Changes

Oof

Memory care.

I was able to get an apartment for mom in memory care at the facility where she had spent time during respite visits earlier in the year. And because of the significant loss of cognitive abilities since her stroke last May, when the nurse from the facility did their pre-move in assessment, it was deemed that mom now requires memory care instead of being able to manage in assisted living.

Memory care. One more step downhill on the journey of dementia.

Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash

It isn’t as though I hadn’t been preparing for this over the past several years, because I knew it was going to happen at some point.

And

It is so hard to see her surrounded by other dementia patients, most far more impaired than she seems, in a locked wing where you need a code to exit.

Oof.

Mid-January was when the apartment became available, and the first several days, I stayed away to allow her to acclimate to her new surroundings. That may or may not have been a good idea, but I had good intentions. According to reports from staff, mom spent much of the time crying not knowing why she was there, feeling like she had been abandoned.

Oof.

The next several visits over the next couple of weeks, much of the time I was reaffirming that she was safe, that this was her new home, and that she was loved. We discovered that she is completely unable to utilize her cell phone any longer, so I made arrangements for her to have a land line installed in her apartment and placed the phone from Campbell Haus there for familiarity.

And, before I took a three week break to visit my kids and grandkids in Kansas, my brother and I helped move several pieces of furniture from the house strategically to make her feel more at home: the two red chairs from the living room with the small table between topped with the antique lamp sitting directly in from of her new television on the table my brother made from an old ladder he found in the barn last year. (I asked him to install a couple of shelves underneath so that we had a place to display lots of pictures of the grandkids and great grandkids.)

Both of my brothers have visited mom since she entered memory care. My sister still calls, I think, on Sundays, and mom’s sisters visit her each week. I am visiting her a couple times a week, and bring an art project for her, and the others who want to join in, on Wednesday afternoons which is the one day each week where there is no scheduled activity.

Her world has become so much smaller than the already small world dementia forced upon her. And I wish that didn’t have to be, but to follow the encouragement of Byron Katie in The Work (https://thework.com/books/), it is what it is.

I don’t love it.

And

It was the only way to keep her safe and cared for and hold on to what is left of myself in the process.

That sounds selfish, but is it? I mean, if her primary support person isn’t able to support her, what happens then?

I have been on increasing levels of hyper vigilance for years, waiting for the next crisis, expecting the phone call that tells me that mom has had a fall, or a stroke, trying to explain why mom can’t do big events for very long…the list of things I was worried about 24/7 is endless. The weeks before mom’s apartment became available I had been sleeping on the couch outside her room because she had been wandering in the early morning-even getting out of the house on a couple of occasions.

And now, if she wanders in the early morning, there are people looking out for her who have gotten sleep on a regular basis. And if she wants to sleep all day, I can still work on what I had planned for the day without figuring out whether I can reschedule my sleep study for the third time.

So memory care.

Mom is safe. She is surrounded by memories and her things and she is getting used to her new routine.

And I can see my kids and grands, be there for important events, explore my creativity again, see friends…figure out living my life again.

Small moves.