Time For A Change

     My daughter, her 3 children and I left to go to visit my sister in Missouri on the 21st. On Monday my daughter-in-law took my Dad to his scheduled Dr.'s appointment. She called me later that night to let me know that Dad had scraped his backside last week sometime and it had become grossly infected. She took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and took over. During the next few days there were multiple appointments with two different doctors (one a surgeon) in trying to curb the infection and properly stabilize the wound. Katy was very thorough, not only in her care of Dad (regularly cleaning and dressing the wound) but also in keeping me posted long distance.  She and my son kept a close eye on both parents as my Mom was clearly not able to handle things.

     In light of these events we had long talks with my husband, my sister, my daughter and my son and his wife. It has been decided that Terri and her children will move in with the parents. There are lots of reasons why Terri is the most appropriate one to do this:

• She's single (divorced) at the moment so is easier to accommodate, and she's WILLING!
• Her children will all be in school during the day and usually with their dad on weekends so won't be too much of an added burden on my parents' mental capacities
• She already spends a lot of time there between taking Mom shopping and cleaning the house twice a month and various other things she does.
• My mother thinks Terri is the most wonderful thing ever and will listen to her when she won't anyone else

     When we (me, Terri and Katy) explained to my parents what we wanted to do we had already talked about so many things that it wasn't difficult to lay out our plan.  My mom had a bit of a conniption as she doesn't see that there is any problem at all; in spite of the fact that she burned the salmon patties so badly that they couldn't be eaten and then gave Dad a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner the following night. He has mentioned several times in the last year that he is more afraid of dying from food poisoning than Parkinson's!

• Mom may not need attentive care at the moment but Dad does
• If Terri is there she can help with anything, day or night. One of our concerns now is that if something happens to Dad in the middle of the night, will Mom be able to get it together enough to call the appropriate people i.e. family, EMTs etc.
• They need more day-to-day attention given to meals, laundry and general upkeep of the home
• With someone else there, they can stay in their home and, at the moment, not even think of having to go into assisted living care or anything else.
• We all really don't want someone to stay there that we don't know
• If Terri gets up and notices Dad is having a bad day she can call me before she leaves to go anywhere and I can fill in.

     The conversation went rather well in spite of Mom's perplexity. I had to take Dad to an appointment so we had a long time to continue talking about it. He seems very happy with the plan and we'll work to that end. Terri was doing her usual cleaning while we were gone and she said that Mom was a lot more agreeable by the time she was done. Mom kept saying how they could do this or that if she was there so it looks promising.

Well, that should catch everyone up on this episode...I'm sure there will be others forthcoming!