dealing with elderly parents

What a long day!

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It’s not even 8:30pm as I start this, but it feels so much later – and not just because the days are shorter and it’s full dark outside!

Today was my mother’s appointment with the eye specialist in the city, but there were things I needed to do before getting to her place.

Which meant, of course, I got almost zero sleep last night. It seems the more I need to actually get sleep before scheduled activities, the harder it is for me to actually fall asleep!

Meanwhile, my daughters took care of all my usual outdoor routines today, which was a huge help.

The first thing I had to do that had me leaving quite a bit earlier than I would have needed to get to my mother’s, was to stop at the home care office. They needed a couple of signatures from me related to the hospital bed they provide for my husband. I also had a copy of the Power of Attorney paperwork for my brother that they needed in order to process my mother’s file for long term care. This was the last thing they needed as far as the paperwork goes. I spoke to the coordinator for a while. He had already talked to the next coordinator about long term care placement. Physically, my mother would only qualify for supportive living, which would be great for her, but behaviorally, they would not be able to provide her the support she needs. Her racism certainly would make it more difficult, too – the home care aids have already reported some unfortunate things my mother has said. Since they were there for only a few minutes, to help her take her medications, there isn’t a lot of time for her to really get bad with any of them. They do have instructions, though, on how to deflect and, if necessary, simply get out of the situation if it’s particularly bad.

As for the care facilities, her paperwork will first go to the supportive living coordinator, where it will be rejected. Then it will go to the long term care coordinator, who is already aware of my mother’s circumstances, and a decision will be made. If she does qualify for long term care, though, this will get her on a waiting list, unless something happens that puts her under urgent placement. Like if she fell and broke a hip, she would go straight from the hospital into long term care.

Or if she got herself evicted, though that’s a grey area.

We spoke about the meal assist, too. We’ll be trying it out at every two weeks, first. They have only 2 hours to do the meal preparation. We would have to make sure they have all the ingredients, any recipes needed, and containers for the meals to go into the fridge or freezer.

After finishing at the office, I was going to pick up fried chicken and potato wedges at our favorite place – the gas station! 😄 It was too early for their chicken to be ready, though, so I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks. There weren’t any that my mother would be willing to drink, so I went to the gas station and just parked until I was sure their first batches of chicken would be ready. I actually found appropriate drinks there, too!

I also made sure to pick up a couple of 5 Hour Energy bottles, and drank one of them right away.

My mother was very happy when I arrived with the food! She keeps saying, she shouldn’t eat fried chicken, because she has made associations with it and various physical complaints, but she really loves their fried chicken was wedges!

We had enough time that we could have a nice, relaxed lunch, and I could tell her about how things went at the home care office. We talked about her bubble packs, and how she needs to not take anything except when the home care aides come in. She told me how, this morning, the aide took the prescriptions out of the blister and set them in front of her in a pile, but when my mother spread them out and counted them, one was missing! The aide, on hearing that, said that she would need to make a report, but my mom knew it had been in the blister. After looking around, they did find it. It may have just stuck to her hand or the packaging as she got it out for my mother.

I told my mother that when I take my supplements, etc. I have a small bowl I put them into first, then take them all at once from the bowl. She liked that idea, so I went digging around her cupboards and found the smallest bowl she had – an absolutely delightful vintage glass dessert bowl with three handles and a pattern of grape clusters and leaves. I’m totally in love with it!

It’s still pretty big for the job, though, so when I told her I collect tiny bowls and how handy they are, she asked if I could bring her one.

I now have a mini tagine wrapped up and in my purse to bring to her. I think she’ll find it adorable!

We talked about the meal assist, and she’s not happy with it, and says that she can do meals on wheels. They deliver 5 days a week. It’s certainly an option, if this doesn’t work out, but we’ll try meal assist first.

We started to talk about the exterminator coming to her place tomorrow, and that I would be there early to try and move as many things away from the walls as can be done. She started to get very angry about it again. She’s convinced they have singled her out for abuse, and that they just want to go through her stuff and steal things. Frankly, I no longer have patience for her behaviour on this. She is very much at risk of getting evicted, and she doesn’t take it seriously. This has all dragged on far longer than it should have, because she would not let them do their jobs. So many people are bending over backwards to try and help her, and she just refuses to accept that she might be the one that’s causing the problem, not everyone else.

I was able to redirect that conversation more than a few times today!

When we left, we had what turned out to be a very easy and uneventful drive. The location of this clinic may be on the opposite end of the city from us, but it is very easy to get to from my mother’s town. The only unfortunate thing about the drive was that I was feeling myself start to fall asleep. I’m glad I got two of those 5 Hour Energy things. My mother even helped open the bottle for me while I was driving!

Once there, I got her checked in and then we sat in the waiting room. We were early, so I told her I was going to close my eyes for a bit.

I think I actually fell asleep for a bit!

Whether I did nor didn’t, by the time my mother’s name was called, I felt so much better.

The first stage of her appointment was for an assistant to ask various questions, check her current medications list, and try to get an idea of just how long my mother has been having issues. It was not easy. My mother’s sense of time has gotten pretty bad, but for all her complaints about her vision, she insisted the problem was her glasses, and didn’t even realize that her right eye was going blind!

He did a quick eye test with her, with the left eye covered, then again with the right eye covered. Her left eye can still see pretty darn good. With her right eye, she couldn’t even see a single large letter C. All she could tell was that there was a roundish shape. She also had some issues when he held up different numbers of fingers at different distances. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes not. At one point, she couldn’t even see him waving his hand back and forth in front of her right eye.

Next, he took her to a machine to take photos and video of the inside of her eye.

It was not easy.

The typical instruction is “focus on the green X in the middle.” To which my mother would say, “there is no X.”

After that went back and forth a bit, I told her to just look straight ahead. He went with that for the rest of the testing on that eye.

The assistant was so very sweet and awesome. He treated her so nicely, with such a gentle mannerism. I found myself wanting to give him a great big hug! 😄

It took quite a while to get the images he needed. It’s hard enough to stare straight ahead and not blink for several seconds at the best of times. It’s even harder for my mother, who had nothing she could focus on.

That done, it was back to an examination room, and for the doctor to see her.

It turns out her eye is really bad, and he was pretty alarmed about it. She’s had blood pooling in her eye for quite some time, but we just can’t get a handle on when she started to have problems. The only thing I could confirm is that I took my mother for her regular eye exam in February, and there was nothing of concern at the time. I was there and saw the photos of my mother’s eye. This damage was not there.

The doctor spent quite a bit of time explaining things to her and making sure she understood what was going on, as best she could, and to ensure she was able to give informed consent for the treatment.

She had to get drops to dilate her pupils, antibacterial drops, a needle to freeze the eye, and finally the needle for her first treatment.

All of which my mother put up with extremely well. When he was telling her what had to be done and made sure to get her verbal and written consent, her response was simply, “do what you have to do.”

Personally, I think I’d rather go blind than have injections directly into my eyeball!

She was pretty amazing about it.

Along with all that, he took the time to give me information booklets, a grid test for her left eye that she’s supposed to do daily, and a bottle of artificial tears. He really stressed with my mother, how important it is to NOT rub her eyes, touch them in any way, or even touch her face near that right eye. If her eye starts to itch, she is to take an eye drop.

If she starts to feel severe pain, though, she is to immediately return to the clinic to see him or, if it’s the weekend, to a nearby hospital that has a specialty in eye care.

When we finished and I was getting her next appointment in 4 weeks, and helping her pay for some of the tests not covered by our system, my mother just sat on her walker seat with her eyes closed, because she couldn’t really see. Once everything was taken care of and she was in the truck, I gave her my husband’s driving glasses – sunglasses designed to fit over regular glasses.

She really, really loved how much that helped!

Also, she looked adorable in camo print driving glasses. 😄

By this time, I was getting really hungry, and I figured my mother would be, too. When she started talking about getting me to heat up a can of soup for her supper when we got to her place, I was not about to leave it that way! I wanted to get gas in the city, where it’s a lot cheaper right now, and the gas station I stopped at had a Burger King attached to it. I ended up getting chicken fry meals for both of us, as that was something easy to eat while driving.

My mother said that the food could wait until we got to her place but I told her, when I get hungry, I start to become dizzy and ill, so I needed to eat. I set my food out on the console, and hers stayed in the bag.

As we were driving, I saw in my peripheral vision, as she reached out to take a fry!

“Temptation!” she said. 😄😄

I told her she could help herself! She had only a few, though.

Once we got to her place, though, I brought the food out for her to have right away. The home care worker would have come and gone while we were out, so I made sure she had her supper time pills with food.

She was quite happy with this.

She still wanted me to open up a can of soup for her, though, for later.

