Sustaining Elder Care – March 2024

A recap: My sisters and I started our journey ramping up elder care back in November. At first we thought we were being proactive in our conversation about ‘next steps’ with my parents’ doctor….but, less than a week later, my mother was critically ill and in the hospital. I spent the next 7 weeks in Texas. My mother managed to recover enough to come home before Thanksgiving even though she needed a lot of support at home. We hired caregivers to assist her at night through December and moved my parents to an assisted living group home just before the new year. As we worked to get them settled into the assisted living routine, we started a surge of effort to get their house cleared and on the market; the sale was finalized at the end of February. Both parents responded favorably to assisted living and decided they wanted to go out to eat occasionally rather than having special meals via take out as we had done for them at their house. In mid-February, they became sick with COVID…my dad first; he got Paxlovid and was recovering. My mother tested positive a few days later; her doctor adjusted her meds and she got Paxlovid; at first her case seemed even less symptomatic than my dad’s; the staff at the group home thought her breathing was wheezy one afternoon (even though my mother did not think she was having breathing problems) and sent her to the hospital via ambulance; she died 2 hours later.

The last few weeks have been busy ones. We reconfigured my dad’s living space from two rooms down to one and are in the process adjusting the assets my mom and dad accumulated to support his long-term care. As I write this, I realize that we have already settled into a ‘sustaining’ rather than ‘ramping up’ mind set. It isn’t that we won’t evolve what we do based on my dad’s needs…but we have a framework that will stay the same: the assisted living group home…daily visits from family….out to eat several times a month…walking in the neighborhood when the weather is good. Right now, he is still adjusting to not having mom around all the time; she was there for him for over 71 years. We are grateful to the staff of the assisted living for their increased attention. He still has times when he looks lonely…but he is talking more than he did when mom was around to talk for him.

Going forward, my trips to Texas will be quick ones – drive down and visit with dad in the afternoon before I head to my hotel, drive home the next day. Sometimes I will visit with dad in the morning before I drive back. I have done 2 of these trips so far in March. My sisters are there more frequently because they live closer than I do – one is there almost every day, another comes 2-3 times per week, another once or twice a week. Along with taking him out to eat, we put out his clothes for the next day, work on a puzzle with him, accompany him on a walk, help him find something that he lost (his wallet with his id and he glasses tend to go missing).

My sisters and I have had conversations about how much we have accomplished in the past few months – having to adjust very rapidly. We are not exactly relaxed at this point, but the stress level is dramatically lower!

Previous posts: November 2023, November 2023 update, December 2023, January 2024, February 2024, March 2024 (1)

Ramping up Elder Care – December 2024

My parent came home from the hospital the Wednesday before Thanksgiving...still requiring a lot of care at night which fell to me since I was staying in their house. Both me and my sister remained almost as sleep deprived as when we were alternating 24-hour stints at the hospital! We quickly realized that the strategy that had worked for the caring of our 90+ year old parents over the past few years was not going to work going forward…and the ‘new normal’ we had scrambled to established could not be sustained.

Even sleep deprived – I acknowledged there were magical moments and the joy of not being in the hospital anymore. I appreciated little things like the gentle glow of warm-colored night lights and the full moon shining through a skylight…and every bit of fractured sleep I could get.

Even sleep deprived – I acknowledged there were magical moments and the joy of not being in the hospital anymore. I appreciated little things like the gentle glow of warm-colored night lights and the full moon shining through a skylight…and every bit of fractured sleep I could get.

Before the hospitalization I had made appointments to interview companies that provide in-home caregivers and to visit an assisted living group home. We managed to keep those appointments and decided to contract for a caregiver at night for the month of December; that relieved our sleep deprivation and gave us a few weeks to decide on the ‘next step.’

Our experience with caregivers has been mostly positive but we quickly realized that there would be at least 3 people involved to cover the 7 days each week. So far 2 have not worked out: one that slept through most of the night and another that one parent disliked (strongly). We realized that the care givers rarely work with their peers (so no cross training or collaboration on unusual situations) and supervision was not apparent. The role of the company they work for seems to be primarily scheduling of services. And the services are expensive.

