Passing Judgement on the Caregiver

I guess since it has been so long since I "blogged" that I need to make up for lost time! The title for this blog sums up some feelings I have harbored since we moved my MIL from her home in south Texas three years ago. As the wife to an only child, you just don't realize the amount of responsibility and burden it creates when your parent or parents have not prepared for their own future. Throw on top of that a horrible disease like Alzheimer's where your parent is unable to care for them self but is physically in a position to make you second guess the type of living assistance needed.

But the most incredible part of this journey has been the insensitivity of the very people who claim to be friends and family. Everyone thinks they know what is best for my MIL and of course, none of them know the daily struggles that she has in just her daily living. If she would have continued living alone, she would have died and almost did three times when she was hospitalized for taking her medication wrong.

She had learned to compensate for her memory challenges by doing little things to keep people from finding out. Even the neurologist that first saw her said, "she is a smart one; she has created many defense mechanisms to hide the symptoms of her disease." She even admitted recently that she had hoped to die in the bedroom of her home and that no one would know what was wrong with her. But the neurologist she is seeing now told her, "you can still have a wonderful quality of life even though you can't remember little things along the way".

My husband and I never dreamed that we would be in the situation we are in right now and believe me, I would not wish this on anyone. But, as my new philosophy on life states: IT IS WHAT IT IS----GET OVER IT AND ENJOY LIFE!

I just hope that the people that are sitting around talking about how awful it is that she is living with us would walk one day in our shoes. Try to understand the difficulty of the disease and the difficult task the caregiver has in keeping her safe while maintaining a "normal" life. Institutionalization isn't always the right option for care.

It is not a journey any of us choose to take but it is a journey and we will find the meaning in this journey.