I took the time to explain some of what we brought home from the clinic, but only briefly. I’ll be back tomorrow and I will stay with her for the 6 hours she has to stay out of her apartment, if that’s what it takes! That will give us plenty of time to sit down with the information and I can explain things to her in ways she could understand.

When we first got to my mother’s place, though, I did a quick check on my messages and found my daughter had sent me photos.

It was very windy today.

We lost a tree.

When I got home, I just had to check it out and get some photos of my own, too.

That is one of the big trees!

In the second photo of the slide show above, I just had to get a picture of how perfectly it fell in between to other trees, without getting caught on them!

The crab apple tree in the third photo was not so fortunate.

The spruce landed right in the middle, breaking off about a third of it.

Well, this is one of the sick trees we were needing to remove, anyhow!

We should be able to use the trunk of that spruce, though. This is one of trees too big to use as a raised garden bed. We should be able to take the bottom, widest, 10 ft and set it aside for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Part of the trunk is cracked, though, so I’m not sure we we’ll get a full 10 feet that isn’t damaged, or what we can salvage from the rest of it.

We shall see. It’s way too windy to even consider breaking it down and cleaning it up.

Once again, it will be up to my daughters to take care of the outside stuff, as I will be with my mother tomorrow.

I’m not sure what we can do for such a long time. There aren’t places to just hang out in her town, and I don’t think she’d be up to any outings. Plus, we want to go over the information the doctor gave her. We could stay in the common room of her building, but it might not be easy to have a private conversation in such a public space.

Well, we’ll figure it out!

Until then, I need to get myself to bed and, hopefully, get a solid night’s sleep this time!

On that note…

Have a good night, my friends!

The Re-Farmer

Cat isolation shelter progress, and a productive day

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I must say, I’m pretty happy with how today went! It was a lot more productive than expected.

Aside from the triple harvest I wrote about in my previous post, I was scheduled to go to my mother’s to help her with errands.

I left earlier, as I wanted to stop at a store to find something I needed, then hit a bank machine before picking up some Chinese food for our lunch. My mother told me she’d had their steamed rice and vegetables for lunch after church and really liked it, so that’s what she wanted me to order.

I am not sure what she ordered, though, as that is not a typical menu item. At least, not as a combination meal for one. She also said it was “brown rice”.

They don’t serve brown rice.

They did have the steamed rice and mixed vegetables as separate items, so that’s what I ordered for her. Another reason I am not sure what she actually ordered that she liked so much; the mixed vegetables alone were more expensive than any of their combination meals. It, and the steamed rice, is meant to be shared by several people!

She’ll have enough to last her for a couple of days, at least!

I ordered a meal combo for myself.

When my mother saw the food, she was surprised by the rice being white rice. It was supposed to be brown! Sure enough, she had eaten stir fried rice, and somehow thought it was plain, steamed brown rice.

The vegetables were what she wanted, though.

They did, however, include small amounts of meat, which had my mother hesitating. She even asked me at one point, do you think it’s okay? before eating it.

She is still completely convinced that the Chinese restaurant serves cat meat. She’s given me several different stories as to why she thinks this. The first time, she told me one of her neighbours had told her this. Then she said she saw it in the news (though that turned out to be about a restaurant in the city, who know how many years ago). Then it was because she saw more stray cats around, so that must mean they’re serving cat. Talking about what she wanted me to order last night, she said that their prices are so much lower than the restaurant the specialized in deep fried chicken, so in her mind that must be proof they’re serving cat. *sigh*

She likes their food, their prices and their generous portions a lot, though, so she just can’t resist going back.

We had an excellent lunch.

My mother had her first home care visits to help with her medications last night. She would have had two visits last night, and one in this morning, by the time I saw her, so I asked how it went. That set her off into talking about how she couldn’t sleep last night, and it had be because of “all the pills” they gave her.

They’re the exact same pills, from her bubble packs.

Then she said she’d gotten up in the morning and had a bit to each, then went back to bed. Just as she was finally falling asleep, there was a knock at the door. Home care was there for her morning meds.

I asked my mother if she had taken her pills at 5am, like she usually does (she’s already been instructed not to, but to wait for home care).

I didn’t quite get a straight answer out of her, but I think she did.

Which has me wondering; did she take a second full set of pills when the home care person arrived, or just the new supplement for her eyes, which is the only one that’s still separate?

The whole point of getting home care to help her with her medications is because, even with the bubble packs, she is getting confused about them.

Hopefully, she will remember to NOT take her morning pills at 5am (there has never been any reason for her to take them that early), but to take all her morning pills, including the new supplement, with breakfast, when the home care person arrives.

After lunch, we went over her list and added a few things she had forgotten. She needed to go to the bank for cash, though – the one thing I can’t do for her. She really didn’t want to go out at all, with how she was feeling, but she had to. I told her that, after going to the bank, I could take her home again and do the rest of her shopping. She liked that idea.

For someone who wasn’t feeling well, my mother was pretty darn spry!

Getting in and out of the truck was hard for her, as usual, but once she was at her walker, she just took off like a shot! I actually had a hard time keeping up with her! I honestly don’t know how she does it, at times!

After she was done at the bank, she decided to come along to the pharmacy, but to stay in the truck. Her bubble pack refills were set to be delivered today but, since I was there on her behalf, anyhow, I could pick them up, then pick up some other stuff she needed from the pharmacy.

That was her limit, though, so I took her home from there.

Talk about timing.

She was unlocking her door when her phone started to ring. It was the eye doctor, following up on her. They’re already tried calling me and left messages, and were trying my mother’s next.

My mother now has an appointment to see the eye specialist in the city.

The clinic is in the opposite side of the city from us. The drive will be well over an hour, plus the appointment is expected to take about 2 hours in total for all the tests they need to do.

This is going to be a very long day for her!!

She’s going to have her eyes dilated, and they wanted to make sure she had sunglasses. I have extra sunglasses that fit over regular glasses in the truck, so that’s taken care of.

The appointment is on the day I was planning to go into the city for our first stock up shopping trip for next month, but that’s okay. My mother’s appointment is more urgent!

We were very happy about the timing with all this!

The call done, I headed out to get my mother’s groceries, then put everything away for her. There wasn’t anything else she needed for me to do, and she was more than ready for a nap, so I left soon after. Gas and a stop at the post office was in order. The items that were supposed to arrive yesterday, but then tracking said they would arrive on the 26th, were all in.

After I got home, I was soon back outside. After harvesting the winter squash, I started working on the cat isolation shelter.

I was able to finish tacking down the mesh covering the pallet floor with pieces of wood lath. There was just the back that still needed to be done but, with the wire mesh already in place on the back, it was the more difficult one to do. There is now nowhere any tiny kittens could squeeze through the pallet floor and get out.

Then it was time to start enclosing the top level. The not-door sections needed to have insulation cut to fit, then covered.

Here is a slideshow of how things went.

The first section I worked on had the shelf across the back to work around. I had cut it to fit snuggly, but it was a bit too snug, and the insulation snapped at the shelf cut. A bit of trimming, and the pieces were fit in.

Yes, there’s a gap at the angled corner support. It was large enough that I could cut a strip from the corner that had been removed and fill it in.

I don’t have enough paint to pre-paint the pieces anymore, so that will have to be done later. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a colour match.

I had a number of wood lath pieces left from my last bundle that weren’t all the same length, or had damage in areas. I cut 14 pieces to 16″ lengths, which left me with a 15th piece that was just a touch short. I wasn’t sure if I’d needed it, though.

This first side has floor boards that are ever so slightly too long. I hadn’t bothered to trim them. I made use of the excess length to hold the first piece of wood lath in place. Then each piece was lined up with that first one and nailed into place.

If you look at the second picture of the slideshow, you can see I had to use that slightly short 15th piece! That corner has the brace in it, so there was extra material to hammer the nails into, to secure it. Plus, it overlapped the top frame piece that it could be nailed into.

The other side was easier to do. The insulation for there just needed a 45° cut in one corner.

If you click through to the third photo, you’ll see I didn’t quite get the angle cut right! 😄 That shouldn’t be a problem, though.

I had to start a new bundle of wood lath to cover this side. They are supposed to be all 4′ long, but a few were just a little bit short. After finding 5 pieces that were all the same 4′ length, I was able to cut the stack into 16″ lengths, then nail them over the insulation.

In the last two photos, you can see how it looks on the inside.

It can be assumed the cats will try to use the insulation as a scratching post. There’s something about this insulation that they just love for that! In fact, in the photos of the insulation pieces before they were covered, you can see all the cat scratches!

I didn’t want them to pull the insulation right out if they did scratch at it. I had some nails just barely long enough to go through the insulation, so I used some of those to tack it to the wood lath from the inside. You can’t really see the nails in the photos.

