Just Pass Me By

I’ve wrote about my struggles in the past of caring for my husband dad, who has Alzheimer’s and dementia. Dad does things which is hard not to let it upset me, and sometimes worries me. Lately dad been a lot of the playing the victim card on people. My husband and I do not hurt him or harm him. He been refusing to wear his hearing aids so he doesn’t understand what being told to him, and then gets mad when we tell him put them in. I went to grab his hearing aids to put them in and he acted as if I was gonna inflict pain on him. I have never hit him or came close to it. Neither has my husband, yet dad acts like we do horrible things. This concerns me because we would never do anything to him.
The worst we do is make him drink 3 bottles of water a day, and eat healthy, put his hearing aids in and walk with his cane. I wish their was medical malpractice insurance illinois for caring for family some days. I am studying to be a counselor and taking practicum and have to have liability insurance. which is amazing. I am not working with clients yet. Oh well back to the topic.
Dad has lived with us for a few years now. Dealing with him becomes more and more like dealing with a child. He takes the couch pillow and puts them over the dog to keep her from getting cold. He use far to much toilet paper and feeds the animals. Everything he does to cause a mess I am the benefactor of it. I have to clean it up. When he lies to people my husband and I have to explain the issues. He been doing a lot of sundowning or trying too but we keep him on a sleep schedule. I love my husband dad but somedays it is hard to deal with, I love him but his ploy for sympathy is frustrating. Can’t he understand people will like him and care about him even if he in a good home, with people who love and care and simply want the best for him.
Lately he been doing the I am not gonna use my cane, and i am gonna full all over the place and get a bruise on my forehead because I refuse to walk with my cane. Then he get angry at me when I tell him to use his cane.
Recently we have started to have to tell him when to go to the bathroom because his brain isn’t receiving the message of I have to go to the bathroom. So he have accidents on the couch or his bed but he won’t tell us when it happens. He tries to hid it from us then when I find it I have to deal with it. This is a ugly thing for anyone to have and I hate watching my husband dad go through this, it heart breaking. I don’t know how to keep from feeling angry, sad and a bunch of other feelings when dad in a episode.

I am so tried of dad plugging the toilet this time it was bad enough for maintenance to come and pull up the rug in the hallway. I wonder how much toilet paper one man needs, geesh I am a woman and use less. They had came right away when I called well within a hour. I don’t have a problem with it taking some time. I am proud of my apartment manager they have done good. They came in fix the toilet so dad could use the one he needed. The next day they sent in the carpet cleaners and they cleaned my carpet up. They also sent someone to replace the mat under the carpet. Now I have a nice clean floor..
I am impressed with how quickly things are responded to in my old apartment it would not have happened that quickly. You’d think everyday is Boxing Day a national holiday for some.
I am glad maintenance doesn’t charge to come and help.

Okay, I am now sick of Occupy Portland and the whole movement. Okay you want to complain about no jobs, guess what find work, create your own income. Another thing the police here have been tolerate and kind, and haven’t done anything yet that have been aggressive. However watching the news I see how a peaceful group isn’t exactly peaceful. I am annoyed. I have been with out work for a while now, however I do not blame the banks. It not the cooperate worlds fault I am not working, or that its not easy for me to find a job. I am so sick of able bodied adult crying over no work but being to lazy to actually try to earn money and would rather do protest and riots to get what they want! What has pissed me off, is them taking the US flag and hanging it upside down, shoot they lucky to live in this country others would kill them and be done with it! Not that I think death is the right way to go.

So lets see its the middle of the months and these guys have caused banks to need to close down. I wonder if they realize many people get paid around now, who actually work for their money and living. Banks are people at least those who work there are and they don’t deserved to be threatened because they are better off then us. You want to have money go find a way to earn and stop causing trouble for people already in their career. Seriously we need the occupy movement almost as badly as a whole in our head. They are like mold black & mild and need to be cleaned up!

I guess I am annoyed because this movement has been allowed to cause damage to several of our parks in Portland, push around police officers, and show general disrespect for people and our country. I get it there are people making money who are far better off then us poor people but do they realize how many of these banks they have closed for the day actually donate to different causes or at least their employees do. So hey how about we all stop working and force the rich to take care of us sounds like a good plan NOT!

We want to make money I suggest we find a job, and work our way up the cooperate later. That not for me though. I will continue working on my education so I can meet my end goal. You know to me the only thing that matters is having a rough over my head, enough food to eat and the rest who cares. There are plenty of services in Portland for homeless people, just like many other states. At least Portland has more temperate weather to deal with.

So I say we get these Occupy people of the streets and allow the banks and cooperate businesses in the area to go back to work. And my suggestion is that Occupy Portland find some job or work. I am sure they have many talents in the group, and maybe if they focused on that it be better then making other suffer because life is not fair. Yep Life is not fair, but we have to deal with the hand we are dealt!

Dad is driving us nuts. Today he couldn’t stop telling us how we could only be gone for 4 hours. Yeah we know clearly that we can’t be gone that long because he can’t take care of himself. Even leaving him for a couple hours makes us nervous. He keeps asking question after question the only quest he hasn’t asked us is how to get longer eyelashes , but has asked how to clean his face. He asks about when his money will come at least 4 times a day. Asks if hubby and I will go for a walk at least 6 times a day and won’t leave me alone long enough to get my homework completed.
He fed the animals yet again, after tell him not to feed them so the dog is puking and the cat has the poohs.

