You all heard yesterday that we attended a wake last night for one of our neighbors. We then actually had a family Italian dinner which always amazes me every time it happens with all of our busy schedules.
Today brought work as usual along with trying to set up appointments to see more nursing homes, doctor appointments for myself and my MIL. Then got a phone call from MIL that almost made me race out there. Instead I emailed BIL and had him call her to see what he thought. For me she was highly agitated and anxious. For him she was pissed that he called while she was washing her hair. This evening she told me that she had last washed her hair for Thanksgiving. OK now.......is this an old person thang? Is this why they have what I call that 'old people odor'? OMG I can't imagine not washing my hair every day. Doesn't every one's hair look like mine in the morning which looks like the cat in the picture above? Well, mine does and it isn't pretty. I can't even fathom not washing it for over a month...yuck yuck yuck.
I digress.....after work we once again headed to inlaws. We picked up MIL and went to visit 2 different dementia residential places. Both pretty nice but I am telling you - save your pennies - they are running around $4500 per month and there is no insurance that covers it. It's called open thy pocket books. I swear I just paid off the kids college and wedding. Why are these called the golden years if I don't get gold?
We then went to visit FIL who is still in a lockdown unit, still being evaluated. Tonight's topic of conversation was all about WWII and one of the battles in Anzio in Italy. It was in this battle that his entire platoon of 200 was killed except for 9 people, one of which was my FIL. He got quite agitated just talking about it so we cut our visit short as it was really upsetting MIL. When we got ready to leave, FIL started bawling and hanging onto MIL. We finally departed and MIL turns to me and says: "How can I not bring him home?"
Good question and not an easy answer. I remembered that we were there 30 minutes and the entire time we were there he repeated 8 questions every 3-4 minutes. We would give him the same answers. He didn't remember one and would instead ask again. So I started asking her the same questions, mimicking him. After 10 minutes when she was getting pissed at me for not answering her properly, I told her - "that was why, only it would be 24/7 again. Do you really think you can handle that? You couldn't handle the 30 minutes we were there. You couldn't handle me doing it for 10 minutes. There was a time in your life that you had to say good bye to your sons and drop them off at college. You were upset then but you got over it and the boys grew up. In this case, you have to look at what is better for you and him. For you is to get rest and recover from your own stroke. For him is to be in a controlled environment with people equipped to handle his problems."
For any of you who have found the golden years......please give me directions.
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