bad house. and you had time to breath and wash your face.