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fatesfollyOkay, it's 1:42am by one clock and 1:49am by another and I'm having a panic attack.
I've just realized that I will be a primary care giver of my grandmother.
I chose not to have children. I didn't want to be tied down. But recent events have tied me down and I don't have a choice.
My grandmother is ninety one. The last of thirteen children. She had one child in 1936, my mother. She lost both her husband and her daughter in the span of one week 13.5 years ago. She's lived alone since then in a cute little one story condo in a quiet neighborhood. She's never been ill or hospitalized more than for out-patient procedures in the past 13.5 years. Last April, she had a stroke. It affected her left side. She can still walk and talk, but her grip's not that great. She has osteoporosis and has cracks and fissures in her spine. In the last years, she's lost 45 pounds without meaning to. In November, they diagnosed her with diabetes. She's always had minor tummy problems and she often chokes on her food. Therefore, every 9 months, she has her esophogus stretched. Recently, she's lost her apetite and cannot eat more than a tablespoon at a time. She went to the doctor on Monday for a three month check up and he put her in the hospital. He fed her both intraveneously and by mouth. She was placed on a high protein/high calorie diet. She was released on Friday.
It was discovered at some point just how little she eats. She does not cook anymore and what was thught to be small meals she cooked for herself was really cereal and cottage cheese, among a very few other things.
She has a companion during the day who is there 4-5 days a week. She comes at 9 and leaves at 1. She's very good. She's a family friend. She cooks breakfast and lunch and cleans and makes sure Granny doesn't need anything. She also drives Granny to her appointments... hair, doctor, etc. It will be my job to go in at night and fix her dinner and make sure she eats it. I will also need to stay long enough to allow her to take a bath as she does not trust herself in the tub without someone in the house.
Ok... that's the way it will be. Now for me.
I work a good 50 minutes to an hour away. I like my job mostly, but it is stressful. I have solid deadlines and people depending on me for different things. I work Monday through Friday from 8:30am until 5:00pm. I rarely leave at 5:00. Since starting the job in June, I can honestly say that the times I have left on time have numbered less than 25. I usually stay until 5:30, 6:00, or even 7:00 to get things done without the distractions of company, telephones or general interruptions. I'm a night owl whose mind starts about 6pm anyway.
Two weeks ago, Lee and I joined a gym. We swim together. I made it a point to leave work by at least 6pm so that I could be home by 7, get dressed in swimsuit and coverings, grab a towel, wake Lee up and get to the gym by 7:30. We'd swim for an hour and go home and we'd scavenge for food... or stop at Subway on the way home. We were home by 9, we'd eat, I'd do some household things, and lay out my clothes for the next day and fall into bed. It wasn't a great schedule, but I was exercising, and both of us were feeling good about exercising. On weekends, damn... I cannot think of a Saturday I've spent in Kinston. The job is so stressful, I usually want to get the hell out of dodge... going to Raleigh shopping, going to see Kitty, going to Wilmington to get a pedicure... I live the life of a childless woman. My house is a mess, but I need to decompress from what are usually stressful weeks.
So where does Granny come in? How do I feed her and look after her needs at night? How am I going to answer to my brother's expectation that I be there every night? Hell, he closes on his family's new house in Charleston, SC later this week. He's here for a week, lives at her house and when she came home on Friday, has spent most every waking moment with her, but he leaves tomorrow and won't return until mid-February. God, I'm already under pressure as a wife and a career person without caregiver attached to it. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't want to put her in a nursing home, but I didn't want this, either. He lives down there and pops in for care, while I'm left to rearrange my life completely.
There are just so many damn hours in the day and I don't do early ones. I hate mornings. I am an absolute grump in the mornings. I'm already like Elvis... I take one tylenol PM at night to wind down and HAVE to have caffiene in the morning to wake up. Plus, she doesn't need me then. My husband goes to work at 3:30am and so swimming in the morning wouldn't work.
And ask me how many freaking meals I cook a week anyway... On a good week? Three. And they're not high protein/ high calorie... if I cooked that and ate it, I'd be as big as a hotel. And if I tried to do it all... work, cook for her, wait while she bathed, tried to work out and eat with my husband..., would she know I was rushing her along? Because of the choking thing, she eats VERY slowly. And she's not jack rabbitt fast moving, either.
Lee's no help either. Grandparents are a foreign thing to him. And the entire time she was in the hospital last week, he went twice, once with me and once at my request.
I don't know what I'm going to do. It's like seeing the mountain before you and not knowing if you have the stamina to climb it or the time to do it before dark.
I know I have a duty, but I didn't sign up for it and only by virtue of the fact I wouldn't move am I straddled with it. I feel guilty for feeling this way, but I'm overwhelmed and scared and confused.
