The Over-the-Hill Gang: Non-specific and sometimes irreverent seniors' stuff

Oh, Soorlady, I'm so sorry. So much sorrow and anxiety to handle all at the same time. It's quite a load for the family to carry. Wishing you all peace and comfort.

And I agree... let your wishes be known about your own final arrangements, find out what other family members would want for theirs, and make sure all your financial ducks are in a row and easy to figure out for whoever is left to sort it out when you are gone. I'm eternally grateful to my parents for thinking so long and hard about their own final arrangements and simplifying it all, first Dad for Mom's sake, and then Mom, who left Dad's arrangements intact so my brother and I would not have much difficulty knowing what to do.

One of my ladies suddenly required a pacemaker, two weeks ago. A lovely lady, it came out of the blue and in the middle of the night. She lives alone, but with an incredible support base so we don't class her 'at risk', and this episode demonstrates her safety. She was home in three days.

Her younger sister died earlier in the year, aggressive liver cancer. Throughout the earlier parts of the illness, family came to realise the husband was more than quirky: first, he had to stop driving, then stop his part-time work, then the financial stuff..had a couple of mini-strokes and was diagnosed with early onset dementia...

My lady's older sister died over the weekend, in another city. My lady can't travel there, and is devastated. Their brother, in Brisbane so about an hour from here, is ill and probably dying. And the BIL with dementia now is very unwell too. My lady said she feels as if her family had a curse placed on them. (Father has visited, and is a good friend to the family. He'll keep an eye on her)

So many blows, when her health is already strained. She's working hard to be resilient and positive. But she's sad, and scared.

of course she is joanne, and she's lucky to have you too

Good news for a lot of people!

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/16/more-evidence-that-chocolate-may-be-good-for-the-heart-say-researchers

When I clicked on this thread, I thought it was about the Village Keepers. Seriously.

Congo said:
When I clicked on this thread, I thought it was about the Village Keepers. Seriously.

Snort. Nope. And please, let's not even get started on the post office... ;-)

@joanne - how very sad for "your lady" and how blessed she is to have you.

Thank you - but it's not about me. I think I posted more to raise the point that too many hits, esp out of the blue, impact more deeply and widely than we realise. This sparkly, irrepressible woman who lives with chronic pain yet pushes herself to maintain a positive demeanour, now can't see herself leaving her home for any reason. She's well connected: 89-ish and on Facebook, etc. but can't get her head around it all now.

I'm mentally comparing her situation with another, curmudgeonly client of similar age. When things are going well, she's fun (but touchy). When she's not well, or doesn't recognise an oncoming infection etc, she's a powder-keg. Her memory, once sharp, is not always reliable and other senses are going too. And she hypes her 'alone/forlorn' status, never recognising that others do notice and value her. When you're grumpy/angry most of the time, one day when it matters, someone won't notice you're where you should be.

*******

Changing subject: I'm trying to tap my iPad with my other hand. VERY slow and tiring!! LOL

I've also reached a 'royal' level in my word game app. Am making D call me Princess ;

Your lady reminds me of the evidence that people can and do die of "broken hearts." Too many shocks to the system, or shocks that are too great to bear, can do physiological damage. For months after my mother died, I felt like my chest was in a vise. Not good.

Has that eased a bit for you, Peggy? I know the sense of loss, of emptiness can hang around for years (did for me), but do you have better days now?

Then again, you've been so busy I guess your life pattern has been totally mixed up for the last couple of months. (Did your guests come last weekend?)

Oh, yes, the chest pain was gone after two or three months, although I did take a few Xanax during that period when it was at its worst. I had seen a doctor about it, but the best he had to offer was Zoloft, which would not take effect for a month and would then require weaning off when I was done wanting it. I needed relief immediately, but it wasn't forthcoming from the doctor. I'm glad I'm not seeing him any more.

The guests canceled because we were so ambivalent about their visit. Quite simply, my SIL had invited herself without even knowing whether we had rooms for them to sleep in, and the fact was we aren't quite ready for entertaining overnight guests. I really think she was trying to manipulate things so Jim would see his mother during her visit to SIL in New Jersey this summer. It really irritates me that they set up these visits from Jim's mother without asking whether we will be available at all, then try to pressure us into visiting them, or manipulate us into having them as house guests when we don't have a sofa in the living room or a bed in the third bedroom... yet. I also find it strange that they never even offered to spend a night in a motel nearby, even knowing we didn't have enough furniture to host them here. SMH.

I've gone back to being extremely anxious about the house we have to put up for sale in CT. The realtor now tells me she would prefer me to get all the work done that remains there before we put it on the market, because once other realtors start seeing it and talking about it, it could create a bad vibe in the ranks of real estate agents if the house isn't "show-ready." I can't do all the work myself, given my physical limitations, and Jim is only off two days a week, and I am sick to death of the whole thing. I want to focus on our new house, and plan visits to get work started on my mother's house on Long Island, but this other house is hanging around my neck like some bloody great albatross.

Definitely time to get some paid help with that house! Can the agent's change of mind be presented to Jim as a change of situation that reopens the discussion about getting help? "We need to get the house ready asap, you don't have time, I don't have strength or endurance, and I don't feel safe trying to work alone...." The $ involved is very small in comparison to limiting exposure of the house to spring/summer buyers.

I was wondering the same thing, but couldn't be so articulate... Shocking migraine yesterday (could barely move or think). We're surrounded by the results ofbaffling family and community decisionmaking, too.

