1109 Yesterday

Friday, February 09, 2007

I got a lot done yesterday. Finished shredding the rest of the medical records, mailed payments for 11 bills, ran several errands (groceries, drug store, lube sheets for the shredder, two separate trips to the bank, four days worth of take-out Chinese food, and a few other things I've forgotten).

I decided that if I got home by 5 pm, I'd go to trivia. I got home at 4:45, but by the time I'd put stuff away, it was after 5, so I didn't go. I haven't been to trivia since something like mid-December, when Tom gave me the terrific back rub. I'm afraid he might think that the back rub is the reason I haven't been. It isn't. It just seems like every Thursday night I'm either tired, depressed, or busy. The next two Thursdays have dinners scheduled.

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A excerpt from my Daily, February 2001, between Jay's last surgery and the start of the immunotherapy, when he was hemi-paralysed and suffering from a bad bout of intracranial edema:
....
4:45 pm - nausea, wants basin
5:59 pm - he says "the gifts have been given out", attempts to sit up on side of bed
6:00-6:40 pm - reasonable discussion, crying, can't eat dinner, drinks ice cream-banana-peanut butter slushy
6:40 pm - urinal
6:55-8:23 pm - read to him, calm, reasonable
8:23 pm - attempts to get out of bed, major struggle
8:34 pm - wants urinal
10:30 pm - falls asleep
11:15-11:45 pm - wants clothes off, I made him put CPAP* on
12:25 am - announces he has hired a company to take his clothes off
12:28 am - wants toilet, gets bedpan, wants urinal, piddles
12:50 am - nothing in bedpan, remove
12:50-1:25 am - squabbling over CPAP, I put it on 4 times, he removes 3 times
1:40 am - removes CPAP, says that "the remote control says there's not enough oxygen to use the tire"
1:57 am - wants another headache pill
2:20 am - fussing about olives
2:40 am - CPAP back on, wants TV on
3:15 am - he's lost, wants to know where we are
3:20 am - wants to discuss scheme involving PVC pipe
3:40 am - "used bedpan", bedpan not there, changed sheets
4:22 am - attempt to climb out of bed, one leg tangled in bars
...
*CPAP = constant positive airway pressure device, keeps his throat open during sleep. In later months, we had it connected to an oxygen concentrator.

2001 was the Year of No Sleep. Eight months of 2001, anyway.

What amazes me is that family caregivers of Alzheimer's patients do it for years!
.