I'm tired of cooking/preparing 3 meals a day. It's just the two of us but boy oh boy can that woman eat!! She stays slimish, I get fattish. It's bad enough I do everything here much less start making her one thing and me the other. At times I feel guilty when I buy her fast food cuz of the nutritional value....not to mention I eat it too.
I hope you can keep it under control Golden and don't worry about your posts. We all understand. Stay strong.
Right now my immediate problem is one of my cats is having ongoing diarrhea issues. We've ruled out any worms or parasites. We've tried antibiotics and probiotics. That didn't help. Now we have him on a hydrolyzed protein diet. I'm praying it's just a food intolerance and this new diet will do the trick.
MsN and lu. Oh yes. So thankful I had the people here for advice and support.
cw and gershun. It’s the pits, isn’t it?You know they won’t change so you have to figure out how to protect yourself. Oh, where are the Waltons?
My whine is my eyes and the optometrist. He examined my eyes, showed me photos of my retina, mumbled geographic atrophy and tried to sell me $1800 worth of dry eye treatment. I did get a new prescription which doesn’t help much but no information or follow up though he told me I couldn’t drive anymore. I looked up geographic aatrophy and it indicates late stage macular degeneration and its the dry type. I gave them the needs assessment for the Handibus but haven’t got it back yet. I went to my dr who is sending me to a retinal clinic. I know there is no treatment I can still read though have to zoom. I need Rs help to fill out forms. This was unexpected but 2 major factors are age and genetics. Apparently about half of women my age have it and I believe one aunt did. I don’t like it, obviously, but only discovering it at this late stage has saved me some years of worrying about its progression. Judi Dench, move over.
If you see some weird spelling and punctuation in my posts, now you know why now you know why.
Sorry for your situation.
It truly has been a Godsend for me~
and there’s more related to the stupid IRA situation but I’m just too exhausted to go into it.
They sent instructions for some testing of our meter and different breakers.
We’ll see!
My last electric bill jumped over $100 from previous months so now we have to go throuugh some hoops to try to figure it out. Faulty meter, faulty appliance???.
And when the heck did I get so many bug bites?
I see a lot of dining room chairs and tables in used furniture shops.
You could do other work that pays better than seasonal secretary. So what if you don't have a dining room table and chairs. You've obviously got a good man who pays the lion's share of the bills if not all of them and I'm guessing he doesn't complain about it because you don't mention it. That's a lot more than a lot of people have. Many couples a lot younger than us are each working full-time jobs (if they can find them) and are living in tiny apartments that not only don't have dining rooms, they barely have space enough for kitchen table.
Your husband's relative has a bigger house and more than you. There's always going to be someone who has more (or less) than you do. That's the way of the world.
You think your degree in sociology was a mistake? No degree is a mistake. You enriched your mind and learned something. Maybe your degree hasn't been a money-maker for you, but that doesn't make it a mistake. A college degree is something to be proud of.
You're able to save $10,000 a year giving your mother showers. That's money in your pocket. Many people can't save a dime because they're living paycheck to paycheck. Your mother is in assisted living. You don't actually have to take on the responsibility for her because others are being paid to.
Just feeling another "whine moment" and typing my feelings out into the universe so I can get it off my chest...
Mom started acting different in 2017. Here we are in 2026, still slogging along. NINE LONG YEARS.
I'm 57. I'm not earning or saving any real money. I'm not building a career. (My sister is.)
I am saving $10,000 a year by giving mom her showers myself. She will run out of her house-sale money in 24 months. Mom was moved in June from memory care back to an assisted living room after the director did an assessment and decided she didn't qualify for memory care anymore. She's been behaving fine since spring. Like a lady with aphasia and apraxia from a stroke. I find it hard to believe that zyprexa is working this well. One little pill. Her hallucinations stopped. Only barely noticeable delusions are left. (She still thinks she's being filmed, and that people are having affairs.) No cussing, no rages, no babies living in her closet. It's been one year since her last ischemic stroke.
