Memory Walk

Very soon the Alzheimer's Association will be having another Memory Walk.  This year it's going to be in October and it will take place in Oxnard at the harbor.  I will be signing up soon and trying to collect as many donations as possible.  Last year was the first year that my husband and all my kids participated and also some cousins, my son in law, mother in law, sisters in law and my husband's cousins participated.  We even took our dog.  I so appreciated everyone showing up it meant so much to me.  Every year my mom and I would participate until she could no longer walk because her disease was advancing even further.  When she was able to walk she would get very excited because she knew why she was walking and she always had hope that a cure would be found.   One day when I went to visit her at the convalescent center, someone had placed a bracelet on her wrist with the words "Hope" written on it.  To this day, my mother still has hope.  Hope is all we can ask for, hope is what we can cling to when we are all at the end of our ropes.  All of us who are or once were caretakers to someone with Alzheimers.  Hope is the key word that keeps us going and getting up one more day to fight to find a cure.  To all of you caretakers out there, I feel your pain and I know what you are going through.  It is my hope that this blog can somehow help not only me, but someone else out there who feels numb from the pain, frustration and exhaustion. And even I did not have the full burden of most caretakers.  My sister is the one who took care of my mom about 85% of the time.  I only had my mom on the weekends.  My sister, on the otherhand, had to deal with the worst.  She had to deal with the sleepless nights and trying to stay awake at work the next day.  On her days off, she cared for my mother.  When she got home from work she cared for my mother.  She cared for my mother and cared for my mother until she could no longer give my mother the appropriate care that she needed because of my mother's decline and round the clock needs not to mention the fact that my sister's health was now at jeopardy.  My sister is the real hero in all of this because she was the one that took my mother to all of her doctors appointments and made sure my mother followed a very strict diet and made sure that she had her medicine at the right time.  Between my sister and I, it was becoming impossible.  My mother got to the point where she could barely finish a sentence.  She could no longer comprehend what we were telling her.  It became frustrating for my mother and for my sister and I.  We had to make the decision to place her somewhere so she could get the care that she needed and so my sister could get her sanity back.  I too was ready to get a good part of my life back.

I always battled in my head whether to give up a good part of my life for a while and have my mom move in with me and my family so that I could take my turn with my mom like my sister did.  But when I thought about that, all I could think about was what it would do to my husband and kids.  I was already missing a lot of my kids games and other functions.  My kids played football, baseball and soccer and I used to feel bad missing their games but there was nothing I could do.  I think for the most part they understood but I just could not visualize giving up more time because I was afraid of what it would do to my marriage and what effect it would have on my kids.  I had to choose and I chose the sanity of myself and my family over my mother.  That sounds cruel and to some people it is cruel because apparently there are a lot of people out there that would do it in a heartbeat.  Maybe I'm just not that strong like I used to always think that I was.  When I read about people and families who have a family member live with them and each family member takes turns caring for this person, I always feel like I should have at least tried, but it was always so hard for me to handle this situation.  Every time my mom left my house, I always felt so drained and so depressed.  I felt like I didn't even know who I was anymore.  I went from caretaker to mom to wife to working mom to caretaker to mom to wife, etc. Some days I just wanted to sit and cry all day from exhaustion.  I remember when everyone at work would always be happy because the weekend was coming, I always felt like I would never see the day that my weekends would be free because, quite frankly, I did not look forward to my weekends.  And even now, now that my mom is somewhere else where she has the care that she needs, I miss her and I look back and think sometimes if it was really all that bad.  Maybe I could have handled things differently or reacted differently to difficult situations with my mom.  Maybe if I would have had more patience with her, maybe if....I guess I will never know and I guess it doesn't really matter now.  I was frustrated and feeling sorry for myself when I had to care for her and now that she's gone, I miss her.  I guess that's how it goes.