The problem is, these probably won’t hold against cat scratching. Using any longer nails would just go right through the wood lath. I’ll have to think of some other way to keep them in place. I even tried nailing a piece of wood lath vertically on the inside, but I’m left with the same problem. Any nails long enough to secure it in place would go right through the wood lath on the outside. Any nails short enough to not do that can be easily pulled out.

I am more than open to suggestions in the comments!

After this, it’s time to cut that clear plastic I brought up from the basement. I found out from my brother that these were used to cover windows in the house, on the inside, to stop drafts. All but one of the windows were replaced before we moved in here. He thought these were from what is now my bedroom/office/craft room, but that window still has a covers over each half, as it was the one window not replaced. The frames on them are quite different from the frame of what I brought to the garage, so I still don’t know where these came from. It does tell me, though, that it is probably Lexan, which is good, since it can handle UV light and weathering better.

I’m going to have to be careful cutting it, though. My brother tells me there’s a possibility of shattering!

The first piece to cut will be to cover the front of the shelter’s upper level. That should leave enough material to use as clear doors on the sections that did not get covered today.

Hopefully, that will be a job I can work on tomorrow.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

Aside from all that, we got some good news today.

The electric company is currently doing a lot of work in the area, replacing power poles, doing over due maintenance and repairs, etc. – and clearing trees away from the power lines.

We got a call from them today.

They would like to come onto the property some time in the next while, to clear any trees or branches near their power lines.

We had to pay a tree company to do that, about 5 or 6 years ago. Things are starting to grow back and getting too close to the lines again.

The power company will be doing it, and there will be no charge.

They will only clear around their own lines; not the lines to the house, garage, barn or pump shack. Which is fine. The lines to the garage and barn don’t have trees near them. The one to the pump shack is something we can keep clear ourselves. The one to the house is almost directly under the main line to the pole the meter is on, so it’ll be cleared by default.

The guy I spoke to couldn’t tell me when they’ll be doing this, but it doesn’t really matter, except for the gate. I asked if they could call ahead, so we can unlock it for them. We’ll see how that works out.

So… yeah. It’s been a pretty productive day today! We’ve got all sorts of things falling into place. 😊

May things continue to go as smoothly and productively!

The Re-Farmer

“It’s like a movie.”

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Okay, Re-Farmer. Take a deep breath, and relax a bit!

What.

A.

Day.

Well. Morning, really. It’s only mid-afternoon, as I start this!

I had a 9am appointment with the guy that runs homecare for my mother’s town, and area. After feeding the outside cats, including giving Gouda his personal bowl of lysine supplemented cat soup, I had to leave it to my daughters to do the morning rounds. Instead, I went through a copy of one of the assessment forms the homecare guy had given me a copy of, after his last visit with my mother.

To recap: my mother wants to go into a nursing home. A very specific nursing home. Back in July, we went to her doctor about it, and she started the ball rolling. What we didn’t know at the time was this was something that gets decided by the home care department, not the doctor. The doctor does have to approve it and fill out some paperwork, but normally, people who need it tend to go from a hospital, after some sort of incident, into long term care without ever going back home in between. My mother is not at that stage. After he did a panel with her, assessing her physical needs, it was clear she was not that far gone… yet. He recommended supportive living.

There is only one supportive living place my mother would be willing to live in, and after looking into it, today was to start the process of application to get her in.

Which would put her on a year long waiting list.

There was, however, that behavioural assessment form.

When I first started going through it, after he gave it do me, I’d read a question and think, oh, no, she doesn’t do that. Then I’d read the examples and realize, wait… yes. She does that. Has done it for years. It’s getting worse as she gets older. Yes, this is a problem we are dealing with.

The thing is, we’ve been dealing with a lot of these for so long, we don’t even think about it anymore. I had to see it written down as questions, with examples, to realize just how far she was deteriorating in this category.

I had talked to him on the phone about this a little bit, but today we had to go through all the other assessment forms he needs to go through, as well.

We were at it for two hours.

I am so glad he was able to fit me in this week! He’s going to be away all next week, the last week of the month is the busiest time for me, and I had only one day available – and that would be the week I would expect the exterminators to try and visit my mother’s unit to confirm the bed bugs are gone. If she doesn’t let them in for a third time, she will get evicted. I’m hoping to be there that day to prevent that.

Long story as short as I can make it:

When it comes to her physical needs, her recent diagnoses have actually been helpful for her, in that she actually wants to go into a personal care home (aka: long term care aka: nursing home). He updated the file on her medical changes.

With some things, it’s hard to say. As my mother is living independently, I’m not there to see if, for example, she can or can’t wash herself properly. All I can say is, she refuses to shower, and does not have a bath tub, so all she sponge bathes herself every night. Is she doing a good job? I can’t say. I can say, she refuses to use the commode her was able to requisition for her, even when I found that her bucket fits perfectly in it, making it easy for her to empty it herself. What is she doing instead? I’m not sure.

With other things, I can see she has made adjustments to work around her mobility issues. Can she dress herself? Yes, because she only wears clothing she can put on herself. No buttons. No zippers. No ties or snaps. Can she feed herself? Yes, but she has trouble eating, because she refuses to have her dentures fixed to account for a tooth that was removed – a tooth that her one of her dentures was held by. Her being able to find work arounds or just put up with things puts her on the line between categories.

We did talk about having home care come to her place to prepare meals, and to make sure she takes her medications on time and properly. They can do bulk meal preparation for her either once every two weeks, or once a week, or someone can come by once a day for a meal prep.

If it was once a day, it would be something very quick – I think they’re only allowed 15 minutes. So it would be something like making a sandwich and heating up a bowl of soup. Everything would have to be ready in advance so that a meal just needed to be assembled quickly.

If it was weekly or bi-weekly, someone would come in for 2 hours or something like that. They’d do all the cooking, divide it up into individual portions, and set those in the freezer (except those that would be used right away).

We decided it would be best to try my mother with every two weeks, then adjust as seems appropriate. As the person who does my mother’s grocery shopping, I would have to talk to the home care person about meal plans and what they would need.

We also talked about my mother’s medications, and how she’s not taking them as she should be. Someone would be coming to her place three times a day to make sure she takes them. They can only do that with medications that are in bubble packs. They’re not allowed to touch anything from a bottle. That includes the new eye vitamins my mother is now on.

Then we got to going through the behavioural assessment.

As we went through the questions, I had to give examples and, in come cases, explanations. This included telling him about what’s going on with our vandal, and her habit of reaching out to him and poking the bear, in spite of our efforts to protect her from him.

I’ll have to get back to that one, later, as we have some new crazy going on from there!

As we went through the different questions and he struggled to take notes that would make sense, there were a few times when he had to just sit back and talk about some of the things. Even things that happened to her when she was still living in Poland, and the atrocities she witnessed and survived. He even made note that she would likely need what they call “spiritual care” that is available, typically for combat veterans and former prisoners of war.

I gave other examples of some of my mother’s behaviour, including something she did during a road trip with my brother and his wife a few years ago, and some more recent examples while driving with me. I also told him about what she did to stab my brother in the back, which she still doesn’t recognize as being at all a problem. After a while of this, he stopped and sat back, hesitating.

“I don’t want to sound rude,” he started, pausing to try and find the words.

“It’s like a movie,” he finally said. A movie where all this crazy, insane stuff keeps happening to people, that’s so over the top. I basically said, “yeah; and when they see the movie, people would find it unbelievable and unrealistic, because people don’t behave that way, right?”

Yup.

Even with all this, though, my mother is a very unusual case. He’s not even sure she qualifies for supportive living, because a lot of her needs are beyond what they offer, but she doesn’t qualify for assisted living at all. Her behavioral assessment, however, may actually be what puts her in personal care – which is what she wants. She’s just on the edge.

In the end, he’s going to have to have a consultation with the person he deals with that makes the final decision. He does know, my mother needs help, and we can’t give it to her. Regular home care can’t give it to her, either.

On the plus side, since all this started because my mother went to the doctor to try and get into a nursing home back in July, she already has the doctor’s form on file that is recent enough, along with the chest X-rays they require. She’s also supposed to get a brain scan, but we’re still waiting on a call for that. She’s already been visited by the geriatric care person, and the occupational therapist. They will need a copy of my brother’s PoA paperwork, which I have and can get to them soon. As PoA, he’s first contact for next of kin, while I’m second contact, as I’m physically closest to her.

He printed out what he needed, and then he had to deal with something quickly before going to my mother’s. I called my mother to let her know we were going to be coming over, only to find she had been still in bed! She had time to get dressed, at least, but when I got there, she didn’t even have her glasses, and was all worried because her floor wasn’t swept.

My sister was coming over to do some housekeeping for her!

She was going to get me to call my sister to cancel, and I told her, we couldn’t be that long. I did tell her that I would need to take her remaining bubble packs to have the new medication and vitamins included.

I am so glad she’s going to have someone come and help her with her medications.

When I told her about including them in her bubble packs, she started to get angry, saying, they get taken separately. Which they don’t, and I’m not sure where she got that from. I was still trying to explain to her about how home care can only help if it’s in bubble packs when the home care guy arrived.

He needed her list of medications, including the new prescription and supplement. As we were talking about her new prescription, she mentioned she’d taken it twice.

??

It’s once a day; the vitamins are twice a day.

Nope.

She took one last night, at about midnight, then taken one this morning… I’m not sure why she took one this morning.

Oh! Crap!

I need to call my mother right now…

Oh, I am so glad I wrote this out and caught on to this!

Yes, my mother took this once a day pill last night, then again this morning – and would have taken it again tonight, if I hadn’t just called!

And THAT is a good example of why she needs home care to help her take her medications!

That was one of the things the home care guy needed to hear her agree to, and sign for, along with the meal preparation.

She also needed to sign a form saying that yes, she agrees to going into a personal care home, when a space becomes available. We explained to her that this might not be where she wants to go at first, but once she’s in the system, she will be higher on the list for a transfer, should a space become available where she wants to be. She just needs that foot in the door.

While the home care guy was there, my mother just happened to launch into a tirade towards him, just like some of the examples I gave him earlier. Some of it, anyone in home care sees pretty regularly, but then she went sideways and made it about something else entirely, making connections where there shouldn’t have been any at all.

When he was ready to leave, I grabbed what was left of my mother’s bubble packs and her new stuff for the pharmacy and walked out with him, and we were able to talk about what just happened.

He told me it would probably take a couple of weeks for the process to work its way through. He has a lot of paperwork to submit, and needs to talk to a few people about my mother’s case – and he’s going to be away for all of next week, as well.

He is a total gem. Sadly, when he gets back, he won’t be staying for much longer, as he’ll be moving to another office, so we’ll be dealing with someone else before long. He’ll be going over all his case files with this person before he moves to the other office, though.

I then went to the pharmacy and explained the situation and asked if they could add the new items to my mother’s bubble packs. My mother had mentioned the pharmacy had called her before I got there, talking about her next set of bubble packs.

When I said who this was for, the pharmacist assistant I was talking to started telling me, I just spoke to her, and I’m sorry if I seemed a bit rude.

???

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Every time the pharmacy calls about her bubble pack refills, my mother gives them a hard time, saying she still has lots, and it’s too early. I keep telling her, she needs to get her refills BEFORE she runs out, but she doesn’t get it. Well, the last time she did this, they held back. When she ran out and came to get her refills and they weren’t ready, she apparently chewed out whoever was at the counter about it not being ready. So when she talked to my mother today, and my mother tried to give her a hard time about it being too early, etc., again, she told me mother, no, this is the date. This is when they’ll be ready.

I think they were relieved to hear my mother is going to be getting home care to help with her medications!

There was only one hang up.

Bubble packs can only have prescription medications in them.

The eye vitamins are not a prescription, so they couldn’t include them.

The pharmacist asked me about the eye doctor, and it turns out they know each other. He will call the eye clinic and get an actual prescription for these supplements from him.

Until then, they would pack 10 days worth of the eye vitamins in their own, separate bubble packs.

As for the new prescription, it says once a day, but doesn’t say when. It’s at night that she has issues, so that’s why she was going to take them in the evening – and why she took one last night. That was the first one she took, even though I brought them for her the day before.

It was going to take them about an hour to update the current bubble packs, so I took advantage of that to go for lunch and update the family a bit.

By the time they were ready and I brought them back to my mother’s, my sister had showed up, done the housekeeping she was going to do, and was getting ready to leave. I needed to explain the bubble packs to my mother, so my sister stays so she’d be up to date, too.

So I went through it all, explaining why the supplements were in their own bubble packs, but she needs to take them with her morning and evening (breakfast and supper) pills, and that the new prescription was with that last pill of the day she’s supposed to take before bed.

That’s why I had to call my mother just now.

The new pill is in with tonight’s bubble pack. She’s already taken one this morning.

After confirming that yes, my mother did take the new prescription pill this morning, as well as taking one last night, I told her to NOT take the one that’s in the bubble pack for tonight, because she’s already taken today’s pill.

I repeated this a few times, and even told her to go ahead and take it out now, and put it somewhere else, but I’m not completely confident she’ll remember.

She was very glad I called about it, though, because yes, she would have taken that pill again tonight, if I hadn’t.

She also realized that I brought back the bubble packs, but not the bottles with the rest of the pills. I told her that the pharmacy is keeping them so they can be included in her new bubble pack refills, as she has already paid for them.

Anyhow… I’m ahead of myself.

It took me a while to explain the bubble packs to my mother, and the times to take them. Even my sister had to chime in to reinforce what I was saying. My mother has a very had time grasping the times on the bubble packs. She’s been taking her morning and evening pills at 5am and 5pm. Why those times, I have no idea, but that’s what she settled on. Only recently did she say she changed to 6am and 6pm, so she could sleep a bit more.

I told her, when home care starts coming to help with the pills three times a day, for the first two they’ll be coming for breakfast and supper – so she won’t have to get up so early anymore! She can sleep in.

She seemed to like that idea!

While we were talking, some mail was slid under my mother’s door, so I opened it for her. It turned out to be her ambulance bill. I was surprised it was only $250 The last I heard, it cost more than $400.

It included a survey on how the paramedics did, and so I started helping her go through that. She got really angry and first, saying, how can they expect her to remember? It was so long ago! (It’s been maybe 2 months?) Then she started saying, the paramedics treated her much better than the people at the hospital, before launching into a story that, at first, we thought was about the paramedics, but was actually about something in the hospital. It included some pretty racist comments, but she talked about how she was being moved around in a wheelchair while her coat and purse were left in an examination room. Long story short, while they insisted she check her purse to make sure everything was there (I’d say it was really obvious to them she believed they would steal from her), she said all her money and ID, etc. where there. However, she now says someone stole “pictures” (which could have included clippings from magazines, newspapers, printouts… ) from her purse.

Of course, the accusation included racist rants.

When I asked, why would anyone take pictures from her purse…

I didn’t get to add, instead of her money or whatever, when she started to get into “that” mode, at which point, my sister said it was time to go!

So we said our goodbyes, then I stayed a bit longer and talked some more about how it went with the home care guy. I explained how she’s just on the edge of things, because she can still do things like feed herself and dress herself, but has other issues. I told her, he needs to consult with someone about her situation, to figure out where is best for her. She was just really happy to know that going to a nursing home is an actual possibility now.

By the time I left, though, I felt like a wrung out washcloth.

But, it’s done. The process is well on its way.

Now, if she can just keep herself from getting evicted, that would be nice!

The Re-Farmer

So many distractions, I almost forgot!

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It’s just past 5:30pm right now, and I’m so tired, I’m about to go to bed!  What a draining day, and I’ve got to be on the road early, tomorrow.

First, the fun stuff.

Catio progress!

Last night, I was able to reinforce the damage wire mesh along the door, after painting the base.  The door still opens fully, with no obstructions, which was my goal.

My daughter did a second coat on the base, as the original white paint was showing through.  She also painted the water stained underside of the “floating” shelves.  Once the paint has cured for a couple of hours, it’ll be flipped upright, the plastic cover removed, and the rest will be painted.  Then, the roof panels can be put on.

As for my day with my mother, she insisted on going back to her previous eye clinic, as she decided the one I took her too screwed up.  The eye doctor there is an Asian woman, so my mother’s racism is in full play.

It turns out, the problem wasn’t her glasses at all.  Since her last eye tests, she developed macular degeneration in one eye.  It’s almost completely blind. 

They can’t do anything for her out here, other than get her to take special vitamins to protect her other eye.  She will need to go to the city once a month for eye injections.  As the person that will be driving her, the specialist clinic will call me, probably within the next 2 weeks, to start that.

She is now glad she went to a “real doctor”.  The thing is, I was in the room with her last appointment. I was there when they took images of her eyes.  I saw the images when the doctor showed them to her.  She did not have it then.  This is something that can happen quickly, which is obviously how it is with her.  But this doctor is a white man – and she knows his parents! – so that means he’s a good doctor, nor the other doctor.

*sigh*

After that, we had lunch, and ran into a friend of mine from high school!  I spent time explaining things the eye doctor told us as we ate. 

Then again as I drove her home.

Then again, after I picked up her meds, Tylenol and the eye vitamins she needs to take, and her groceries.