Today I drove the hour to mom's AL, put her in the car and drove 90 minutes to an eye surgeon who specializes in mature cataracts. (We live way out in the country where experienced doctors do not want to live. No golf courses.) Back when mom was in her 60's, an eye doctor told her to get cataract surgery and she refused. Well now she's going to have the surgery with a higher chance of complications. The doctor tells me the surgery will be worth it since it's extra hard taking care of a blind vascular dementia patient. He said they'll do one eye at a time, then do a follow-up the next day. That's four more times I'll drive for 5 hours. I am so tired. It doesn't help at all when people tell me "It could be worse" or "Linda has lung cancer, at least you're not in her shoes."
I was never much of an envious person until all this started happening and I realized I am close to retirement age and I don't own a dining room table or chairs yet. Our living room has a couch and one chair. I went to visit my husband's relative in her new house and her bed had an actual headboard, her kitchen had double ovens, and she had a vanity table, and her TWO living rooms had all kinds of seating. She actually has these things at her house called "parties".
I make $18 an hour doing seasonal secretarial work. My degree in sociology was a huge life mistake. I don't have the money to pay for a community college certificate in something like medical billing, and even if I did, all the job ads near me are asking for 1 to 2 years of experience. AND I don't really know if it would be wise to try to build a new career at 57, especially when I'm the one who has to leave work to show up for mom.
I'm just feeling bitter and envious and self-centered these days. I feel like a hundred thousand dollars should be dropped out of the sky on those of us who've had to caregive for more than 6 months. Then we could pay for a couple more years of assisted living and buy ourselves some daggone chairs.
(((Hugs)))
I’m just so depressed about it all. I have been walking with a black cloud over my head for the last five years.
Everything just fell apart.
My mother and her nails! I've tried clipping her fingernails and toenails three times and snipped her skin and she bled long all three times. Since she's on a blood thinner and my eyesight is bad, I've quit trying. She got on her facility's bus to go on their supervised trip to the nail salon one time. She liked it. They go monthly. The last time they went, she wouldn't go because she was grouchy or had a stomachache or something. She wants ME to work on her nails every time I visit. I tell her I am not a nail technician and she's just going to have to live with long nails. She gets grumpy. I already help her shower twice a week, I'm not going to file nails. She harps and harps and harps. For hours. "My nails. My nails. But my fingernails. See my nails? My nails are too long. I can't file my nails. You need to do my nails. My nails. My nails."
I'm just so tired and done with the dementia years. Nearing a decade. Caregiving is especially hard for someone who is put off by touching, eye contact, talking about emotions, etc. It's like prison. And YES I know it's hard for the person with dementia. I love it when people remind me to just be empathetic.
I try but hope I will be forgiven if I use the wrong term. If you are not working in the field you can miss the latest version.
I think terminology can become self serving.
My whine - I am just coming out of a couple of weeks of the worse FM flare ups I have had in years. No fun, but getting better now. I overdid it a couple of weeks ago which probably triggered it.
And I have to add grape tomatoes to my list of FODMAPs no-nos. I might get away with a couple of them a day - even maybe 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening. Same with strawberries! At least I can still eat chocolate!!!😊
Regarding the N word, I am shocked to find that ‘modern’ trendies object strongly to ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ - with ‘Uncle Tomism’ a well known insult. In fact:
1) It’s a wonderful book. I am proud to own it.
2) It was a major cause of the US Civil War and the emancipation of Ns.
3) It was common practice at the time to copy speech in spite of the assault on normal spelling. I find Kipling’s ‘Irish’ soldiers hard going and approaching unreadable.
Unless you only want to read 'new' books and talk to people who are up with the newest trends, it's good to have a sense of history.
Unless someone uses a term in a derogatory manner on purpose , I think we need to give people some slack . It is difficult to keep up with all the new terms .
Being understanding towards those innocently using an old term is important as well .
I’m all in favor of new terms when a new medical definition is made (eg for many mental issues), but not when it’s just ‘PC speak’. And then, I never did travel well on ‘nut case’ or ‘loony bin’.