7/9/08
Yesterday was another petty boring day where I barely left the house at all except to go for a walk in the morning and the evening. I called Sandy while I was walking during the evening. Cathy called in the morning to see how things were going.
My mother was starting to bloat up. By last night she looked like she was ready to give birth to a basketball. The nurse came and said to increase Dad’s time release morphine to 2 pills 3 x per day at 6 a.m, 2 p.m. and 10 p.m., so I started that at 2 p.m. yesterday. Then it seemed like he was restless after that. He was up and down a lot. Last night he said he didn’t feel good but he couldn’t exactly pinpoint in what way he didn’t feel good. He can still get to the back bathroom on his own, but he holds onto things more and needs a hand to get himself up sometimes, like off the bed. Sometimes I go in there and he doesn’t have his oxygen on. I tell him to put it on, but I think by the time he gets back in there he forgets.
Around lunchtime, Mom made him eat some roast pork and gravy and mashed potatoes, which I don’t think he wanted. But she nagged him to finish the potatoes. He’s pretty good about eating his raisin bran and prunes and milk for breakfast, and he’s been eating cherry pie and vanilla ice cream for supper. Not much nutrition, but better than nothing, I guess.
So this morning Mom got up and she was still swollen up and said she felt horrible. Roll of eyes. Such a whiner. She ate some prunes. I went for a walk and by the time I got back she’d had big b.m. I joked with Sandy last night that maybe I’d stick a pin in her and let all the hot air out.
I’ve decided I’m not heartless. I’m realistic and practical. Dispassionate, maybe. People like Kevin and Mom allow themselves to be ruled by emotion. There’s no balance. I can be sympathetic and empathetic, but when people don’t do anything to take care of themselves, to take the reins of their own lives and health and well-being, then I wonder why I should help them when they won’t help themselves. If you’ve done everything you can to aid your own situation and you still need help, I’m there. But if you’ve sat on your ass and done nothing and then you want someone to bail you out, forget it. I’ve got no sympathy for you and I’m sure less inclined to help.
I will be shocked if Dad is strong enough to get to Dr. Miller on the 17th, but it could happen. I hope it does. Every day he seems to struggle a little more and things seem harder for him because he’s getting so weak from being in bed so much.
He’s sleeping now since I gave him his meds at 6 a.m. It’s about 9:30.
Frankly, I can’t wait to get out of here and perhaps, after Mom and Dad are gone, I won’t ever come back. Can’t think of a reason why I would. And I’d be happy not to. This town is half-dead, or maybe ¾ dead and it seems like the people who live here are getting the life sucked out of them along with the town. It’s like there’s no energy here. Everyone’s so content to sort of fade away slowly just like the town itself.
It is so sad to see all the abandoned houses. They proclaim “No one cares” loudly every time you walk by one. And some of them look like they could be pretty cool if anyone wanted to put a little time and effort into them. I guess people just walk away from them. You can see how stuff is still there, grills, toys, Christmas lights, stuff like that. Like they moved out in the middle of the night and couldn’t take all their stuff with them.
Some of them have For Rent signs, but they don’t look like anywhere anyone would want to live.
Mom said Steve called and he got to Tucson okay and has to go back to work tomorrow. I bet he’s sick of making that drive after doing it twice in about a month.
I cleaned out the refrigerator some today. Mom forgets what’s in there. Why she saves all that take-out food is beyond me. No one is going to eat it. Saucers with unfinished chocolate pie on them have sitting there for two days. You know they aren’t going to eat it. Some unidentifiable stuff in the very back, black with mold. Mushy decaying salad. I dumped it all before she got out to the kitchen. She just keeps shoving stuff back and putting new stuff in, so she has no idea what’s in there. She said Maxine’s cherry pie was all gone, but I found a piece on a saucer in there, which she had told me there was one piece left earlier on the same day she told me it was all gone.
#caregiving #parents #dying
