Shifting Gears

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I didn’t have anyone to share my most intimate feelings with when my husband’s illness began. It was hard to accept and even difficult to acknowledge the feelings generated by the turmoil in my every day life. My feelings of anxiety, incompetence, frustration, hurt, anger and fears filled me and I really needed to vent. I needed to talk to someone, but who? Who would understand the vastness of my feelings?

Two of my close friends, my son and daughter-in-law, and my sister-in-law were always willing to listen but I often had difficulty expressing myself. I found it hard to fully describe what our daily life was like and how the changes in Al’s health had leached out into every aspect of our life.

I had many concerns about not only his well being but also about my ability to handle everything. So in 2016, I began writing a blog (www.fohshallqueen.wordpress.com) in order to get these feelings out where I could perhaps better understand and deal with them. Many of those posts are included in this blog.

On June 15, 2018 I posted the following:

The last few months of 2017 were not good. Not only was my husband’s condition deteiorating but I was going into overload, often feeling LOST and LONELY with no idea of how to handle some of the problems that arose.

For instance, when he would be up till 2 or 3 AM, walking through the house, saying, “I want to go home” over and over and nothing I said or did could appease him, I felt helpless. Several times my solution for this was to take him out in the car and drive around for 30-45 minutes. My thought was that maybe by taking him out he would feel that he was home when we returned. This didn’t work. Our late night rides occurred anywhere between 10 PM and midnight from fall through December. It became difficult to get any sleep and I was getting to the point where I didn’t know what to do.

In early December 2017 he needed to go to the Emergency Room for a bowel obstruction. He would not get in the car for me to drive him there and instead he removed all his clothes and moved around the house, sitting down on every chair and bed, leaving stains everywhere.

I begged and pleaded for him to let me dress him and take him to the hospital but, even though he was in pain, he wouldn’t. Around 4 AM I had become so frustrated that I just went into the kitchen and beat my fists on the counter and wailed. Then I settled down and decided that calling 911 was my only option.

They were wonderful with him! They managed to get him dressed in underwear, slippers, and a robe and they were able to finally get him out of the house and into the ambulance.

It was a scary time for him and for me as well. They had to remove the obstruction manually which was very painful for him even though they had given him a couple of injections to relax him. He ended up in the hospital overnight and it was not a good experience.

It was becoming apparent that he needed more care than I could provide and frankly I was feeling physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Family members as well as our doctor suggested/recommended that I look at placing him in a facility. I resisted but, as things continued to slide downhill, I looked for, and found a lovely Memory Care Assisted Living facility close to our home and they were able to take him in quickly. I moved him in on December 28, 2017 and that was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.

God help us!