Last week

OK, hope your'e up for reading a book.


This past week:

She fell on Wed. I had to run to Walmart. It's roughly 8.5 miles down the road. She didn't want to go. Fine, whatever. Stay in the house, I'll be right back. Yeah. Went outside and got too hot or tripped or who knows what - and fell. Did I mention she's on blood thinners? Came back to blood all over and she apparently tried to catch herself from her fall - with her face. OK, not really, but her left knee, right hand and forehead all had cuts and she's got one of the best (fullest) shiners you've ever seen. From above her eyebrow to all the way down including her cheek, thanks to the blood thinners.

On Friday I went with her to her doctor. Left the big kids with a neighbor teenager babysitter so I could discuss things with the dr. w/o too many ears. Took FOUR hours to get everything done at the drs, lab, back to the drs, Walmart, her house to feed the cat (will get to that in a minute). Not to mention she lives like 35-40 minutes from us, so going back and forth is adding up in gas quick. And buying her french fries when we're out because she 'forgot' her purse.......or OJ if she's dizzy......Pepcid for heartburn, chicken noodle soup.........It's like adding two more kids! OK - to the dr. Her doc. is TEENY. Like not even 5 ft tall. So, I tell the nurse that they ARE going to be running some tests, so warn the Dr. Dr. comes in and we go over it all. To keep this from being 89 pages. Yes, she's a diabetic. Yes, she's been TOLD she's a diabetic. No, noone gave her a monitor (has one now, I demanded it) but they were somewhat monitoring her with an A1C (or AC1 C1A, something like that) test that shows how stable your blood has been over the last month or so. I don't really understand how that works but it's crap, anyway, because she always goes for that bloodwork in the mornings as fasting bloodwork, so it doesn't seem to me it can tell how she does during the day or how low it dips, it just shows if it's been relatively stable. Relatively stable LOW is still bad! She's off the glipizide now, just on metformin. Hasn't had the dizzy spells she was having all the time before. If this continues I'll demand they take her off the motion sickness pills, as well. Demanded a urine test. She got mad. Tough. I do the laundry around here, something's not right. Big surprise, she's got a UTI on top of it all. On antibiotics 2x day for 10 days. Bought two of those M,T,W,T,F,S,S things to put pills in and wrote morning on one and night on the other and filled it with meds for a week because I KNOW she's not keeping track of what she's taking when, one of her meds (the blood thinner) is diff. doses on diff days. I stole the sheet off her calendar at her house (yeah, she didn't even have it here, so I know she couldn't have been following it) and used it to fill those plastic things. They are going to call in the antibiotic for her. We go to her house to feed the cat before heading to pick it up to give them time to get it ready.

Her cat. Cute. White. Little. Spoiled more than any of my kids ever were. When you open the door she ALWAYS runs and hides. ALWAYS. It's a tiny apt. One bedroom, bathroom, teeny kitchen open to small living room area. If the closets are closed there are exactly four places she can hide: under the small table, under the bed, behind the couch, in the tub. So we walk in. C (almost 2) goes to look for her. Mawmaw's calling for her. Come here baby! Come here Misty! I go with C (he's loud and scares the cat). I tell her she's not under the bed. I can see she's not under the table thing. She immediately gets hysterical. OH MY GOD, MY BABY IS GONE!!!!! She's GONE! Yelling. Tears in her eyes. Me: Mawmaw. She's a CAT. She didn't unlock the deadbolt, go outside then lock it back behind her. She's here. Her: SHE'S GONE, what will I do? I walk over. She's behind the couch looking bored lying on the cool tile. Me: She's right here. So we're there FOREVAH to feed the cat, clean it's cat box, check the mail, blah blah blah. Go to Walmart. It's been roughly 3 hours since she ate. Which I told her while we were at her house. Get some juice, take it with you. Did she? No. So in Walmart waiting for her med she gets weak and dizzy. I have to go get juice. Get her checked out and I go get the car, some woman walks her out. She's griping she's hungry. YA THINK??? I just told you to get something not 10 min. ago! We go get some fries and a coke for her at a drive thru. She's fine in 4-5 minutes. By the time we get back I owe the babysitter $20 and I paid her younger sister $2 because she played with them bunches. Plus gas. Cost me a fortune and all I got was irritated.

My Mom called last night. Wanted to know if we're going home for my cousin's wedding reception. Younger brother to my cousin we lost in Jan. They got married in Feb. but just went to the JP because they thought it was too close to the funeral. Anyway. I don't know. Depends on Mawmaw and what's going on here. If she's still here then someone has to be here unless she gets a LOT better about taking care of herself and eating. If we still have to make her eat, like now, she can't be alone. If DH is out in the field then I have to stay. Won't know until probably a few days before. She gets pissed. Tells me I 'can't ruin my life for her.' Yeah. I'll remind YOU of that when you're 82 and need help. So we get into it. Funny thing is, she moved HER DAD in with us when he was old and had Alzheimers. I was old enough to remember it all. Talk about disrupting a household - he woke in a new world every day. A lot of it is funny now, but wasn't then. So it's OK for her but not us. Whatever. Told her I could make it easy. If ANYONE thinks I'm going to drive hours to come home and hear them complain about our family choices they are wrong. I'll just stay here. That cousin and I aren't that close, he probably won't even notice I'm not there unless someone says something to him. Don't know his wife at all.

Then today. DH had duty yesterday and last night. So we go to church this morning. Involves me putting makeup on her because she's embarassed, I get that. I make her eat. Tried to tell me she did when I went to check on the chickens. Right. I ask the kids. No, she just put the toaster up and left the room. So I make her a slice of homemade bread with peanut butter. She gripes about 'forcing it down.' Too bad. If you want to go, eat. Otherwise you're not going because you'll be on the floor in 2.5 hours. So she eats it, complaining about how she's not hungry. We stop at a store and I buy my newspapers and an OJ for her. Tell her to put it in her purse and drink half of it if she starts feeling weak. We get to church and they have cookies out. She perks up. Eats two of those. Suddenly she's hungry. Insert me rolling my eyes here. Service included the kids from VBS doing some songs. Lunch afterwards in the hall. She ate like 3-4 bites of pasta. Said she couldn't eat the meat, didn't like the beans. Whatever. DH had showed up part way through the service and of course was exhausted. I send him home with her and the kids and I ran to Walmart to get milk, anti-acid stuff for her, etc. I come home and she feels like crap. Says she feels sick to her stomach. I take her blood sugar. 252. What did she eat when you got home? DH says nothing. She says nothing. Then she says, all I did was drink that OJ and eat lunch. Yep, she drank the entire OJ bottle during church service. Just because she had it. Didn't feel bad, just drank it. And DH sat next to her and didn't say/do a %&*&&^% thing. Didn't ask her anything about what she'd done when she started feeling bad, either. Just sat in the chair and did nothing and left it all for me to deal with when I got home with groceries. Sent her and him and C to bed for naps before I killed someone. There are THREE of us adults in this house. I CANNOT and WILL NOT be the ONLY one that does anything about her health. She wants to go home, well, you know what, then take some control of your life and health and eat every three hours like you are supposed to! If you feel weak THEN eat something with sugar. Don't eat/drink your 'rescue' stuff just because it's there!

I swear, I'm going to kill someone.