It has enables us to sleep through the night but the days have been fraught with home health appointmentss (nurse visits, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, virtual doctor visits). There have been two medication changes – both with positive results. My sister and I have gotten very efficient at preparing thickened liquids and appropriately elevating the hospital bed to avoid aspiration of fluid in the lungs of our parent that was hospitalized. Other upheavals have piled on too: Carrollton’s replacement of a sewer line at the edge of the property, a plumbing problem that caused the only bathroom in the house with a door wide enough for a walker to get through to be unusable for about 24 hours, required fall yard maintenance, Thanksgiving celebration…and preparation for Christmas. There is always something that needs to be done that we can’t quite find time to do.

We researched assisted living options…at first thinking that they would be a back up plan but deciding that they should be the 1st choice based on our experience by early December and that the form that would probably be more suited for my parents would be a group home rather than a larger facility. We found one that had been created in a renovated house in their neighborhood for 6 people. We visited the facility and liked it. They had 1 opening at the time. Then they told us that there would be a second opening by the end of December (one of the residents being moved to a facility with a higher level of care) and that the largest room (the one that had been the master bedroom in the original house) was going to be available. We started the application process.

The initial discussion about assisted living and the specific place we were looking at seriously went as expected. One agreed to keep an open mind…the other had a visceral reaction and didn’t want to consider any other option than staying in the house they have lived in for 33 years. We scheduled a visit to the assisted living home…hoping that we could encourage both  parents to be in information gathering mode and ask a lot of questions.

The day of the tour arrived…one parent had already decided that assisted living was the way to go, the other was still thinking it was not. Neither asked questions on the tour but looked around eagerly. One was completely exhausted by the outing but confirmed their idea that moving was best. The other became convinced (and upset) that they were going to be losing the house they called home for 33 years and moving to the assisted living place.

We are proceeding with the process toward assisted living. There are many ways that it could fall apart…but as I write this post we are on track…planning to make the move in January.

Stay tuned for our continuing journey ramping up elder care….

Previous posts: November 2023, November 2023 update

Zentangle® – November 2023

30 days in November – 30 Zentangle tiles. All except one of the tiles I selected this month were from my ‘thicket series’ – which started with a branching double string that created many smaller spaces (a ‘thicket’) with various ways of filling the string.

8 of the tiles were made while my parent was in the hospital…a way to fill the time and regain some calm with the focused activity of creating a tile.

I left my scanner at home so the images were created with photos made with my phone…not as tidy as the scanned images of prior months but it was the best I could do when it came time to do this post!

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Community Supported Agriculture (1)

I enjoyed my membership in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) when I lived in Maryland. When I first moved to Missouri, I decided that I would try to simply go to local Farmers Markets for locally grown produce. That remained my plan until recently when I realized that one of the best things (for me) about belonging to a CSA is the prompt to enjoy more variety…maybe even a totally new-to-me veggie or herb. So – I researched Springfield MO area CSAs and discovered that I could become a mid-season member of  Milsap Farms!

It is a bit different from the CSA in Maryland.

  • Instead of being less than I mile from where I live, it is on the other side of Springfield. I pay a little extra for delivery of my share to my front porch.

  • In Maryland I went to the farm every week and did ‘swapping’ while I was there. In Missouri, the share composition/swapping is handled with an email prompt and then an online app which is completed by the day before delivery. I didn’t quite get the routine the 1st time around, so I got the default delivery for that week. By the 2nd delivery, I was comfortable…knew when to look for the email and do the tweaking.

  • My daughter lives closer to me now so we can split up the share after I receive it. For example, out of the first share I gave her half the carrots, celery, herbs, and onions (she suggested that I keep the kohlrabi since I like it better than she and her husband do). For the rest of this season (until the end of October), we are getting the small share and evaluating how well we like the CSA; at this point, we think we’ll sign up next year…but still need to decide if we want a small or full share.

The first week’s share (picture below) included: carrots, celery, Thai basil, dill, onions, and kohlrabi The second week included: salad mix, radishes, green bell peppers, pea shoots, basil, carrots, and watermelon.

So far – a positive experience!

Nutting’s ‘Beautiful’ eBooks

Wallace Nutting started out his adult life as a Congregational minister but retired at 43 because of ill health. His ‘second act’ (he lived to be 79 years old!) included photography and colonial furniture collecting and reproduction; his reproductions and photographs are still widely collected today. Both aspects are represented in books he published and are available on Internet Archive. The ‘Beautiful’ books reflect his travels; he was evidently an avid bicyclist and took up photography to document what he was seeing. Nutting’s pictures capture places as they existed in the 1920s; since he tended to photograph landscapes, some of the places might look very similar today. The only one not in the northeastern US is Ireland!

The Internet Archive also has Nutting’s book documenting Windsor chairs – which he collected and reproduced. I selected a child’s highchair as the sample image…remembering my daughter sitting in a similar chair for lunch the first time she visited Mount Vernon (Washington’s home) and we stopped for lunch at the restaurant there (back in 1990).

 He’s a great role model of redirecting your life in a positive direction after encountering a roadblock (like ill-health) on the path you thought would be yours.

Intentions 2022

At the end of last year, I posted about what I thought would be different about 2022 for me – things that I wanted to make happen. Now that the year is half over, I am assessing my progress on the four areas I wrote about last December.

Releasing myself from some of my daily metrics. This has been the hardest change…and I still find myself pushing for the 12,000 steps…4 books…2,000 words each day. But there are days where other priorities have prevailed such as tasks on the critical path for our move from Maryland to Missouri. So far, I’ve ‘made up’ for the low days on books and words…am averaging the goal for 2022. I’ve not made very much of a change!

Reverting to a cleaner/neater house. In the Maryland house, the piles of boxes that accumulated over the three months before we moved made it harder to clean although we did clean the areas we could get to and cleaned items that were being packed. The house ended up sparkling after the carpeting was replaced; 35+ year old carpeting in a house that always had at least one cat is a cleaning challenge! In our new house, we are vacuuming frequently to clear the dog hair (previous owner)…successfully based on the vacuum canister not filling up as quickly as it did originally. We are still unpacking but there are lots of spaces to put things away and we are striving to keep more surfaces clear. The laundry chute is a plus – no hamper or other laundry receptacle in the bedroom. This intention is still a work in progress but both my husband and I are making the effort; we are motivated to have the house comfortable….keep it cleaner and neater than our Maryland house.

Look for the unique. It’s a habit now…I record something unique at the end of each day and have been surprised how easy it is to identify an event or sight or food…that was a 1st or one/only. The habit has caused a slight change in my attitude. I am more likely to look from a unique perspective or try something new than I was a year ago!

Moving to live closer to my daughter. Done! We are still working through the aftermath…address changes, new licenses/registrations, completely unpacking. Of all the changes I anticipated at the beginning of the year…this is the big one. It probably happened faster than I thought it would. We’ve owned our house in Missouri for about 1.5 months now – enough time to realize we make a great choice. I’m already set to make a fall road trip with my daughter, accompanying her on a road trip to Canada for her to attend a conference – something I would have not been able to do if we still lived in Maryland.

I am doing so well on my intentions made at the beginning of the year that I am adding to the list for the remaining months:

Spend some time each month with my parents (Carrollton).

Design/implement landscaping tweaks to our yard in the fall.

Start volunteering (again).

Zentangle® – May 2022

31 Zentangle tiles for May. It was a little more challenging to do one a day with the flurry of activity getting ready to move….but I did it (although with fewer extra tiles than usual). There were more rectangular tiles in May because I was at home; the rectangular tiles don’t fit as well as the square tiles in the box is take when I travel as happened in prior months…and will happen in June too.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

A New Family Member

Adding to the overall drama of the month….

My niece had her baby! It was a milestone in our family – the first great-grandchild for my parents. One of my sisters became a grandmother. I became a great aunt as did my two other sisters. There has been a flurry in recent weeks to get pertussis vaccinations to safely visit the newborn. I was far from the event – in Maryland rather than Texas – but my sister provided enough texts for me to feel included. And I’ll get a pertussis shot in preparation for seeing the baby sometime in June.

The event was a good prompt to think about motherhood…how it has changed since my sister and I had children….how it has stayed the same. The basics are the same. Now there is more concern for the impacts of pollutants from the environment and potential COVID-19 infection on the developing fetus and newborn. The political climate that could impact care during pregnancy and delivery has degraded overtime and got much worse very recently. Still – the birth of a healthy baby is a time of hope for the future…a motivation for the adults of the family to lean into the actions necessary to enable this new family member opportunities on par with those we had…or better.

