All I wanna do

Its been a rough year. Unemployment, stroke, pneumonia, poverty, cold, cold winter. It has been a hard year.

Yesterday, I started thinking about what all was going on this time last year. We had removed dad from Vivian's care, and he was staying with Sandy and us. He started out full time at Sandy's, and I would go to her house and sit with him there during the day. That would give Sandy time to do everything else she needed to do. After a few weeks of sitting at her house all day, I decided I would go get him and bring him to our house. In the beginning, it would just be for the day, but it didn't take long before he was spending one night, then two. If everything was going good, he would stay a 3rd night with us, and then we would take him back to Sandy's. That system worked out pretty good.

Daddy hated taking his medicine. Some days he would take it without any resistance, but other days, we would just about have to pry his jaws open to get it in his mouth, and on those days, he would usually spit it out anyway. Then I had a stoke of genius. I would get his breakfast ready and have it sitting in front of him. Then, I would put all of his medicine in a spoon, and spoon-feed his medicine. I never had any more problems getting him to take his meds.

Alzheimer's patients experience what is called 'sundowner's syndrome. That is when the sun goes down, he wakes up. On a good day, he would go to bed about 7 or 8pm. We slept upstairs, and had his bedroom downstairs. So to make sure we knew if he got up, we put an alarm on his door, so if it opened a chime went off.

One night, he was up every hour. I would just get to sleep and the door alarm would go off. That was a long night. About 6am, I was aggrivated and exhausted. I called Sandy and told her to get up because I was bringing him back to her.

We realized then, we were not doing him any favors by trying to take care of him ourselves and made the difficult decision to put him in a nursing home.

Getting someone in a nursing home just about takes an act of congress! The social worker said she found a place in Oneonta. So we got him admitted, and the second night he was there, I get a call from Sandy saying the hosptial said someone had to come down there and stay with him because he was up and all over the place, and they didn't have the staff to sit with him and keep him in his room. The roaming wasn't a problem within itself, but he was wandering into other people's rooms - women's rooms and that was a problem. Sandy called me and asked if I could go down there. After being there for about an hour, he went to sleep and slept tru the rest of the night. I stayed just in case.

The next night, I got another call to go down there for the same reason. Patrick went with me that night and that was a rough night indeed. He would take the bed covers and throw them like he was casting a net. He would drag them back and do it again ... and again ... and again. This went on for hours. He also pulled and tugged at his locator bracelet until he got that off.

The aggrivating thing about this whole situation was we were paying them to take care of him. They said they did not have the staff to supervise him all the time, and I understood that. But when I saw the "staff" sitting around reading magazines and texting on their blackberries I was pissed.

The hospital had a security system on the doors that would alarm when one of the patients tried to leave. But somehow, dad found a door in the kitchen that was not monitored and got out. Just so happened, someone saw him walk out and they were able to get him back before he got away.

The last night I was there, I called Sandy in the middle of the night to come help because I was at my witts end. She and Johnny came and instead of staying, they brought him home. He stayed at our house that night.

The next day, they took him to Princeton Baptist hospital in Birmingham where they were going to try and adjust his meds so he would sleep at night like he was supposed to.

He was there about this time last year.

He was there three weeks before they found a bed for him in a different nursing home in Birmingham. This was a completely locked down unit where you had to have a code to get in or out. They suggested that we not visit for several days until he got used to the place.

Three days later, they could not get him to wake up one morning and had to send him to the hospital. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, and passed a few days later.

April 13th will be the first anniversary of his death.

After that is when we hit our financial disaster. Since then, all we have been able to do is barely get by. No recreation, no eating out other than the occasional burger from the .99 cent menu. The only place we go is the grocery store, DR's appts, and now physical therapy. Even getting out in the car and just driving thru town is really not an option because we need to conserve gas for the necessities.

I finally went back to work, then Patrick had his stroke. We got thru the worst of that and I went back to DirecTV and was back 5 or 6 weeks before Patrick went back in he hospital with pneumonia.

I found a job at Sante Fe working in the Kitchen, but was only getting less than 20 hours a week. Last Friday night, I finally worked an 8 hour shift - with one 10 min break. I quickly remembered why I walked away from the restaurant business in the first place. But when I got home, Patrick was in the tub and couldn't get up and had been sitting there for a couple of hours because he could not get to the phone. I realized then that It was still too early for me to try and work and take care of him.

Hopefully, June is when he will start receiving his long term disability benefit again and our income will double. Hopefully, he will continue to get stronger and more independant between now and then. Hopefully, I can find a job that is close to home that I will like and will pay decent.

Hopefully.

Once he starts getting his LTD, we can start to get our stuff out of hock, pay back our friends that we have had to borrow money from, and pay off the check advance places where we have had to get loans. Hopefully, I can pay off Belhaven and start Snead in the fall in their cosmetology program. Hopefully, we can start working on this house and do some of the things we promised we would do.

After Dad passed and Vivian moved out, we moved in under the agreement that istead of paying rent, we would keep he place up and fix it up to get ready to sell. Because we have had such a rough time financially, we haven't been able to do anything wiht the house like we promised. It wont take long to make up what we owe once we get started.

For now, not working. Broke. All I want to do is sleep. I guess there is nothing else to do, for now.