taking care of grandma

i now know for sure why my mom is so tired. for the last 3 days, i've been in charge of "watching" my grandma, from 9am until 9pm everyday. you would think this wouldn't be that hard. but when i had to do it i realized how exhausting it could be.

first of all, you don't get to sleep in when you have to be in charge of grandma. you have to get up at 830 - now, i'm not saying oh my god that's so early, but my body still seems to think it's on west coast time, so that's 530am for me. then i have to check in with the girls who stayed with grandma all night to see if anything interesting happened overnight, if she took her medicine, if she's had breakfast, etc. then it's off to the kitchen to get her the rest of breakfast she might not have eaten yet, along with applesauce that has some potassium crushed up in it since the pills are too big.

my grandma has numerous health problems but she is not incapable of getting up and moving around. she attributes her lack of movement to the fact that she is afraid of falling. yes she has fallen before but this fear drives her. she's also afraid of the dark. i'm not kidding.

anyway after breakfast it's blood tests and other medications, and then she usually falls asleep in her chair while i ran around doing stuff in the house. until noon. then it's time to wake her up to take some medicine, and give her lunch. have to make sure the lunch has some meat, cheese, crackers, fruit, vegetable, milk...and i have to make sure not to give her too much, but to give her enough so she's full.

the afternoon can be full of adventures. this weekend was especially good because on friday my brother came downstairs from his room and we played cards with grandma till dinner time. on saturday, her usual afternoon companion made a visit to the house, also to play cards. so for the afternoons, mostly what i had to get her to do was get up, go wash up in the bathroom, get dressed, and maybe do some foot exercises before the parties began.

then it was off to the kitchen again to make dinner; friday i made tacos which turned out to be bad since she can't really tear the tortillas with her teeth, however she did eat all the insides including beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, guacamole, and a little mild salsa. saturday we ordered chinese, and sunday we had leftovers.

after dinner, and more medications, if i haven't been able to get her to do her physical therapy beforehand, we get down to business and do the exercises the therapist has left for us. i have to say gram's been doing great with the exercises lately. most of the moves are very simple for someone with good use of their legs and feet. for her, they're more challenging because she doesn't feel her feet sometimes, or she doesn't trust them, or she just doesn't balance well and remember, she's afraid of falling all the time. i try to convince her that i am here and i will not let her fall; she's convinced she will fall and knock me over. if rugby girls have to come running to get me down, i don't think grandma will be so successful as she thinks.

anyway after dinner and exercises, then there's more downtime. sometimes, like during the week, she'll watch jeapordy and wheel of fortune. on the weekends i have to come up with some other plan. usually i can find some movie on that we can watch together, and we do some foot exercises while we're doing that.

when the girl who comes to stay with gram overnight arrives around 9pm, i check her blood sugar again and get the evening medications ready, as well as the next day's pills and overnight juice and snack.

for anyone who read all that, congratulations, you made it to the end of the post. me, personally, i'm exhausted. but i know my folks had a nice getaway from the house for the weekend. they went up to cape cod to just relax for a few days and it seems they had a nice vacation. my dad showed me the pictures; they had great weather.

tomorrow it's supposed to snow. i can't wait.