Trials

Right now I am faced with a trial.  It is now to where I do not feel comfortable leaving the house at all.  We have made a change at home with the television and it is all I can do to maintain my sanity.  Apparently the television was more of a babysitter for my grandmother than I thought.  The cable has been out the past week and I have been unable to leave the house and come back with everything in one piece.  The boys and I would leave and run a couple errands and come back a couple hours later and we wouldn't find grandma in her chair like usual.  She would be somewhere in the house and into something.  I have caught her in my room and the boys room.  I have seen where she has tried to get into her medication, which I've moved to a locked box in my bedroom.  I have been afraid to leave the house because of the dread I have knowing the messes I will have to clean up when I get back home.

Today I went to my mother's house and I was gone for two hours.  When I walked back in the door I heard her talking to a lady on the LifeLine monitor.  She wears this button around her neck to push in case she "falls and she can't get up."  So, I walk in and hear her immediately tell this woman that she heard her family come back and she will be fine now.  The woman was very insistent and continued to verify that grandma could not breathe and whether or not she needed help.  Grandma said, "no, I'm fine now" and disconnected the call.  I could hear the phone ring as I left and went back to the car to carry in the rest of my things.  I came back in and she was sitting on the couch folding towels.  I asked her what that whole thing was about and she tells me that the LifeLine people called her and asked how she was doing and she told them she wasn't breathing good.  She reminded me how she gets shortness of breath whenever she gets up to do anything...like whenever she gets up to get ready to go anywhere, or when she does chores around the house (remember, she was folding towels).  About that time the phone starts to ring again and she tells me I'd better answer this time.  It was the LifeLine lady calling back and this time VERY insistent to see how grandma was doing.  I stepped outside and asked the woman if grandma had pushed the button and she had.  Grandma had gotten the towels out of the dryer and got short-winded.  She pushed her button and asked the lady who answered if she could get a portable oxygen machine so she could still do things around the house.  The woman told me she tried to explain to grandma that they could not prescribe or deliver medications.  I tried to explain to the woman that grandma has dementia and I was very sorry.

How can I go anywhere or do anything?  I never know what I am going to come home to.  Although, what kind of a life would it be for the boys if they never got to go anywhere?  What am I going to do????

Failure

I feel like a failure.  I feel like I am failing at everything.  I am failing my grandmother, my family, and my children.  Recently, while talking with some family members, grandma suggested I go back to work to start earning some of my own money.  Then I would be gone all day and she would finally be able to do whatever she wants without me here bossing her around.  Let me tell you, that made me feel really good.  Like the past year and a half has been such a waste, because all I've been doing is making her life miserable.  She has been criticizing everything I do and nothing is right.  The garden is wrong, my house keeping is unsatisfactory, my child-rearing is a miserable attempt.  I just get so tired of busting my butt to be cut down and made to feel like trash, like I'm failing at everything.  I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels.  It is three against one...all the time.  I am tired, so tired, of being asked to defend every time I get on to the boys.  Or anything I ask the boys to do that she doesn't understand or agree with.  Simple things like bath time.  I ask them to come get in the bath tub and they say "no" and she yells "no" right with them and then helps them hide from me.  They go jump in her chair and she tries her best to prevent me from getting to them.  I am mentally exhausted from fighting with everyone all the time.  In her mind I can't do anything right so she is turning the boys to think that too.  All I can do is my best and that is not enough right now.