Even Though it Isn't Just About Me.

Yesterday i got mad. I got mad at this disease, I got mad at my father and I just got mad in general. I was mad that this disease had taken my father from me, the man I loved, admired and laughed with my entire life. The man that i dreamed would walk me down the aisle on my wedding day, would tease my children like he had teased me, would give my husband a hard time, and would have philosophical discussions with me until he was in his 80's. This man was gone before i knew he was even slipping away. This disease had robbed me of all these future dreams and thoughts, and it made me unbearably hurt and angry.
Then for no other reason than I had no other person to aim my anger at, I got mad at my father for "cursing" our family with this disease. For making me wonder daily if the reason the doctors cannot control my seizures is because they are not seizures but small strokes. If I have been having strokes since I was in my late teens, just as my father had and just have yet to be diagnosed. I felt anger that he had "given" me and my brother the chance at this disease and taken away my choice at having my own children (i will not pass this on). I will never get to hold my own baby, see my own traits and family traits reflected in my own child, or the traits of my husband. This made me unbearably sad and angry yesterday. I wept for my father who is so confused now days, I cried for the future we have lost together, but I finally cried for myself and what this disease meant and has taken from me.

The Group Home Debate

My mother and I have been going around and around about whether or not we are ready to put my dad into a group home. How can we tell if he is ready, how can we tell if we are ready? How do we know when we have done the best for him? How do we know when it is better for him to be in the group home and not to be living with us anymore? How do we know when his care has taken over too much of our lives and it is time to progress on to the next stage of his care? How do we know this isn't going to hurt him more than it is just going to be to help us?
The woman helping us with his care, and our therapists tell us these are all common questions to ask yourself, feel guilty about and wrestle with when placing a loved one into a care facility, and to be even more comforting they tell us that no matter how posh the facility, how wonderful the care, and the people the majority of the people react horribly to being put into these places. Yay:( None of these things we found truly? helpful in making a decision.
So the question is how do you decide For us we have gone back and fourth. Having stolen conversations while my father was away at his daily care facility. Conversations wondering about how much longer we would be able to care for him without losing our minds because some days are just so hard, wondering what we would do if he took a sudden turn for the worse and we had no where to put him and neither of us could care for him, and wondering what we would do if someday his anger (from his strokes) took over and he took it out on one of us physically.
Well the answer to all of our questions came in a rather strange way. My mother has been ill since before christmas. She has been in and out of bed with first a horrible virus, then on and off migraines ever since. We couldn't figure out what was bothering her, she could never get enough sleep and was tired all the time.
Then after christmas, around the first of the year came "the call". They had a spot open at one of the group homes connected to my dad's care facility. NICE group homes. They wanted to know if we wanted the spot. Mom hesitated....then turned the spot down. She didn't think he was ready for the group home yet. Thought he was too aware of things around him. Now to be fair my dad is fairly aware of some things, but he has little to no short term memory, doesn't remember what he did for his jobs all his life, and at dinner time doesn't remember what he ate for lunch. He has trouble working the microwave, the tv remote and the vaccuum. This leaves us with only the option of watching him 24/7 so he does not harm himself, or put others in danger(i.e. trying to drive, leaving food in the oven, leaving the stove on, putting something metal in the microwave and starting a fire[he did this, we put it out]).
Ever since "the call" my mother has come to regret not putting my dad in a group home when she had the chance, she knew it was a good place, the owners were great people who care about the people they are taking care of, and he (my dad) would have known his roommates.So, now we are waiting until another slot opens up in one of their homes. Who knows how long that will be.