Are two heads better than one?

It started with a busy day for me. Since my mother has dementia and my father’s back are too bad to stand and walk for long periods it falls on me to do the monthly grocery shopping. As well as paying the monthly bills among other things.

This particular morning I had to first go to work and then do the groceries, which is a mission and a half. Anyway, I got home and started to unpack the groceries and my father went and started to work out what our electric bill is.
There was a sudden silence followed by this can not be. When I went over to him I saw that our bill was exactly double the amount that we pay every month. When you do not have a lot of money, this can give you a whopper of an anxiety attack.

We sat there in our living room trying to figure out where he made a mistake in calculating our bill. I worked it out too and came to the same amount he came to.

It was horrible. We sat there nearly in tears till my mother showed up. She usually works it out for us. She was having an off day with her Dementia and still did the correct calculations. It turned out we got our math wrong.
What a relief.
Two heads better than one? Not in this case!

Having dementia does not mean that that person is suddenly stupid and incapable of doing ordinary daily tasks and other things.
As a daughter with a mother with early-onset Dementia, it is very hard to come to grip with how things will become- or more accurately how soon things will go downhill. Will she still be able to do this or that? These thoughts cloud your judgment. The fact is, as I have mentioned earlier, they aren’t suddenly incapable of doing things. Let them continue as they have been their whole lives until it is clear that they aren’t capable of doing it anymore.
There certainly will be lots of frustrating days for the person with dementia and his/her companion, family members, and friends. I certainly have a fair share of frustration as does my mother. Deal with it and move on/

PS. Grammar and punctuation suck, but that is nothing new.

Be courageous.

About two years back a friend’s mom got sick. I ended up looking after her small farm for three months. One of the tasks I had was to look after the egg hatching machine. When it got time for the first batch of eggs to hatch, I was ecstatic! I was in front of the incubator, looking through the window for any signs of pipping.
I did not know that it took hours for them to get out of the egg, but found out soon enough though.

One chick was too weak to break out and the membrane dried. since it was more than a day that the chick was struggling I decided to help. I got the shell off eventually and had a very weak chick in my hand, who might not survive. I put the chick back in the warm incubator and hoped for the best.

Soon it got time for the chick to leave the machine even though it was still weak. Anyhow, a long story short, I ended up sitting with the chick on my chest under my shirt so that she could stay warm and stop crying for weeks in the middle of winter. I had to separate her from the other chicks as they were stronger than her.
I decided to call her Courageous because even though she had a less than ideal start in life, she fought to stay alive.

Sometimes life throws us huge curve balls and punches, but it is up to us to decide how we will handle it. We can either sink or swim. Lots of people out there have mental, physical and even undiagnosed issues to deal with that is terrible. And I include myself in this, but decide to live today, and go out with your back straight and tackle everything with all you have.

Those of us that have friends and parents with mental illnesses like Dementia, Alzheimers, Depression and so on, support them as much as you can, even though it is hard for us too at times. It could have been you, and they are far from useless. They are still the people we know, love and care for.
BE COURAGEOUS TODAY NO MATTER WHAT PROBLEMS YOU HAVE. DECIDE TO LIVE AND MOVE FORWARD.

PS. Grammar and punctuation suck, but that is nothing new.

Update on my blog “anxious about my first teaching practice”. End of the first week.

I can certainly say that I was unnecessary anxious about the teaching practice. The mentors (teachers) are very helpful.

My first day did not start that well. It started with a question–did you prepare a Bible story? Hmmm well sh!t was all I could think of and said no, but I can tell them about David and Goliath. A suggestion Saro gave the previous night in case I had to do a story. The story went well in the end.

Lesson learned- be prepared for anything.

The story made me think about children’s stories in general. They contain a lot of violence. Are we teaching our children violence from the start of their lives without realizing it?

When I told them the story about David and Goliath I said David threw the Goliath with rocks and then he fainted haha. If you think about it even stories in the Bible have violence. Anyway, it is a topic for another day.

As I said in my previous post, I have a lot of self-doubts. Am I studying the correct course? Yesterday I realized that I am actually enjoying myself a lot.

I also realized that teaching is a lot of work. It requires a lot of preparation. Many people are under the impression that teaching isn’t working. Some regard only physical work as a job.

This is not the case. Teaching is emotionally taxing. Not to mention the long hours. A teacher’s job doesn’t end when the school closes for the day. A lot of hours go into planning and marking at home. This is just a few things out of a very long list.

Teachers also work in different circumstances depending on the area where the school is situated.

Anxious about first teaching practice.

Tomorrow will be my first hands-on teaching practice. A few months back I only observed and got thrown in on the deep side, forcing me to either swim or drown. I really feel uncomfortable to speak to people. I almost never know what to say. It simply is just very stressful for me for varying reasons. Keeping this in mind here goes today’s blog

The observation turned out rough, but I ended up enjoying the experience more than I thought I would.

I have prepared as much as I could for the first week. The theme for the week will be farm animals. So I have the plans, thought everything through, but still, the feeling of anxiety lingers.

Lots of thoughts running through my mind. Will it be good enough, am I good enough, what if the observing teacher thinks I suck and is not suited to be a teacher? What if I suddenly can’t remember the points I wanted to make?
I guess all these thoughts are my self-doubt and insecurities that are coming through.
My sister went to another school to do her practical and that woman just criticized her attempts, throwing hard punches in a manner of speaking. Now, I really do not mind critic, but if you want to dish out criticism you should also be able to give advice on how you can fix it. Sadly, this teacher did not do this. This is also floating around in my mind.
In plain words- I am scared and unsure. With feelings like this, I would have backed out very quickly if I could. But I am stuck.
Ah well. I will just have to “man up” and take the bull by the horns. But how do I get rid of the anxiety?

PS. Sorry for the bad grammar. 🙂

Sad Thoughts

I have been thinking about writing this blog for a while now. It really is such a raw wound on my heart that I am afraid of being overcome with emotions, which will be good in the end. I hope.

A few months ago my mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia. At first, none of us could believe this as we did not notice this, which is strange as we all live together. She was referred to a psychiatrist for a reevaluation for her Bipolar medication, but I guess things developed from pointed questions to a test for dementia. Boy, what a hard blow. Needless to say, today a year or so later, we notice the signs clearly.

Now the question is: how the hell do we handle this? How do I handle this? I guess I am still in denial. I do not want to google vascular dementia, I don’t want to hear about it and I certainly do not want to see the symptoms. I do not want to see my mother forget something. The problem is: how do I get patience when she suddenly cannot remember what I am talking about or stop feeling irritated when she cries about every little thing? On the other side of the coin, how can I sympathize with her when she is distraught about forgetting something? Because it certainly does not help to say “do not worry it happens to me too sometimes”, all this comment is telling her is that I am trying to compare with her. This I can assure you, is not the case.

It simply is one of the ways of saying do not worry about it. These are just some of the things that are bothering me. At night I lay awake, feeling scared for us and her. How will she end up being? Will, I then resent myself because of all my impatience and the times that I got irritated as a response to something she did, say or forget? Even though I do not do this on purpose? There is so much more I want to say, but I do not have the words to type it down. All that remains is to feel like crying and to never stop.

THIS SUCKS BIG TIME!!!!

Guys, I know my grammar and punctuation is horrible. please excuse this in my blogs.

Thanks for listening.