Happy Mother’s Day, Mom | by Linda Brendle

Helen Hagan Robinson, my beautiful mother, probably around 19 or 20 years old

Today was my first Mother’s Day without Mom, and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

The Last Transition – Moving into Assisted Living

A few weeks ago, the good people at Assisted Living Directory asked me to write an article for their website. I wrote a brief account of Mom and Dad’s journey from independent living through moving in with us and on to assisted living. The article featured one of my favorite pictures with this caption:

Talking to My Son About Boston | reblogged post from Christian Piatt

Bill O’Reilly is angry about the Boston bombing and thinks everyone else should be, too. Last night after listening to him, David asked if I was angry. I’m not angry. I’m just sad – sad that my 9-year-old grandson has to try to make sense of something so senseless – sad that children can’t take home made treats to school any more.

Read about Christian’s conversation with Mattias over breakfast this morning:

Talking to My Son About Boston.

Blessings,

Linda

Another Blessed Year | by Linda Brendle

NYesterday was our 13th anniversary. I started to write a post about how our love story started, but I was having some computer issues and didn’t get it written. Then I realized that I wrote the story last year on his birthday, so here it is – my tribute to my husband David, the love of my life.

Follow this link to the post:

http://lifeaftercaregiving.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/birthdays-and-engagement-rings-by-linda-brendle/

Blessings,

Linda

Breakfast Adventures – Part 1 (The Lab) | by Linda Brendle

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venipuncture

I was going through some old files last night looking for an outline I thought I had started on a book idea. I never found the outline, but I came across something I wrote on November 3, 2010 after taking Mom and Dad to the lab to have some bloodwork done and then out to breakfast. It was just six weeks before they moved from my home into an assisted living facility near my brother Jim. I was rapidly approaching burnout, and I wrote this saga to get rid of some of the tension from the outing. I posted it in my Facebook notes, but I didn’t start my blog until six or seven months later, so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s rather long, so I’ve broken it into four parts and will publish a part each day from now through Friday.

###

It’s 10:30 in the morning, and I’m exhausted. Today was test day for Mom and Dad. They have their six-month check-up with their PCP next week, and they had an appointment at 8:40 this morning at the lab. Since they had to go in fasting, I planned to take them to breakfast afterward. I knew it would be an adventure. I was right.

Who Are You? | by Linda Brendle

A friend who is also a caregiver recently confided in me that one of the hardest parts of her job is not knowing who will greet her when she gets up in the morning. Will it be the confident, efficient, take-charge man she has known for half a century, or will it be the man who is struggling with a life-threatening illness, the one whose mind is fogged by pain and medications, the one who can’t remember how to tie his shoes?

I Want My Pills! | by Linda Brendle

Photo from KOA, Clayton, NM
http://koa.com/campgrounds/clayton/

 

This morning I took part in an on-line discussion on a caregiver website about medications for our carees. Medications played a big part in my stint as a caregiver, and I thought I’d share a section about the subject from my book.

 

Day 34, KOA Campground, Clayton, New Mexico:

 

We had a relaxing evening with laundry, dinner, TV, and medication maintenance. This twice a month job involved sorting various pharmaceuticals into pill organizers for The Kids. They were fascinated by the procedure and offered predictable comments.

Fighting Death | by Linda Brendle

Yesterday I cited an article from an AgingCare.com newsletter about Daylight Savings Time. The newsletter had another article by the same author, Anne-Marie Botek, titled “Why a Nurse Refused to Give a Dying Woman CPR.” It was about the controversy surrounding the death of an 87-year-old woman who was a resident of Glenwood Gardens, an “independent living facility” in Bakersfield, California. When the woman collapsed, a staff member called 911. The staff member was a nurse, and the 911 operator pleaded with her to administer CPR until the paramedics arrived, but the nurse refused, citing facility policy against doing so. The ambulance arrived within minutes and transported the patient to the hospital where she was later pronounced dead. Shocking, right? When I first heard the story on the O’Reilly Factor last week, I thought so, but after reading this article and thinking about Mom and Dad’s situations, I’m not so sure.

My Son, the Holy Heretic | by Linda Brendle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Wednesday’s post I mentioned that I was going to be a guest on Christian’s blog today.

Being Hacked and Other IT Challenges | by Linda Brendle

I’m having a real “IT” week, and it’s only Wednesday. It began on Monday morning with a text from my son Christian. If you’re new to my world, you may not know that he’s a writer, a prolific writer, and the Internet is his life. He has published several books and is a frequent contributor to a number of e-publications – and he BLOGS. He gets more views in a couple of weeks than I’ve gotten in the 19 months since I published my first post. So here’s the text he sent me: