Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Where's Daddy Hawk Been?

Inquiring minds, or at least Cederq, expressed some mild concern that we here at Preachers and Horse Thieves had fled the coop for the dark side and forgot to turn off the lights or leave a forwarding address. Such is not the case. 

Although, he mentioned something about cookies AND pie...might have to investigate that a little further.

Life, as usual, has stampeded through my free time and taken what little extra bandwidth I had set aside for blogging for a glorious white water rafting adventure down the toilet bowl. 

The main reason behind all of this has been the rapid decline of The Queen's mum, Oma. As reported in previous updates, Oma has been developing a case of Alzheimer's for quite some time now. She was formally diagnosed in September with "Stage 6 Dementia/Alzheimer's". At that time, she was still able to walk relatively well, unassisted for normal distances to/from parking lots, etc. She would still feed herself for the most part. 

Now...sheesh. Wow. You would not recognize her from September to now. She is homebound now, unable to stand or walk without assistance, and she is forgetting to swallow her food. The OMA we knew is gone. In late December, I burned several days of vacation time to get home health aides set up, discuss funeral arrangements and finally get her approved for hospice. The hospice folks have been wonderful. They even came to the house on New Year's Day to do the formal assessment so that I wouldn't have to take another day off from work. 

There is a lot of internal family drama that would be very cathartic to write about but which would probably bore you to tears and only wind up widening the rift into a gulf. As I told The Queen the other day, I will stand before God on Judgment Day to answer for my mistakes. How I've handled the care of her parents won't be one of them. Others in the family will have some answering to do. That's  all that needs to be said about that in this forum. 

So, I haven't gone anywhere. I promise I will give this blog a proper shut down if it ever comes to that. Due to higher priorities, posting will remain light with scattered bursts of my usual drivel and humor when possible as The Queen and I are handling the majority of the care giving with hospice assistance. 

6 comments:

  1. My prayers for you and yours. I understand somewhat. I had a similar situation with my (at that time) mother-in-law. She was a wonderful person. I became her primary care giver while her family never darkened the doorway.

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    1. JPD, bless you for doing what others would not. People ignore the Fifth Commandment at their peril.

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  2. Oh man I can relate to that what you are going through. I was the primary care giver to both my mom and dad back in 2007 when they both died within four months of each other. Being a retired nurse I felt it my duty and privilege to provide the nursing they needed. Hospice was a God-Send, I can't say enough about them. Of five other sibling, two could be counted on to help, like you enough said about that. Then after they died holy hell broke out as I was the executor of the estate and trustee of the Family Trust. Again, it was the gang of three... You can imagine the drama. Take care of family and your self and the wife unit,, my prayers for strength and purity in your troubled times and come back with your wit and humor restored, we will wait patiently as we know of your travails. As for pie, it was decided that those of us that weren't too keen on cookies another incentive was developed and brought forth, pie, many flavors and with ice cream.

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    1. Cederq, I am all in for the cookies, pie and ice cream. Bless you too for doing what needed to be done. I, too, am the executor for both my in-laws. So far, there has been no friction on that point; however, we shall see what the true colors are when it's time to actually act on the will that's in place.

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  3. Sending prayers, hugs, good thoughts, and LOTS of patience your way for both you and The Queen. Family can be a major pain. I see it every day at work. Talk to your Hospice nurses--lots of time they can shoulder the blame for decisions that have to be made, and that can keep you from being the bad guy. At least some of the time. Touch back here when you can--we will be here. Alzheimer's truly sucks!!

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  4. Suz, thank you for the prayers and hugs. We have been leaning on Hospice quite a bit. They have an entire team including a social worker and chaplain. They have all been great, and they did an excellent job of explaining reality to one family member who seems to think that "putting them in a home" is the best option. Haven't heard a peep out that mouth since.

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