The Sunshine Award

I have been nominated for the Sunshine Award by Frangipani Singaporenicum.  Thank you so much for that honour.

The Sunshine Award comes with a few rules:

Include the award’s logo in a post or on your blog

Answer some questions about yourself

Nominate some other fabulous bloggers

Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been nominated

Share the love and link the person who nominated you!

I have used Frangipani’s questions

Love or money? My knee – jerk reaction is money of course! But then reality sets in and I realise it’s love.  I’d be lost without my husband, children, mother and brother.  I care for my demented F i L for love.  Losing money doesn’t bother me half as much as an emotional upset.  Love all the way.

Which is your most favorite book ever? Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence.  I love the way he writes.  I love the evident emotion of the book and the family complexity.  It’s one of a tiny number of books I have read more than once (the others being Lady Chatterleys Lover (also by Lawerence), Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights and Memoirs of a Geisha)

Which is the one television character that you simply adore?  Meredith Grey of Grey’s Anatomy.  She’s a gifted doctor, a flawed imperfect human being struggling through life, oh! and she has and Alzheimers story too.

What kind of music do you like? It’s easier to say that I don’t like R n B and Rap.  Apart from that anything goes

Which is your favorite genre of movies? (Comedy/Romance/Suspense/Action/Horror) I love a great RomCom

What do you do when you feel very sad or depressed? Up me medication ;op (I’m Bipolar so that’s a regular ocurrance)

And now for my nominees……… I have actually been nominated for two separate blogs so this is confusing for me but:

kimjoy24 : Her memory bank blog detailing her life with her father who suffered from Alzheimers is very touching

ragingtranquility: Reading his blog reminds me that I am not the only person in the world with a f***ed up family

Let’s Talk About Family: Another Carer struggling against the world ;op

 

The Catch Up

It’s been almost a month since I last updated you on F i L’s progress.  That’s not deliberate, but as I have been trying to keep my distance I haven’t needed to vent quite as much.

He is getting used to the carers we have hired.  They pop in two evenings a week to cook him a meal and to do some of the ‘heavier’ housework.  He prefers the ladies that come as they are more ‘efficient’.  I think it’s actually a little bit of residual sexism.  He continually asks me about cooking even though I tell him it’s No. 2 son that does that job in our house.  To his mind, a woman’s job is in the home looking after the man and their children.  The carers visiting, plus the two afternoons he spends at a local old peoples club, mean that on four days a week he is seen by professional care staff and given a proper meal which takes the burden off of us.

No. 1 Son still thinks his dad is ‘fine’.  It now transpires that his own F i L has had to go into a care home a he is now so ‘bad’, so perhaps this is a comparative assessment.  We didn’t know that this was going on although we did know he had had a stroke or similar and was becoming a little unsteady mentally.  I did for a moment feel sorry for No. 1 son until I remembered that a) he wouldn’t have actually done anything to help b) No. 1 son’s F i L has a wife looking after him, a daughter living close by, and another daughter a few miles away who is a ‘Lady that Lunches’ whilst his dad is alone c) It’s not his dad!  He did actually visit for an hour or two a couple of weeks ago.  He didn’t tell anyone he was doing this (not that he needs permission) but while he was there he fixed F i L’s garden strimmer.  There was a reason we hadn’t fixed the strimmer.  It was because F i L strims his shoes, legs and the cable.  We left it so that he couldn’t use it!

He has deteriorated rapidly over this past month.  It was my fear that my not visiting might bring this on, but I can’t make myself responsible.  He is worrying about things, many of them the things I would routinely do for him, which means he doesn’t sleep properly.  By not sleeping properly he gets more confused.  The confusion leads to worry which means he doesn’t sleep properly.  It’s a vicious circle.

Over the past week I have visited a few times.  He phoned me telling me that he couldn’t work out what tablets to take.  Realising that he could easily overdose I went asap and I was right to.  He had emptied his dispensing box and sorted the tablets so that each medicine was in a separate compartment.  On Thursday night he would have taken a weeks worth of Warfarin!  Husband and I have since been back approx 7 times to redo his medicine box as he keeps taking the tablets out and getting confused.

He knows that his memory is bad.  He keeps saying that he is going to see the doctor about it.  He forgets that he has, many times, and that there is sadly nothing that can be done about it.