From the Edge of Dementia

Here I am at my new daily station, sitting beside Pop in his room, as I will be for the next indeterminate amount of time.  Upon getting up this morning, he was more or less the same as yesterday.  I bathed him and dressed him, got him in his chair and then fed him.  Since he's the quietest when he's eating, I figured I'd be ok to take a quick bath.  When I came out he was only about half way through his food so I ran downstairs to get dressed and bring the laptop up here.  But when I got back in here I was in for the shock of my life.

He had his glass of milk in one hand and a cookie in his other hand (the bad hand, which was laying in his lap).  This seemed pretty normal but on closer inspection things were not good at all.  He had Mr. Winky out in plain view (which was glistening wet) and his cookie was actually partially resting there.  Then I noticed that his pants were soaking wet all over the front, down his left leg (I mean, soaking wet).  And in addition his lunch plate and part of the tray had pee all over it.   His urinal was bone dry so he hadn't even attempted to use it.  AND he was oblivious to all of this.  In fact, when I brought his attention to it, he didn't know what I was talking about.  He had no idea how it happened. 

I really had only one immediate question for him...

"Pop, your sandwich wasn't wet when you ate it, was it?"

He looked at me like I had 14 eyeballs and said, "I don't think so... why?"

I pulled out the wheel chair from the table so I could clean that up and saw that the floor was also soaking wet. 

Now the floor and table are clean and disinfected.  He's clean and dry and dozing in his chair. 

Tonight I'm actually getting out of here overnight.  I was thinking about not going because of Ma but it's obvious now that my life is about to really change here.  I'm going to have to be with Pop close to 100% of the time from this point on (he had me up most of the night again, too).  I think it's going to be a real challenge now to get out of here for my monthly weekend for awhile.  So since I already had this evening planned, I'm going out to let loose for the last time until whenever.  I've got respite scheduled but Rob's also going to stop by to check on Ma. 

Ma's not taking this well at all.  She's been a damn basket case since this started.  And the pee incident this morning hasn't helped her one bit.  So, I'm gonna have to look into her getting out of here for a weekend here and there instead of me.  I'll have to talk to the kids about it because I think Ma would rather commit suicide than have to stay at my sister's house.  But I think she'd enjoy spending time with either Rob, Rich, Karen at their houses. 

As for me, after tonight, I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet.    

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• #1 Comment from deshelestraci 
  12/15/06 3:36 PM | Permalink

  Oh you are going through it!  I just read your posts and can't help but feel bad.  This too shall pass, right?  The pictures of your pop with the hat are priceless!  Have a nice retreat!
  Traci