Then again, because she couldn’t figure out why she had 3 bottles of pills instead of two.  She suddenly decided the vitamins were her prescription medication, and the prescription medication were the vitamins.

They have completely different instructions.

I ended up writing it all down, complete with illustrations, to help her remember.

At least she can still read with her left eye!

The monthly treatment she will be getting should fix her eye, though maybe not 100%.  We don’t know how long it will take.

That’s the short version of a very long day.

I need to try and get some sleep, now!

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, Button update, and my mother is determined to get herself evicted

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What a long, long day.

I’m exhausted, and will make this as sort as I can.

First up, the good stuff. Check out this harvest!

It was a sort of double harvest. I wasn’t expecting to gather anything, but that first and oldest melon finally dropped off its vine. That thing is about 9 inches across! There were also a few San Marzano tomatoes, but I didn’t have a container, and the melon made it harder to carry things. So I put them in the old kitchen, then went back to the old kitchen garden to gather was it in the second photo. I found myself picking a good handful of those tiny strawberries. Then I checked the Black Cherry tomatoes and found quite a few I could pick, hidden among the leaves. Way more that I expected!

My brother and his wife were expecting to come early to drop off another load, but I left before they arrived, so I never saw them. I went to my mother’s town, got a few things done, then got to her place nice and early. I’m really glad I did, so I could go over the letter she got from the hospital. I knew the location, but when I looked it up on Google Maps street view, across a specific parking lot from the main entrance, but I couldn’t see where the clinic entrance was.

Turns out, that’s because it was recently built in the parking lot, and street view hasn’t been updated yet.

When we got there, I had to park illegally because there were not parking spots available anywhere. Not even disabled parking. I then helped my mother up the ramps from hell to the door.

They were excellent ramps. There was just 3 levels of them, switch-backed up to the door, and that was a LOT of walking for a 93 yr old woman with busted up knees, using a walker!

I then had to leave her to register herself so I could find somewhere to park – several blocks away!

Long story short, she had some very uncomfortable tests, but she now has a diagnosis, a new prescription to try, and a plan of action.

I also found out that she has NOT been making any effort to drink more water, and the most the nurse questioned her in preparation for the tests, the more obvious it became that a lot of her problems would improve if she simply drank more water. She’s only drinking the equivalent of 1 500ml water bottle a day! She’s digging in her heals on this one, though, as she is completely convinced it has to be food that’s causing her problems. Of course, it’s the food she needs the most that she’s decided are bad for her. *sigh*

That done, the clinic was able to fax her new prescription in, and make a follow up telephone appointment in 3 months for the doctor so ask her how it’s working and adjust the dose, if needed. There are other drugs that can be tried, but this one has basically no side effects, so that’s the one he’s starting with.

On the way to her home, we stopped at a restaurant in her town, as neither of us had eaten since about 9 or 10am, and we got to the restaurant at 6pm. She needed to take her evening pills, and had brought her bubble pack for the list of medications they needed, so she went to take those – without water – before we went in.

Which is when I saw that she’s been messing with her meds again. She’s taking her morning pills, but for the past few days, skipping her evening pills. When she got this evening’s pills, she took the one that is supposed to be taken before bed at the same time. Something she promised she would stop doing.

When we finally got to her place and opened the door, we found her mail on the floor. She started to try and distract me with one envelope that she said was an invitation, but it was the other one that got my attention. It was from the government public housing department that owns her building. When I mentioned that, she tried to dismiss is as probably being about her rent.

I opened it.

It was her final notice.

She refused to allow the exterminators in her suite again, which goes against her rental agreement. This is the second warning letter they’ve sent her. If she does it again, she will be evicted.

As I was reading this to her, she basically started to laugh about it. When I tried to stress the seriousness of this, she started ranting about the “drunkard” in another unit, and how they’re not kicking him out. Then she started saying “this isn’t Russia”.

She refuses to accept how serious the consequences of her actions are.

It is so incredibly frustrating. She is her own worse enemy!

*sigh*

After reading the letter, we moved on to the information booklet she was given and I briefly showed her the sections that gave her concrete actions to do – and one of them is, drink more water! That was as much as she was up to, and I left soon after.

I’ll be back in a couple of days to drive her to another appointment. I’ve updated the family about all this, and I hope my siblings can get through to her on just how much of a problem she is causing herself. Both about the eviction warning, and messing with her medications.

There’s not much we can do about it, either. Unless a doctor declares her cognitively unfit, and she isn’t there yet, she is going to have to face the consequences of her actions.

Ugh.

Enough about that.

Throughout the day, I was also getting messages from the Cat Lady. She was taking Button to the vet. When her mother was cat sitting for them, she noticed that Button was having trouble seeing at night. His hearing isn’t back, either, so both his eyes and ears were going to be checked.

He has also had quite the growth spurt – after being dewormed three times, he’s finally putting on weight! Even the clinic commented on how big he’s getting.

They have decided that his issue is basically being developmentally delayed. His eyes are healthy, but just not where they should be for his age. He was treated for eat mites, and they believe his hearing will also recover.

That’s the good news.

The frustrating news is, the person who was going to adopt him has instead adopted another cat and is no longer interested in him. Given his vision and hearing issues, the Cat Lady wants to make sure he goes with someone who can take care of these issues until he grows past them.

Assuming he gets adopted out at all.

It was recently confirmed that a cat of theirs that was startled by a noise and disappeared, was the victim of a coyote. The Cat Lady says that Button is helping to heal her heart. She absolutely adores him.

I really hope she finds someone for Button. They already have way too many cats from us! She’s still trying to get The Wolfman adopted out, but any time someone comes over to see him, he hisses and even swipes, and runs away!

I’m just sad that the potential adopter backed out. A vet – even a large animal vet – would have been the perfect placing for Button.

So that is where we are now, and I am ready to crawl into bed and pass out.

I just know that the moment my head hits the pillow, I’m going to suddenly be wide awake! That was me last night, so I can really, really use some real sleep tonight!

The Re-Farmer

The day so far; a tiny surprise harvest, and why am I so tired?

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My daughter and I are home now, from visiting with my mother. I’m glad my daughter was with me, because I had to get her to drive us home!

I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

I did my morning rounds as usual, but was not expecting to harvest anything today. Instead, I gathered this tiny harvest!

Yup. Two types of strawberries!

The larger ones are the Albion Everbearing strawberries that have recovered remarkably well after getting eaten by a deer. I’ve had the odd ripe strawberry every now and then, but this is the first time there was more than one to gather. There were actually more than what’s in the photo, as I left behind a couple that were slug damaged.

The little ones are from the strawberries in the wattle weave bed that were grown from seed last year. They are still blooming, too, and there are lots of little green berries still developing. It’s a shame they don’t taste any better.

Once back inside, my younger daughter and I started getting ready to head out. My older daughter wasn’t going to make it. She’s been burning the candle at both ends, working on new commissions, and was not feeling well today.

The general plan was for us to have a sit down restaurant lunch with my mother, then go to the nature reserve. My daughter was hoping we could do a picnic instead. With my mother, it all comes down to how she feels, and what she is up to.

I remembered to bag up a few slicer tomatoes for her. Just enough for a taste, really. She’s not supposed to eat acidic foods, but small amounts, early in the day, don’t bother her. My sister usually brings my mother large amounts of tomatoes, forgetting completely that my mother isn’t supposed to eat them. This year, however, she mentioned her tomatoes did not do well, so she doesn’t really have any to give. We have so many of the Forme De Couer tomatoes, there is plenty to spare.

We packed supplies we’d need to eat outside, if we did end up doing that. Then my daughter made lots of noise, topping up the outside cat food, to lure kittens away from the truck. There was one kitten that just did not want to get out from under there! We managed to get them away, though, and soon we were off.

We left early enough to stop and pick up a birthday cake for my mother. Or, in this case, a variety of cheesecake slices! We still got to my mother’s early.

We didn’t stay for long before heading out. My mother needed to stop at her bank, first. They merged with another and she said she needed to order new checks. She’s sent a check and said it was rejected, because of the old company name.

Getting in and out of the truck was difficult for my mother, though. She tires so quickly now, too.

Once at the bank, the teller was confused about a check being returned, since all the key information was unchanged. It took a while to get the rest of the store out of her. It turns out, she did not get a check returned. She had sent the check to a grandson for his birthday. He had come over to see her, and told her it was rejected, apparently because of the date. It’s possible my mother wrote the date out in her usual mix of Polish, English, numbers and Roman numerals.