Donate/Recycle/Trash

We are getting rid of things we don’t want to move via donation, recycling and (last resort) trash:

Donation

We’ve done monthly donations that filled our porch – needing to be out by 8AM and picked up sometime during the day. This month the pile was front of the garage because we had maintenance people coming: boom box, yoga mat, mini-trampoline, office supplies, clothes, window/deck pressure cleaner, deck stain sprayer, clothes, coffee maker carafe, reusable water bottles, small outdoor rug.

Recycle

We have curbside pickup for some types of recycling for things like plastics, paper and cardboard, but we overwhelmed the bin with the amount we needed to recycle so we included it in our trips to the ‘landfill’ where they have recycling bins plus an area for electronics recycling: cables (computer and phone), computers, files from the 1970s and 1980s , and old cardboard.

Special recycle

Our credit union had a shredding event; we took 3 boxes of old receipts! It would have been too time consuming to do with our small home shredder.

Trash

Fortunately the most bulky items were not heavy….but it was depressing that they could only go into the trash: furnace filters that were for a furnace that has been replaced, old plastic bins, and Styrofoam from inside boxes that we used for packing not needing the Styrofoam

Hazardous waste (special trash)

More of this type of trash had accumulated in our basement and garage over the years than I realized. Most of it was very dusty. Our county has a hazardous waste area of the landfill that is staffed on Saturdays so we accumulated what we had and took it all at once – a SUV full!

  • Paint (and paint cleanup fluids)…this was the bulk of what had accumulated.

  • Gardening chemicals…some was very old and might not even be sold any more!

  • Cleaning products

26 Months in COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 cases in Maryland are increasing but all the counties in the state are still green in the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Level map. Most of Missouri is too. Still - the positivity is 5-8% in Maryland and 8-10% in Missouri…not low enough for me to be comfortable in crowds or in indoor spaces without a mask. How does that translate into our increased level of activity?

Buying a house. Both my husband and I wore masks when we walked through the house we had bid on and then the next day when we talked to the inspector. There was a meeting in the realtor’s office where we wore a mask as well. During our travel, we masked at rest stops and in registration/hallways of our hotel. We brought an air purifier into our hotel room and got takeout for meals.

Birding. We masked at the Harriet Tubman Byway visitor center and the registration/hallways of our hotel. Otherwise - the activity was outdoors, and we didn’t mask. All our meals were picked up from drive through windows.

House maintenance. We’ve had more people in our house for maintenance purposes in Maryland…preparing the house to be sold. We mask while they are here, and they do too.

Broken tooth. I have an appointment with the dentist because a molar cracked…needs repair. Hopefully the precautions the dental office has in place are effective. This seems like the highest risk situation of all the things I’ve done recently.

And we are moving over the next month! I am realizing that the precautions I have in place (following guidance re boosters, masking when I am indoors other than at home, avoiding crowds, keeping hand sanitizer in the car, taking an air purifier with me on road trips) are probably going to be my strategy for the foreseeable future unless the infection rate drops dramatically. So – this is the last of the monthly posts even though the pandemic is continuing. I’m not getting complacent…I’ve simply accepted that this is the prudent way to be…nothing new to post about every month.

Zentangle® – March 2022

March was a busy month with an overlay of trauma (laptop problems, getting sick while I was traveling) but making Zentangle tiles helped me weather the increased stress. The daily routine of creating at least one tile is one of my most reliable methods of coping with whatever is happening otherwise.

I am still using up old pens so there are fewer colors in this set…although while I was in Texas, I had the box of old gel pins to add to the variety. I used more round and square coasters this month – realizing that some of them were yellowing after being unwrapped – perhaps absorbing some moisture from the air and beginning to deteriorate. There were a lot fewer rectangular tiles this month. Overall – I like the patterns and colors in this collection.

I’m always a little surprised when I choose the tiles for the month….enjoy again what I created during the month.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Zentangle® – December 2021

31 tiles for the 31 days of December….

