changes

Quite a few of my friends know that James' mother is an older lady and her health is starting to deteriorate. Well, it has started going downhill quite fast unfortunately. she's still mobile but her doctor thinks she has been having a series of small strokes. This has started to affect her short-term memory and she's not been eating regular meals which in turn is messing with some of her medications. We have been monitoring her with several phone calls a day and at least one of us is home every weekend to do stuff for her. She is signed up for services that come in three-four times a week to help her with housework, bathing, etc. Plus she has several friends that come by and check on her so it's not like she's neglected.



Tuesday however, she had one of her spells caused by not eating properly and Dorothy has a bad habit of playing up how bad off she's feeling because she likes the extra attention it gets her (not saying anything out of turn here, James is the first to admit his mom is like that). The home health care person though instead of questioning her about whether she ate or not instead freaked out and called James insisting that Dorothy had to go to the hospital right then. Well, after 30 minutes of getting her to eat something and James calling a relative to take her to the doctor she was ok. In fact she was okay enough that she started going in and out her apartment door for some fresh air and allowed one of her cats to run out. Dorothy being Dorothy immediately went outside without her cane, managed to catch the cat, and tried to come back up the steps without the cane and the blasted cat in her arms that is struggling to get away. Yep, she took a tumble, no broken bones thankfully, just a scrape.

So this has precipitated a change in our work schedules that we were hoping to be able to postpone until after the holidays. My work schedule will continue to be pretty much the same, there just won't be anymore lollygagging on the way home. James will be working from Friday thru Monday however.

The dispatcher didn't like it but if he wants to keep us he's just going to have to live with it. We have absolutely no choice at this point. Dorothy's memory is going, her health is deteriorating, and she has told us that she will not go into an assisted living home much less a nursing home. She has said that if it came to that she would quit eating altogether and spit out her medicine. So, with this new schedule at least one of us will never be any further away than 6-8 hrs max on Fridays and Mondays instead of 10-12. The majority of the time one of us will either be at her apartment or our own house which is only 10-15 minutes away depending on traffic. With me keeping the same schedule that means I'll be able to finish out this race season for sure but it also means that James and I will only have part of one day off together. Adjustment time. Oh well, such is life.