This grandson is one that never contacts her, nor returns her calls, and hasn’t since he turned 18 and got his inheritance from my late father. Now, suddenly, when there was a problem with a check she sent him, he shows up at her door? He also never returned the check, but just told her there was a problem. It seems the name being an issue was something my mother “figure out” herself. My guess is, with him there, she just gave him cash. My mother has a terrible habit of pandering to those who treat her the worst, while treating those who help her the most, quite badly.

The more the story came out, the more the teller seemed concerned. She checked, and no one had tried to cash a check in the last 3 months. She did assure my mother that she did not have to order new checks. The ones she has now are perfectly fine.

From there, she decided she was still up to a sit down restaurant. We did bring up the idea of getting take out and going on a picnic, but she acted as if she never heard.

We had an excellent lunch. My mother insisted that she would pay for it, but she never tips, so I snuck ahead and paid for it. By the time we were done eating, my mother decided she was up to going to the nature reserve. That got amended to her staying in the truck while my daughter and I explored. Not that we’d leave her by herself, but that’s what she pictured in her mind.

When we got there, I was going to just follow the roads to parking lots and we could see what we could see. I did end up taking a sign road, which turned out to be exclusively for people with disabilities. This allowed us to see parts of the sanctuary we had never seen before.

As we were going home, though, I was hit by exhaustion. The sleepy kind. It just came out of nowhere and slapped me upside the head!

When we got to my mother’s my daughter and I were going to leave right away, but my mother insisted we stop for tea and some of the cheesecake. She asked about the bill at the restaurant, and I showed her the slip that did not include the tip. She gets very angry when she sees us tip! She was very… parsimonious, shall we say, about paying me back, and actually underpaid me. Then she declared that my driving her was my birthday gift for her, as her reason for not contributing anything for gas this time. Which I normally wouldn’t care about, if I hadn’t found out she’s been practically throwing her money at people that have disowned her again. My daughters have joked that maybe we should start being mean to her, too, and she’ll start throwing money at us, too. Not that we could ever do that, but the sad thing is, it is probably true.

Overall, we managed to keep things okay during this visit. We were able to cut away from her usual racist rants, and she was only moderately insulting to my daughter about her appearance. As for why my other daughter didn’t make it, when we told her she wasn’t feeling well, my mother flat out said she didn’t believe it. 🫤 Ah, well.

She started showing us pictures and newspaper clippings that are her typical segues to more racist rants, so we cut things short, then made our escape. I could see she was getting very tired, anyhow.

Which I could completely understand.

Before we left, she gave us a couple of cards for the girls, and it turned out she was at least as generous to them, as she had been with the grandson that only shows up when money is involved.

My daughter drove us home, and I’m so glad she was there do to it. I was able to close my eyes for a bit during the drive home, at least!

Not enough to get some rest, though, so that’s what I’m about to do. Even though it’s late afternoon. I have been drifting off, time and again, just working on this blog post!

It is most definitely time for a nap!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty status, and shopping for Mom

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Today, we were expecting another hot day. There was a small potential chance for rain in the morning, but not a lot.

It was also my day to help my mother with her groceries, so was outside, watering the garden, earlier than usual.

It was a rather strange thing to start hearing thunder, and find myself hoping I could finish watering the garden before the rain hit!

I did get the main garden area watered, then emptied the last of the rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden. I did have an adorable surprise with that, though!

I’ve got two watering cans that I fill and bring with me to whatever section I’m working on. As I was reaching down to pick the second watering can up, something was looking at me!

There, clutching the opening of the watering can, was a green tree frog – on the inside of the can!!!

I tried to carefully get it out, but it let go and dropped into the water, instead. So I emptied the can on the wattle weave bed as quickly as I could. I ended up having to turn the can upside down and shaking it to get the frog out! Thankfully, it was none the worse for it, and soon hopped away.

Gosh, tree frogs are so adorable!

The girls, meanwhile, took care of eye baby. Now that we are out of eye drops, and the antibiotics are given in the evening, this just making sure she got fed supplemented cat soup with the modified bottle, then an eye washing before setting her outside.

The bottle feeding can get a bit messy.

We’re using a nipple that is cut back for a wider opening, but the cat soup sometimes still has chunky bits just big enough to block the opening. Which means, every now and then, it spontaneously plugs, then unplugs – all over the kitten! On top of that, once she’s done, she just closes her mouth and turns her face away, and ends up with cat soup all over her face.

When it started raining harder and I had to come inside, I discovered one of the other kittens, cleaning eye baby up!

The other kitten was very enthusiastically grooming that cat soup, out of her fur!

She seemed to be quite content with the attention.

In the other slideshow photos, there’s that little fluffy cat. She is, if I remember correctly, one of the late litter of eight kittens from last year. She is also the one that dropped her litter of kittens all over the yard and abandoned them. I’m really working on trying to get her socialized at least a bit. If we can catch her to get her fixed next month, that would be awesome! So far, she has started to allow me to pet her after I’ve set food out in the kibble house. She prefers to eat there over the other areas we scatter kibble. Outside the kibble house and no food around, though, she still won’t let me near her.

As for the others, I tried to do a head count this morning, counting both adults and kittens. I think I counted 31, but when I counted again, I got 29. Broccoli and her two were not there; I saw them later at the old garden shed. There were a couple of regular adults that weren’t there, either, including Brussel. There is at least one kitten that has gone “missing”. The fluffy orange one that showed up with Baby Hypotenose – the two kittens that Sprout finally brought to the house. I have been seeing Baby Hypotenose a fair bit, but its orange sibling just disappeared. If this is another loss, that would be the last of the orange kittens gone. We have one orange tabby and one orange and white among the younger adult males, plus the Grand Old Lady, Rolando Moon, and that’s it for orange cats. Quite the change from when we first moved here, and almost all the outside cats were orange tabbies!

Since I was out so early this morning, I actually had time for breakfast before I had to leave for my mother’s. I timed it so that I could pick up lunch for us. She likes the dinners that the grocery store sometimes has available, but there were none today. Which I didn’t mind. I was really looking forward to some Chinese food.

They were closed.

They weren’t supposed to be closed. All the signs said they should have been open, and I could see lights on inside, but the door was locked. I ended up going around the back of the motel the restaurant is in and went in through the bar. The lights were on in the dining room, but the kitchen and back areas were all dark. I asked the woman working the bar before leaving, and she had no idea why they weren’t open.

I ended up going to the gas station to get some of their fried chicken and wedges, getting there just as they were bringing out the first batch of chicken for the day.

Which was good – theirs is the best fried chicken! – but I really was looking forward to Chinese food! 😄

Then I had the problem of getting into my mother’s building.

It was locked!

This has happened only once before. The main doors are usually never locked, even overnight. These are also the accessible doors, with the automatic door openers; another reason for those doors to never be locked!

I do have keys but, for some reason, the outside door key have never worked. It almost works – the lock did start to turn, but towards the “lock” position, not the “unlock” position. I have no idea why it doesn’t work. My mother’s own key does sometimes stick, too, but nothing like this! I ended up having to phone my mother to let her know I was at the door closer to her apartment, but couldn’t get in.

So my mother had to toodle over with her walker to let me in. These doors have a tiny vestibule between an unlockable inner door and the always locked from the outside outer door. My mother was able to open the inside door, then had to use her walker to block it open so she could push the bar on the outside door top open it for me. (When coming in from the outside, there is barely enough room in the vestibule for her walker, and for the door to swing open. It still ended up hitting one of her wheels, but she prefers it over using the main doors.)

The alternative would have been to make her walk down the hall and through the lobby to reach the main doors, and still have to fight to open two doors. The inside one, at least, would have opened with the push of a button, but the walk would have been harder on my mother than opening the doors closer to her apartment.

What a pain!

Once inside, I set things up and we had our lunch. While moving things aside, I saw she had a notice of inspection for bedbugs again. She told me, it was just slid under her door this morning. It looks like they will be back on the 28th. I looked up the calendar on my phone to confirm what day that falls on, while she quickly tucked the letter away before I could read the rest!

It falls on the day I’ll be making my first stock up shopping trip to the city.

My mother is not happy about them coming by again. The last time they did, she didn’t get up to let them in because she wasn’t feeling well. She did yell out verbal permission for them to come in, but they would not. She doesn’t quite understand that she risks eviction by constantly finding ways to avoid them! She doesn’t appear to have bedbugs, but if her neighbours do, that can change very quickly, and they are required to check a certain number of times since the last time they sprayed.

Once we had our lunch, we went over her shopping list. There were a few things I needed to clear up. She writes her list in a sort of mix of Polish and English, and her English words are spelled phonetically – in Polish! She then makes little drawings of the things she has on the list, but sometimes that doesn’t make it any clearer! I mean, a sour cream container and a yogurt container are basically the same. 😄

This time, she had flour on her list – it was even spelled correctly in English! – but the doodle was quite clearly and ear of corn. Corn flour? My mother doesn’t use corn flour, but that’s what she called it.

