Running

A wolf is running over endless green fields, the wind blowing through her fur, feeling how her muscles work harder to run faster, feeling endless freedom and joy.
I dream this quite often when I feel pushed in a corner, frustrated and depressed. It is such a nice dream, I want to cry when I wake up realizing that it is just a dream.
A wolf represents freedom to me. They are free and THEY are the predators and haveno fear of other predators hunting them.

Nowadays I just feel to run away from everything. It feels like a very dark cloud is moving with me above my head. Depression is an awful thing to have.
My mother has Vascular Dementia and Bipolar. It is hard to handle and process everything even though she has been diagnosed over a year ago with Vascular Dementia. There is a lot of crying, temper tantrums, confusion and hurt on both sides.
I feel ashamed to say that I feel everything is always about her. No thought goes to the rest of us, the family. Our needs, wants and worries. A lot of families feel like this. And it is normal to go through feelings such as this. It is a phase that they go throughgh. Acceptance is hard.

On the sidelines, I struggle to keep all my balls in the air and to get my overactive brain to be quiet.I am struggling with patience and I am tired of all the sh@t and drama every day. Sometimes I feel utterly lonely in all of this, but at the same time, I do not want to talk about it all. It is contradicting I know.
I just feel like running. running from everything that’s bothering me. It is sad because I am not a person to run away from my problems. It’s hard to get up out of bed in the mornings to face the day.
In the end, I know that we all will get through everything but getting there is hard.
That’s all for now till later 🙂
PS. excuse my grammar and punctuation.

Hurting

I’m sitting with my back against a water tank with mountains as my view. Today it feels like a mountain is on my shoulders. Actually it’s been a few days.

I wonder what it feels like to know how you are going to die. It must be devastatingly horrible. A family member of mine found out that her cancer spread a lot and that she needs to go for radiation. I think that’s what it’s called. She told my mother that she is sitting in bed every day crying where no one can see and hear her. She has a very painful road ahead of her.

My mother that has early onset vascular dementia is having bad days every day lately. I do not understand how she feels bad every day. We had a fight today because of the way I asked her whether she needed to go to the doctor or hospital among other things. Apparently I speak much nicer to my chickens. It ended with her threatening the unthinkable – suicide.

It is a sad thought to think that she will die of this illness and it’s really terrible knowledge to have for her an us- her family. I still haven’t Googled vascular dementia. It scares the shit out of me. My imagination is bad enough.

People do not realise that it is not only the person with the illness that suffers. The people and family around them suffers just as much. We also have feelings and sad thoughts about what’s happening. We are just as afraid. It sounds selfish but it is the truth. It is hard to get a thousand responsibilities suddenly on top of those that you already have. I don’t mind having them as I am sure other do not as well, but it still is something to get adjusted to. Anyway, that is the other side of the coin for today.

That being said we should always stand by whoever has a mental illness. Even if it gets extremely frustrating. Any illness for that matter. I heard of someone whose friends deserted her because she was diagnosed with dementia. It’s only cowards that do this in my opinion.

I rarely cry. But sitting here, I can’t seem to stop the tears from coming out. No one should make threats of committing suicide to others. It is downright mean. No matter what the situation is.

PS. I do not have wifi so could not put my post through grammarly so please excuse as usual my grammar and punctuation.

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.