I have not posted in a while, but feel the past two weeks weighing heavily. I am not sure what I was thinking would happen once my mother moved to assisted living, but I was hopeful there would be improvement. I am thankful she is in a safe place and being looked after; Brookdale-Corsicana has turned out to be wonderful choice for my mother. But I still ride a wave of emotion from calm that she is protected to guilt that I can not be there for her as much as I would like.
I think the hardest thing for me is thinking we had gotten to a comfortable place. She was letting me do for her and assist in taking care of some financial things, but now she seems to be crawdadding.
Last week on mom's birthday my husband and I took her to get her hair done at her favorite hairdressers Wanza's. She was able to get her hair done and it looked beautiful; she set an apt. for the next week to get her hair permed and we enjoyed the day hanging out and just being together. We had lunch at Collins Street Bakery and picked up cake and cookies, we did some shopping and picked up a few things she needed. Overall, a very successful day.
Fast forward just to just four days later. I called to remind mom I would be there on Wednesday to take her for her perm. She was confused that she was getting another hair cut and did not want one, she did not want me driving down to take her to her appointment. She called every day to tell me not to come and we repeated the same conversation, she thought I set the appointment, she thought I was not letting her have her way, she thought I was pushing her around. I tried to redirect her that I was bringing her a special gift and that helped to get her to calm down and the next day she called three times and we repeated the same conversation.
I had been working for days on a special gift for my mother. A digital cloud wifi picture frame. I had been scanning in her memories for many many hours a day and I wanted her to have it. It's actually a very remarkable frame from Nixplay. You can find these at Nixplay. I was so very proud of this special gift and thought I would set it up for her while she was getting her hair done. So this negative attitude towards me about me coming to see her was unsettling because I was trying to do something nice.
Well I convinced her to go to her appointment and just talk to Wanza's about if she really needed the appointment or not. There was a bit of a public argument and an uncomfortable situation but she reluctantly decided to stay and I went back to her apartment to set up her gift. While there, I ran into one of the directors of the facility and she mentioned an issue with mom's newspaper account, and I told her I would take mom by the paper to sort it out.
Mom came out to the car and did not let me go in to talk to Wanza's about her next appointment. She did not like being asked if we owed Wanza any money, or if she set up another appointment, she scolded me saying she could set up her own appointments and Robbie could take her, that she did not need me. Personally, my cousin helps more than she should have to and I feel it is my responsibility; but I decided to table the conversation and call Wanza later.
We had a nice lunch at Cotton Patch but she got confused easily while trying to order and told me to order her what ever I was getting. I need to remember she does not do well with spicy food. I ordered us both Chicken Tortilla soup and we split fried green tomatoes. It was very good, but next time I'll order her Chicken and Dumplings. I then told her we needed to go by the newspaper to fix her account. She instantly got defensive and suspicious and upset, but we went none-the-less. Of course, she could not explain to the lady at the counter why we were there, so I had to explain. Somehow they had my info for billing, which I never gave them, but one of the staff at Brookdale had, so this upset mom. So they changed it back to mom's and we paid the subscription, which is all we were there to do. Honestly though, I do need to be the one billed, so now I need to call them back.
We ran a few more errands that went a little better and then went back to her apartment to see her gift, which she loved until she realized I was leaving it there. When I started to leave she said she did not know what to do with it, I said just enjoy it. Then she said she did not know how to make it work, I tried to express that it just works, she does not need to do anything. She wanted to know what to do if it stormed, I said just leave it alone and plugged in. I gave her hugs and left to go home.
30 minutes later she unplugged the picture frame. I called as soon as I got home and questioned if she had unplugged it. She said yes, she did not want to waste electric. I told her to plug it back in and then leave it alone, that it was meant to stay plugged in. I had plugged it in behind a heavy couch so she would not be tempted, but that was fruitless thinking. She did get it plugged back in and I could see it come online. I am hoping she will get comfortable having it there. My plan is to add captions of people's names so she can remember who people are.
Well, I am emotionally drained by my mother again not trusting me to help her. Alzheimer's is a theif that eats away the best parts of people and leaves turmoil in its wake. I love doing for her and helping her, that's what she does not understand, it brings me joy when I can help. But then I constantly question that if my helping her is upsetting her, am I doing the right thing? I think I am, I legally am required to, but I would help anyway if she let me. But she constantly reminds me, she does not want me to.
So what's a daughter to do?
No comments:
Post a Comment