She meant corn meal, which she uses all the time.

I did explain to her that corn meal and corn flour are different things. I don’t think she’ll remember, though, as she’s never seen corn flour, so she doesn’t have any sort of connection to make to help her remember. Not that it’s a problem, but I did want to clarify, based on what she had on her list!

Her list was very short, so I asked a few questions and a few more things were added to it. She had the newest flier, too, so we went over some of the sale items, and talked about possibly substitutions. There was no meat on the list, and the only thing that could be considered a protein was the cheese I ended up adding to her list after going through the flier with her. She insisted that she still had plenty. I am suspicious, though, as she has increasingly tried to blame eating meat or “heavy foods” (she has her own definition of what that is!) on her not feeling well.

At one point, she started telling me that she feels like she’s dying, every night, and had considered getting me to take her to the clinic in the nearby hospital. She’s also becoming obsessed with an appointment with the “new doctor” that’s there, because it conflicted with a home visit appointment she had on the same day. I was the one who cancelled the appointment for her, so I knew that it was not with the new doctor. It was with a nurse practitioner. It was my sister that had taken her in to the clinic, but no one was available to see my mother, so they made this appointment – and forgot about the date. Neither of them seemed to realize that the appointment was with whoever was available, not the new doctor.

I suggested that if she wanted to see a doctor, I could make an appointment with her current one for her. She actually yelled angrily at me, NO! I told her, you’ve got a good doctor, and she laughed and made a comment about the doctor talking to the computer instead of to her. I told her, the doctor was reading what she was looking up on her file. Some people tend to think out loud, or read out loud, as they do that. I was with my mother during her last appointment, and could see that’s what she was doing; as she read through my mother’s file, she would sometimes say parts of it out loud, very quickly. It’s entirely possible the doctor doesn’t even notice that she’s doing it.

When I explained that to her, my mother finally just said, “I’m scared of black people.”

*sigh*

With how hard it is to find a doctor these days – especially when living outside the city – it’s aggravating that she’s allowing her racism to deny herself the health care she’s demanding!

As we talked, I brought up again, she needs a hospital bed, so she can sleep upright.

Which is when she started saying it was her stomach – her digestive system (she literally does not understand what is or isn’t part of her digestive system, or where the organs are located in her body) – that she now thinks is the cause of her troubles, then tried to make connections with eating “heavy food”, like the chicken we just ate…

I asked her, what does that have to do with her breathing? She’s been complaining that she can’t breathe at night, and that’s why she feels like she’s dying. Now, she says it’s her stomach?

I tried to ask more questions, but she changed the subject.

*sigh*

It’s frustrating that she is so all over the place with how she feels, and latch onto things as the “cause” of all her problems, usually because of something she heard on TV, or one of the people in her building saying. But when solutions are offered – like having a hospital bed so she can sleep more upright – she refuses.

Other than this, though, things went smoothly. I worked out what she needed on her list, then did the shopping for her.

Once everything was put away, I stayed a bit longer, but was feeling incredibly sleepy. The overcast skies and rainy weather has that effect on me. I still had to go back to the grocery store for a water jug refill – just one, for now – before going home, too.

Once that was done and I got home, I went for a nap almost right away. It seems I really needed that sleep, too!

As for right now, the skies are clear again and it’s sunny out there, so I’m looking forward to my evening rounds. Meanwhile, as I was writing this, my younger daughter came in to let me know that she was able to harvest the last of the garlic for me! They were getting a bit over due!

For now, they’re laid out on the freezer in the old kitchen. Once the dirt has dried out a bit more, we’ll brush them off, trim them and string them up to hang with the others in the garage.

As for the cat isolation shelter build in the garage, I won’t be doing anything on it today. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow. Mostly, though, I think I’ll have to go through the sheds and garage again, so see what materials I can find to continue the build, until I have the budget to buy the materials I need to finish it.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find what I need and get this finished soon. I will have to double check with the Cat Lady to see what date she has booked for us, for a spay or neuter (depending on what cat we can catch!). If we end up with a male, we won’t need the isolation shelter, but if we can get that fluffy little cat, or one of the other mamas, that would be idea.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

No more Button! (and unexpected family drama) (updated)

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Yay, for Button!

Poor little guy passed right out, during the drive. For a while, there, he was really trying to get out of the carrier, and almost got the door open!

The exchange has been done, though. He is now with the Cat Lady. He’ll stay at the rescue for a week for standard vet care, then – if all goes well – be on his way to his forever home.

Even the Cat Lady commented on how tiny he is. He has definitely grown since we found him in the junk pile, but not by much!

One of the Cat Lady’s daughters was in the vehicle with her. She ended up holding Button rather than putting him in their carrier, and he actually started to fall asleep in her arms within minutes!

The Cat Lady also gave us a donation of cat food. There was a couple of cases of cat food – the kind that comes in pairs of packets with individual meal portions – plus a small bag of “immunity boosting” kibble.

She also found her bottle of the antibiotic drops for the eye baby. We are to give one drop in each eye, every 12 hours, for at least 14 days. She also warned that this stuff does does tend to burn, but to make sure not to wipe it off.

The hard part is going to be opening the eyes enough to get the drops in there!

I’ve got the kitten inside and in the carrier for the night. I’d gone out for my evening routine and found her in the outer yard, heading for the driveway, giving out her squeaky meow! The poor thing can’t open her eyes at all, even after we wash them. The eyelids are just too swoleen.

The girls and I will be doing the first dose of drops, soon. The kitten has already eaten and settled down in the carrier. Thanks to the individual portion cat food donation, it was easy to mix up some cat soup, just for the eye kitten, with the same supplements we use for the big batch we made for all the cats. When we added the food and water bowls to the carrier, I got some of the soup onto her mouth a few times before she figured it out and started lapping it up.

She asked us to keep her up to date on how things go. After Button has gone on to his forever home, they might be able to take this one for care. I appreciate that, but fear they’ll be stuck with another one of our sick cats – to go with the 6 cats from us they already have, all of which have had some sort of health problem! At least with The Wolfman, it was an injury that healed, rather than things like viral infections or heart problems.

She has us booked for the beginning of September for a spay or neuter. She’ll send me the exact date when she has a chance. This will be whichever cat we can catch, so I really want to get that isolation shelter finished before then. I was able to do the last of the painting this afternoon, which means assembling the frame can start tomorrow!

Several minutes later…

Wow. So much just happened in just a short time!

First, I started getting updates from the Cat Lady. Button has been eating well and sleeping well.

From his teeth, he looks like an 11 week old kitten, but he’s the size of a 6 week old kitten!

His eyes are weepy, which we could see, but he also had ulcerations in the back of his mouth, which we did not know about! Classic calicivirus, she says, and expects him to be put on antibiotics when he sees the vet tomorrow. Which likely means other kittens have it, too.

She also warned us that there is a severe panleukopenia outbreak in the province right now, and what symptoms to watch out for, and recommending to use bleach to clean even the outside bowls, if possible.

As we were chatting, my daughter came down and we took the eyes baby into the washroom to try and get those drops in. I don’t know that we managed to open the eyes enough, but at least it’s a start.

While that was happening, the phone started ringing. When I got to it, I found a message from my mother to call her.

*sigh*

My mother just heard geese flying by, and that reminded her that she wanted to take me and the girls to a nearby migratory reserve.

She has no idea what a problem this request is.

I told her, I would talk to the girls.

She didn’t like that, and then offered me a choice. We could go to the reserve and have a picnic there, or we could share a meal at the one local restaurant, then go to the cemetery where my father, brother and other family members are buried. That, I definitely don’t want to do, because then she’ll want to come here, and that’s never pleasant.

She could tell I wasn’t enthused, and I tried to explain.

First, there’s the fact that we all keep different hours, so my daughters would have to mess up their schedules. Which they wouldn’t mind doing, if it was for something pleasant, but my mother is never pleasant with them, but rather always testing and prodding and judging.

The other thing is, it would leave my husband here at the farm on his own – and no one to be on watch in case our vandal has another mental break and decides to burn the house down or something. A concern she dismissed.

What I couldn’t figure out how to explain was that, because of her own behaviour towards them – and how she treats me – the girls just don’t want to be around her.

It didn’t matter, though. She instead went on a rant about how I keep the girls basically imprisoned upstairs, and they should be free to go places.

I told her, just because she doesn’t see something, and it doesn’t involve her, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. The girls can go where they want (frankly, I wish they did want to go out more, but they don’t). They are adults and free to do so.

She instead started ranting that no, they aren’t free, and now she can see why the government takes children away from their parents, because they don’t know how to parent…

Which is when I said goodbye and hung up.

