Mom dumped trash on the car and too much is unknown.

The beauty of blogging may be that kindly advice and well meant suggestions are rarer here. For now, unless I develop a following. Two edges to that. Be read or be left to think in peace.

The last three weeks have been terrible. Unfair, unfathomable and remain unresolved. Where to begin. Bullet points, I think. To the purpose of documentation and release from my body.

• Dad has begun to fall frequently. His Parkinson's is progressive faster than anyone wishes (of course). In 28 days, he has fallen 5 times - once when neither Star nor I were home (grocery shopping) and only Mom to help him.
• Dad's voice strength is gone. He tries to project, but even if he gets his volume up to a discernible decibel, his muscles aren't forming the words well and it is all a blur. I mostly guess at what he says by context or visible clues.
• Star is so alone no matter how present any of us are to her. Being a primary caregiver is a lonely, heavy burden. (Which is not to say it is begrudged or put opn her or in any way a negative choice. But even carrying a bouquet of roses can be a burden if done for too long or without gloves to keep the thorns from the skin. I am just saying.) That tears at me, because it is not a condition any person of any status can change for her. A spouse, a friend, a lover, the President, a dog - no one could undo that condition. But perhaps any combination of those people could meet other needs for her. To that end, I remain her friend without question.
• Mom is inflicting injury to herself. She is picking at her fingernail beds and her face and her arms until the skin is raw or worse. And we cannot get her to stop. There isn't any reasoning and distractions can not last for more than a second. And the energy of our emotions lingers in her enough to make her disgruntled or frsutrated with us. Then she snaps at us or is defiant or is hurt. And somehow there isn't an answer.
• Tonight (July 9, 209) Mom just took off her shirt while we were watching a movie because she was hot. She had a thick afghan on her legs and feet, but decided to remover her shirt to cool down. Then, of course, was frustrated that I helped her put it back on. Can't blame her really, since it made her feel like her decisions aren't good enough.
• Which they aren't.
  
• She is sucking on her fingers. Sometimes to - I assume - take the sting out of the torn fingertips she has. Sometimes it is just to suck.
• She has taken to sticking her tongue out to feel the end of it between her fingers - like she is gauging the thickness of her tongue.
• Her willingness to go to adult daycare has stayed about the same. She goes but is exasperated when we get there if they aren't engaged in an activity. The daycare reports that mostly she seems content while there. They are not having any more success than we are in stopping the self inflicted hurts.
• Dad seems to be doing better now that his pain is managed better, but he seems to sleep more. Some days it appears to be all afternoon, other days it seems to be only frequent naps with alert spells in between.
• His feet are extremely swollen - because he isn't walking as much?
• Tonight he decided to walk back to the bedroom without his walker. Not a huge deal, I suppose, but the whole point of the walker is reduce the opportunity for falls.
  
• So, in an effort to help (mainly in an effort to relieve her chronic boredom so inherent in Alzheimer's), Mom decided to take out the trash. She removed the trash from the kitchen and carried it to the garage, using our indoor door to the garage. So far so good, except she hadn't secured the bag closed and then she tried to toss it over the ramp rail. The rail is about 4 feet high. She was trying to get the bag into the recycle bin because she thought that was the trash bin. And in doing so, the trash bag partially dumped onto the floor of the garage and onto the bumper of one of our cars. Sigh.
• We have been talking about finding a full care memory facility to place Mom in. We are being heartbroken repeatedly throughout the day and in our sleep. How do we agree upon a turning point - the point where we actually send her into someone else's care.
• We are getting great advice.
• I will blog that part of this process later. It is longer than this post in content!
• Mary is coming on Saturday. She is coming for several reasons but the one that she expressly stated was so that Star could get a vacation and so could Tom and I.
  
• And to top off the week, Star had to give out for adoption her little cat, Stubby, because he was causing her other cat, Marco to act out. Marco was so unhappy he had no choice but to get our attention. The decision was hard and seems to foreshadow the decision we will face with Mom and Dad. Yet, Marco is so clearly better with the littlest catlet off to his new adventures. Star is clear about all the reasons and such - but I can only imagine her growing sadness at all these changes.

There is so much more. Mainly we have agreed to increase the documentation of our journey. It is intended to assist us in knowing when and why we are doing what we do. And when it is time to change what we do.

Today has been hard. No question. May tomorrow be better.