In the first few days of the month, I continued to use my old pens…but then switched to red (with black…sometimes white) and some Christmas themed patterns. There was a skew toward square tiles rather than rectangular this month…just as there was in November.

I enjoyed the red pen…will return to it for February (valentines). Maybe in January I will pick another color to feature in most tiles….and strive for some very different patterns.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

My Blog’s 10th Anniversary

I started my blog 10 years ago this month. It was part of my transition from being career focused for more than 40 years. And I’ve kept it going – it’s an enjoyable daily rhythm for me. I’m savoring my history of the past decade in this post.

The blog posts from 2011 included a trip to Longwood Gardens and a long road trip to Tucson, Arizona (with photos of rest stops along the way) where my daughter was in graduate school. I stated the gleanings of the week and enjoyed posting recipes and photographs of places I was visiting. The new technology was a Kindle Fire; I was making the transition from physical to digital books…it would take several more years to complete the transition and I’d graduated from the Kindle Fire to an iPad, Smartphone (and laptop) for reading. Some of my favorite posts form 2011 include: Recipe of the Week: Homemade Soup for a Cold Day, Water Lily Pictures, and 10 Cosmetics from the Kitchen.

In 2012, I started the monthly ‘10 days of little celebrations’ and experienced the trauma of my parents getting older…beginning to experience substantial health problems. We added a bird feeder on our deck – visible from my office window and I started enjoying birdwatching through the window. Some of my favorite posts include: Birds from my Office Window, Gray Day Reflections, Yucca Seed Pods, and Ten Days of Little Celebrations - November 2012.

The next year I started the zooming and free eBooks posts. Over the years my camera’s optical zoom capabilities have improved dramatically and I enjoy using it to get better images. By this time, I was almost completely transitioned to digital books too. We made a road trip to Florida for a satellite launch at Cape Canaveral and I got my first close view of Sandhill Cranes in the Orlando airport cell phone lot waiting for my daughter to arrive. Some of my favorite posts close to that anniversary include: 3 Free eBooks - December 2013, Sandhill Cranes in Florida - November 2013, Herons in Florida - November 2013, and Zooming - December 2013.

In 2014, I started my effort to reduce the ‘stuff’ we had accumulated from living for more than 25 years in our house. My volunteer work has gradually increased…and would be easily sustained until the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of my favorite posts from the end of 2014 include: The Grand Cleanout - December 2014, December Sunrise, and Fall Field Trips.

The big event at the end of 2015 was our travel to the big island of Hawaii…including a day trip to the top of Maunakea. It was an wonderful experience but I find myself wondering if I ever want to take a long flight like that again.

2016 was our first birding festival – the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache. We also discovered the Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam, closer to home. I started my monthly Zentangle posts. Here are some sample posts: Highlights of 2016, Conowingo - December 2016, Zentangle® – November 2016, and First Day at Bosque del Apache.

I started the monthly eBotantical Prints posts in November 2017. I’d been browsing historical botanical books in the last decade of my career and was beginning to figure out a way to share my list. At the time I thought that I had about exhausted the supply, but I’ve continued to add 20 or so books every month until there are now over 2,200 books on the list!

In 2018 we attended our second Festival of the Cranes in New Mexico then enjoyed the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival early in 2019.

In the last few months of 2019, there was a last road trip with my parents at Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the Christmas lights near home and planned for a birding festival in Laredo, TX in the early part of 2020.

As we were coming back from the Laredo birding festival, COVID-19 was in the news and soon we were ‘staying at home as much as possible’. By November 2020, we were anticipating that a vaccine was going to become available and the pandemic would end. We were doing virtual birding festivals and otherwise keeping ourselves happy at or close to home.

And here I am in November 2021, still not like I was pre-pandemic. I enjoy many of the same things I have in the past 10 years, but I am not out venturing into crowds…not flying. I am facing a health challenge of my own (cancer). My parents are home bound in Texas, and I have made visiting them my rationale for 3 road trips since the spring when I became fully vaccinated. At this point, it is not the pandemic that causes most of my anxiety, but the changed behavior (sometimes abrasive and violent) of people under stress that has become so apparent over the past year.

The blog continues…it’s a way to document my present….and notice the subtle changes in the way I am ‘living well.’