Mid-year Equinox next week: maybe that will clear all the craziness and indecision in the air.

@soorlady - So sorry to hear of all of your bad news. Prayers for you and your family ...

Oh, Joanne, sorry about the migraine. Hope things improve.

MJC, once I found out how much the *help* was really going to cost, I got cold feet myself. But maybe you are right. If I could get someone else to finish packing and moving all our stuff, I could focus on what remains of cleaning and stain the front porch and have Jim cut back the shrubs all along the length of the driveway. Actually, I wish I could hire a landscaping company to do some trimming all around, because the place is looking quite jungle-like, but I have a feeling that price would be astronomical.

But I think this is the last I will say about that house on this thread and limit it to my own blog. I don't want to distract from what this blog is all about...

Just popping in to say that my scan results came in and they were good. I am over the moon relieved. Since I took a couple of xanax to cope, I just want to go to sleep but still! Thanks for always being there.

Lisat, I wanted to ask but felt confident all would be fine now, focus on enjoying Summer!

lisat said:
Just popping in to say that my scan results came in and they were good. I am over the moon relieved. Since I took a couple of xanax to cope, I just want to go to sleep but still! Thanks for always being there.

HOORAY! Take a nap. You deserve one.

Oops. Got so carried away I posted it twice.

Hah!
Just spent 15 mins trying to get rid of a chin hair only to discover it's actually a new 'smile' wrinkle!!!

joanne said:
Hah!
Just spent 15 mins trying to get rid of a chin hair only to discover it's actually a new 'smile' wrinkle!!!

LMAO. Seriously.

We're told a lot of stuff about dementia, and often not much about it is good. We really don't know much about prevention, although there's a heap of serious research going on. It's hard to keep up, and keep the info straight.

Generally we tell the community: what's good for your heart is good for your brain. If you can keep your blood moving freely, all through your body, and stay connected to the people and activities you love, you should be OK. Build in variety and challenge, change the pace, keep moving and you should be OK.

So this research in PLoS Medicine is quite surprising: it seems to indicate that for people of European background with an inherited tendency to higher blood pressure (and who therefore have taken blood pressure meds), there is a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease. Technical at first, there is a good plain English discussion and summary. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001841

lisat said:
Just popping in to say that my scan results came in and they were good. I am over the moon relieved. Since I took a couple of xanax to cope, I just want to go to sleep but still! Thanks for always being there.

Hurray!

lisat said:
Just popping in to say that my scan results came in and they were good. I am over the moon relieved. Since I took a couple of xanax to cope, I just want to go to sleep but still! Thanks for always being there.

Great News!!

Thanks @sac - we buried MIL on Tuesday and left for a family vacation in the OuterBanks on Friday morning 11 adults, 4 teens, & 8 between 11 - 1 year - got home yesterday. Not exactly restful - but lots of fun and good to continue being together after two sad events. Back to the work world tomorrow.

The vacation sounds like a good distraction, even if it wasn't restful.

We are headed next week to my mother's house to begin packing up what we want to keep and getting rid of what we don't. Repairs are starting now on the garage, which had a tree fall on it some time ago.

It's going to be so hard to dismantle the house where I grew up, and which is going to feel so empty and damp and unloved now. I can't even begin to imagine going through more than half a century's worth of my parents' stuff and deciding what to do with it all.

My brother is stepping aside quite happily for this portion of the activities, which is just as well for both of us, I think. Although it is not going to be easy at all.

It will be bittersweet to continue to absorb some of the furniture and other bits and pieces of my childhood into our current house, where they will continue their useful lives without my parents. Thank goodness we already started this process when we moved Mom into assisted living and then into a memory care facility. I think it might lessen the shock.

But now we have to complete the tasks, and that's going to hurt.

I hated doing that for my mother's place, and I had a very supportive partner and worked with my sister to try to get things done. There was just too much.

I've still got boxes of MIL stuff we've just dumped in the garage and never gone through properly.

I think it's best to work through it all with a declutterer in attendance, when one can. There's stuff our hearts scream for us to keep that really we don't need to and won't mean anything to anyone else, but could be useful now if passed on via charity or secondhand store. But i keep kitchen utensils that we now use appliances for, I never use them, I keep them because mum used them when I was 10 or younger... Who would want a butter curler now? Let alone the paddles to make perfect, equal pats of grooved butter-balls... Or a stringed mandolin only for slicing tomatoes??

@PeggyC- so sorry you have to do this chore alone. It is not easy and an emotional chore. SoOrLord didn't grow up in the last house his mother owned, but 43 years of family gatherings echoed in the walls. I did most of the work that he couldn't bring himself to do. Will send up some good thoughts and PVs for you....

Will be thinking of you PeggyC. We spent 3 weeks doing this in the house my husband grew up in, and his mother grew up in it too. We have carted an extraordinary amount from Georgia to NJ to Maine, and I will not comment further on it.

Was looking for the Bitching Thread, unsuccessfully. Please forgive my grumpiness.

I'm fed up with team-mates who answer to me in terms of workplace hierarchy yet won't take direction. They might have worked there longer than me, they might be older than me, they might see things a different way; but I am team leader and sometimes when I ask for things to be done a particular way, it would be really nice to not have to justify it in complicated sentences which are usually followed by refusal to comply.

Sorry it's going that way, joanne. (((j)))

What is jersey_boy's all-purpose response to inappropriate **** from people? "Thanks for letting me know."?