I've just realized that I will be a primary care giver of my grandmother.
I chose not to have children. I didn't want to be tied down. But recent events have tied me down and I don't have a choice.
My grandmother is ninety one. The last of thirteen children. She had one child in 1936, my mother. She lost both her husband and her daughter in the span of one week 13.5 years ago. She's lived alone since then in a cute little one story condo in a quiet neighborhood. She's never been ill or hospitalized more than for out-patient procedures in the past 13.5 years. Last April, she had a stroke. It affected her left side. She can still walk and talk, but her grip's not that great. She has osteoporosis and has cracks and fissures in her spine. In the last years, she's lost 45 pounds without meaning to. In November, they diagnosed her with diabetes. She's always had minor tummy problems and she often chokes on her food. Therefore, every 9 months, she has her esophogus stretched. Recently, she's lost her apetite and cannot eat more than a tablespoon at a time. She went to the doctor on Monday for a three month check up and he put her in the hospital. He fed her both intraveneously and by mouth. She was placed on a high protein/high calorie diet. She was released on Friday.
It was discovered at some point just how little she eats. She does not cook anymore and what was thught to be small meals she cooked for herself was really cereal and cottage cheese, among a very few other things.
She has a companion during the day who is there 4-5 days a week. She comes at 9 and leaves at 1. She's very good. She's a family friend. She cooks breakfast and lunch and cleans and makes sure Granny doesn't need anything. She also drives Granny to her appointments... hair, doctor, etc. It will be my job to go in at night and fix her dinner and make sure she eats it. I will also need to stay long enough to allow her to take a bath as she does not trust herself in the tub without someone in the house.
Ok... that's the way it will be. Now for me.
I work a good 50 minutes to an hour away. I like my job mostly, but it is stressful. I have solid deadlines and people depending on me for different things. I work Monday through Friday from 8:30am until 5:00pm. I rarely leave at 5:00. Since starting the job in June, I can honestly say that the times I have left on time have numbered less than 25. I usually stay until 5:30, 6:00, or even 7:00 to get things done without the distractions of company, telephones or general interruptions. I'm a night owl whose mind starts about 6pm anyway.
Two weeks ago, Lee and I joined a gym. We swim together. I made it a point to leave work by at least 6pm so that I could be home by 7, get dressed in swimsuit and coverings, grab a towel, wake Lee up and get to the gym by 7:30. We'd swim for an hour and go home and we'd scavenge for food... or stop at Subway on the way home. We were home by 9, we'd eat, I'd do some household things, and lay out my clothes for the next day and fall into bed. It wasn't a great schedule, but I was exercising, and both of us were feeling good about exercising. On weekends, damn... I cannot think of a Saturday I've spent in Kinston. The job is so stressful, I usually want to get the hell out of dodge... going to Raleigh shopping, going to see Kitty, going to Wilmington to get a pedicure... I live the life of a childless woman. My house is a mess, but I need to decompress from what are usually stressful weeks.
So where does Granny come in? How do I feed her and look after her needs at night? How am I going to answer to my brother's expectation that I be there every night? Hell, he closes on his family's new house in Charleston, SC later this week. He's here for a week, lives at her house and when she came home on Friday, has spent most every waking moment with her, but he leaves tomorrow and won't return until mid-February. God, I'm already under pressure as a wife and a career person without caregiver attached to it. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't want to put her in a nursing home, but I didn't want this, either. He lives down there and pops in for care, while I'm left to rearrange my life completely.
There are just so many damn hours in the day and I don't do early ones. I hate mornings. I am an absolute grump in the mornings. I'm already like Elvis... I take one tylenol PM at night to wind down and HAVE to have caffiene in the morning to wake up. Plus, she doesn't need me then. My husband goes to work at 3:30am and so swimming in the morning wouldn't work.
And ask me how many freaking meals I cook a week anyway... On a good week? Three. And they're not high protein/ high calorie... if I cooked that and ate it, I'd be as big as a hotel. And if I tried to do it all... work, cook for her, wait while she bathed, tried to work out and eat with my husband..., would she know I was rushing her along? Because of the choking thing, she eats VERY slowly. And she's not jack rabbitt fast moving, either.
Lee's no help either. Grandparents are a foreign thing to him. And the entire time she was in the hospital last week, he went twice, once with me and once at my request.
I don't know what I'm going to do. It's like seeing the mountain before you and not knowing if you have the stamina to climb it or the time to do it before dark.
I know I have a duty, but I didn't sign up for it and only by virtue of the fact I wouldn't move am I straddled with it. I feel guilty for feeling this way, but I'm overwhelmed and scared and confused.