Today I took shadow out for her walk, she a good little girl. I think I have done great training her, she hasn’t tried to jump on any one for quiet awhile. She is a loving dog but when she first moved in she wasn’t potty trained, had no leash walking manners. Now she walks nicely for me on the leash, still barks at other dogs but she not out of control in it. She better at greeting fellow dogs, and behaves nicely. She still need some reminders. I have her even trainned to walk around the couch and wait for the command up on the couch. I have worked hard with her to teach her how to be a good dog. At least she never gone after my shoes, I couldn’t imagine the mess the zamberlan boots would make if she started chewing on my boots.
She is still playful and wants lots of love.

I have to feel bad for my big sis, she called me today. I am normally a early raiser but lately I haven’t been sleeping good. When dad is up I am up, which means I don’t always sleep much. When i finally do get to sleep while he sleeping I am so tired I sleep till almost noon. Normally I used to be up no later then 9am, it has changed a lot for me it seems. My husband is up most nights working so he can’t make sure dad doesn’t wander about so it on me. I don’t mind at all. You do what you need to for family. Mom asked me today why hubby doesn’t stay with dad at night when he up and I need sleep. Hubby sleep through anything and if dad wander out the door I want him to be stopped so he does not get harmed.
Dad sleep last night but I was very tired today. Finally my face cleaner came in the mail yesterday from MN, I am so glad I won’t need to get some argan oil for skin and try it now. the stuff I had was drying me out and making me itchy.

I learned something new today. I have always been allergic to MSG I can’t eat it. It causes me respiratory troubles, stomach aches and other unpleasant things. I found out tonight that MSG has gluten in it which means I can not eat it at all. I have not know watch spices closer, and other things I tend to like. If it has any MSG in it I need to pass it up. We went out to eat tonight, needed to get a dad out of the house. He was a little grumpy, so I figured his grumpiness was more to do with needing to get out and do something then just wanting to be a jerk.
We stopped in at our little mexican place. I was talking to them about needing to be gluten free. He was able to tell me not to eat the sour cream there because it had MSG in it. Now this answers why I gotten a few blisters in my mouth after eating it. I am glad he told me about it. I never realized msg is a can’t have it at all. It hard to avoid it nearly impossible.

Dad has been frustrating me. I understand he needs to get up and go pee, I understand he might have needs in the middle of the night. I don’t mind if he tells me he has a need, especially when he staring at me and I ask him What do you need. What’s wrong. I get annoyed when he tells me after I finally fedup with trying to get some sleep that he was in pain all night his legs hurt. Well why didn’t you ask me for something. I was on my computer till 3Am and then waiting for the stupid Cable box to turn off which it never did. I finally fall asleep and got 2 hours of sleep for him to wake me up. I hardly get a full night sleep, so I get grumpy becuase I can not take naps during the day. Only naps I get is when I am sick, other wise I simply don’t fall asleep well.
Today when he started complaining at me about his pain, I told him I didn’t want to hear it because he could have asked for meds. He often does not tell us what he wants or needs and then get mad at us when we are not mind readers. It not like I have a mobile cell booster in my brain that connects me to everyone needs. Yes I have empathy, sometimes I can tell if he not feeling the best. But how am I supposed to fix it if he don’t tell me what wrong when I ask or what he needs when I ask. He ask for donuts and popcorn but not meds for pain.
Today he told me, find him somewhere else to live. I told him fine you can go to a home, you ungrateful little grunt. He can’t take care of his self, I have to make sure he takes his meds, takes a bath, puts clean clothes on. It like dealing with a 2 year old child, except he mostly potty trained. He won’t even tell me if he gotta go potty while out then want to stay there when he has an accident and get mad at me and hubby when we tell him no we need to go home and change. I know he got Alzheimer but it still hard not to let some of the things that happen bug me. This weekend he ended up in the hospital for dehydration even though I been giving him water. Sometimes I feel like I have failed at my duty to protect him, but as I say you can lead a horse to water but if they aren’t gonna drink it nothing you can do.

Last night dad became unresponsive. It was very stressful. I called 911 and I simply took charge of the situation until the EMT got here. My husband tried to open the screen door and it fall off, his way was to try to put the thing back on. It doesn’t work well anyways and well its to small for our patio window. My husband got more worried about the cat sneaking out, I worried more about the dog because she tends to take advantage of things. Otis hid under the coach. You know you can lead a horse to water but if it does not want to drink it won’t and dad is much the same way.
I mean we don’t need adult diapers yet but he complains about needing to drink three bottles of water a day. Then he ends up in the hospital for not drinking water then he acts like he doesn’t know what happened. Today he was talking about gee what happened to me last night. Well the hospital gave you a gallon of water and you were fine. I mean we make sure he gets his two bottle of waters a day, now we need to be stricter with him and make sure he gets at least 3 bottles of water.

We both got worried we might lose him. I responded to stress by telling my husband to leave the door alone, because it can’t be fixed right now. The hardest thing when this happened I knew I could not call my grandma who normally is there for me when I am feeling stressed and overwhelmed. So the lesson is drink enough water, eat right and try to be happy.

Eating gluten-free is very expensive. Some days I wish I could go back to eating wheat but I know that would be very bad. It is amazing the price different between wheat products and gluten free products. I wonder if it will ever changed, and gluten free becomes about the same. I will need to look at coupons by dropdowndeals.com it seems they have many different option of coupons. They have things ranging from food to clothing to other items I use daily.
I guess I need to start planning my grocery shopping a little better and allow time to find the coupons I need or desire for different food products. Shoot I could even look for clothing this way. Next time I go to buy a DVD I might see if I can get a coupon to cut down the cost of it. Why pay full price when a coupon can take off some of the cost.