I AM NOT ALONE

Someone sent a review of her situation with Alzheimer and here are a few of the lines:

"/
"You would almost think that it would help to be dealing with it on a couple
of fronts. You would think that the Alzheimer's seminars that I attended
because of my mother would have made me more aware of the cause of some of
the changes in my mother-in-law. There's a sort of kinship with my family
and my husband's family. We can compare war stories. And when I have to
beg off from one side because of the other side, they do all understand. We
all do manage to share a sense of humor - passing it around when sometimes
one of us loses our own. Mostly there's a lot of begging "Just shoot me if
I get like this" and gathering promises to "save yourself" if it happens.
Otherwise, it's amazing how little overlap there is.

I thought at first that I was living that old saying about being so busy
fighting off alligators that you forget that the real objective is to drain
the swamp. But in this case, the swamp can't be drained. We just have to
fight the alligators until the dam bursts and the swamp drains on its own.
Some times I feel cruel and cold to wish for that deadly heart attack or
that final bout with pneumonia but most of the time I realize that I would
have put my dogs to sleep long before this and called it mercy.

What I feel like most days is that I'm in a sort of Fun House. I have to
get out somehow and sometimes I can make it a little way through the maze
before the next thing jumps out at me or I hit a dead end and have to
backtrack. Fortunately, I'm not in there alone. And I keep reminding
myself that with all four parents now in their eighties and all with serious
health problems of one kind or another, this can't last forever. ......................"

She covered it very honestly .......I am at a loss many times to control
my own emotions of love and despair , guilt, depression .
You put all this in one bag, shake it and what comes out is an upset stomach, headaches,vertigo,a pain here and a pain there, it all eats you up inside.

My hairdresser said one of her clients went this week and left a husband with
Alzheimer. I understand how that works.
But I take my commitment very seriously and feel that I have to be here to take care of Bob, not the kids. So what am I going to do about it?
Well, I make deals with God , now if He is so inclined to listen to me then we are in good shape.
Humor, people, humor, without it you die.