I think she has forgotten that the girls are 28 and 31 years old, not the 9 and 12 year old’s they were when we left this province because of her. She did not approve of our homeschooling and kept reporting us to different levels, making up lies about what was going on in our household (which she knew nothing about, but thought she did). Each time, we got “investigated” and they recognized that this was a problem with her, not us – but at that point, the next place left for her to report us would be children’s services, and she would have been perfectly willing to do that, and have the girls taken from us, simply because she did not approve of how we were raising our kids.

*sigh*

Well, that’s it. I’m done for now. I need to update my family and siblings on what just happened, because she’s going to cause problems for us over this.

*sigh*

I would really love to have a boring life right now.

The Re-Farmer

Update: Well, I talked to my daughters, and they really do want to go to the nature reserve. With my daughter’s work schedule, though, she had deadlines she needs to meet before the end of August, so we looked into September. My mother’s 93rd birthday is in September, so that fits, too. So we picked an open day, I called my mother back, and now she’s all happy – though she really tried to get it to be sooner! September will be too cold, she says… 😄

All that drama, and for what?

*sigh*

Rough night and new kitten mama identified

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I was finally able to connect with my mother last night and, as expected, she needed a grocery shopping trip. So we made plans for that, and I headed to bed early.

I even fell asleep!

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, I rolled over and got hit with a Charlie horse. After much pain and difficulty, I finally managed to reach my phone and send a voice to text message to my daughter, asking for help.

I love technology.

She was able to give me a hand, bring me some ibuprofen, etc., until the cramps finally eased off. When I was finally able to walk, she stayed close while I made my way to the bathroom and back, ready to help me get back into bed if I needed it. Thankfully, I did not, but the muscles kept threatening to cramp up again. I finally got up and made myself something to eat. By the time I was done and able to get back into bed, I slept so hard, I never heard the thunderstorm and heavy rains that swept over us! I didn’t know we’d had a downpour at all until morning. My leg was still unstable, so I asked the girls to do the outside stuff and water the garden, but the garden didn’t need it this morning.

My mother and I had plans to go out for lunch before I did her shopping, so I intended to be there on the early side. While the girls did the outside stuff, I still wanted to check on things before I left, which reminded me to take pictures of the garden beds to show my mother.

One of the first things I saw as I headed out from the sun room were the new kittens – and their mama!

It is now confirmed: their mama is Sprout. I knew she must have had a litter somewhere, but this is the first time we’ve seen her with kittens.

The orange kitten looks so fluffy!

Unfortunately, Sprout is one of the more feral of the yard cats. She is even aggressive to the other cats, snarling, growling and hissing at them if they come too close. That might make it harder to socialize those kittens!

Then, as I was heading to the truck to head to my mother’s, I spotted Brussel’s last kitten.

She and her baby still like to hang out in and around the garage, much like Broccoli and her babies prefer to hang out by the garden shed.

The visit with my mother went okay. When I got there, she told me she was not up to going out to eat, so she’d made lunch, instead. I wish I’d known in advance, or I would have brought food. I don’t like eating her groceries! It did give us a chance to talk, and I showed her the photos I took of the garden (those will be in my next post), then we went over her shopping list, which included a stop at the pharmacy.

There were a couple of things I forgot to pick up when I went to the grocery store for ourselves, yesterday, so I did both our shopping at the same time. I even picked up a few extra things for my mother that weren’t on her list, but the prices were good, and I knew she could use them. Other things, I found substitutes, because the prices were too high. Still, she’s now well stocked for the week, and that’s the important part.

The visit did have its down sides. After I’d put everything away, she had the local paper out and open. Our vandal has made his annual “in memory” listing about my late brother, with a colour photo of him with my late father. This impressed my mother greatly, because he does it every year, and it costs extra to include a colour photo. The fact that the content is passive aggressive and misleading – even outright false, in one thing – she is totally impressed by it. I told her I’d already seen the listing online, and she was all “and you didn’t tell me?” My response was, why would I? He does this every year, and it’s not like he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart. She then launched into making excuses for him and how he’s doing such great things, like volunteering to cut grass at the cemetery. Which I’m sure he made sure she knew about. Well, I visited the cemetery, too, but I don’t tell her about it, or about the flowers I added at the family graves, etc. Coming from me, she would find ways to either tell me how I am doing it wrong, or find a way to turn it around and start saying how great our vandal is.

Then I found out, he’d come by her place recently.

I told her, he shouldn’t be doing that.

She, of course, tried to turn it around on me, because that’s what she does. It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, because she phrased it so oddly, but she essentially said, if my daughters did what our vandal did, would I cut them off entirely? I told her, if they did what he did, yes! I would hold them responsible and accountable. I then called her out on making excuses for him the way she does, pointing out that he’s stolen 10’s of thousands of dollars of stuff from her that was on the farm (heck, his taking stuff was one of the biggest reasons she asked us to move here!), but that’s okay because he put a colour picture in the paper? He does this stuff because people have been letting him get away with is for years. I’m the first person to stand up to him, and he ended up vandalizing the place, we have to keep the gate locked, and worry that he’ll suddenly show up and try to burn the house down or something.

She changed the subject after that.

That was pretty much the only real downside of the visit. Mostly, I think she was just too tired to be as difficult as she usually is.

I didn’t stay too much longer after putting things away, since I did have my own few purchases getting hot in the truck, so I headed home soon after.

Once at home and settled, I gave the outside cats their lysine enhanced kibble. Since it’s the more granular type of lysine, I have been making sure the kibble bowls get some water in them, so it’ll stick to the kibble. With some of the bowls, I add extra water, as the kittens seem to prefer it, and this way they are getting more hydration in this heat, and the lysine will be dissolved in the water. Some of the kittens are getting leaky eyes and noses, including Button, and I want to make sure they get their lysine! It helps strengthen their immune systems.

No sign of the new kittens this time, though.

Then I went into the garden, but I’ll talk about that in my next post.

As for how things are now, my leg is still feeling like it’s about to start cramping up on me. More so as I’m sitting down then while I’m walking around. I’m going to be feeling downright nervous, getting into bed tonight! I’ve been looking into the various possible causes. One was the lawn mowing in the heat, but I didn’t do anywhere near as much as I have in the past. Lack of electrolytes is a possibility. I’m already taking B12 and Magnesium supplements, but it looks like I might be low on potassium and sodium, too. At least, those are the only possible causes I can be proactive about. Others include things like “getting older”. 😄

Well, we’ll see how it works out tonight!

The Re-Farmer

Back home, and a new source for cat food?

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But first, the cuteness!

Big, giant cuteness.

Leyendecker is such a big boi!

Today was my day to take my mother to her medical appointment. It got hot fast this morning, even as I was just going my rounds. As I write this, coming up on 7pm, we are still at 29C/84F, and the humidex is at 34C/93F. This heat is supposed to continue for the next couple of days, and no rain or even thunderstorms expected, so tomorrow morning, I’ll have to make sure to give the garden beds a deep watering, before it gets really hot again.

I am really appreciating the AC in the truck!

I was thinking of going to my mother’s a bit early, so we could get a bit of a visit in before her appointment, since I had to go to pick up eggs after. I was going to call her to see if she was good with my arriving early when she called me, instead.

While I was in the washroom, of course.

The message she left was almost a wail, asking where I was, and did I forget about the appointment today?

I had told her I would arrive at about noon. She was calling shortly after 11.

So I called her back and told her I could leave right away. In the end, it was only about half an hour earlier than I intended to be there originally.

I tried to have a conversation with her. I really did!

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out well. A couple of times, I was trying to share some information with her related to the topic at hand, and she would cut me off and start going off on a rant. It was as if she’d assumed the conclusion of what I was saying and responding to that – even though it was not at all what I was trying to say. She had no interest in what I was actually saying, but in what she thought I was saying.

When she cut me off again by making a racist comment, I gave up and suggested it was time to leave.

So we were a bit early for the appointment.

While in the waiting room, we got to talking about the purpose of the appointment, which was to get her medications reviewed, including the changes done by the ER doctor, and for the pharmacy to get the updated information before they have to do her next bubble packs.

That’s when I found out my mother wasn’t taking the one pill the ER doctor told her to start taking again, every day. She was taking it every other day. She had already been saying to me, how she was feeling better after being back on the pill, but then she was saying that she was feeling worse after being back on that pill.

I told her she needs to stop messing with her prescriptions, and that we needed to make sure to tell the doctor about this. She was to stop taking the pill for 30 days, and the blood work she had done would tell the doctor if anything about it needed to be changed.

When the doctor came in, we explained about my mother going to the ER. She tried to look it up on my mother’s file.

The hospital never sent the information to her!

She was able to go online and link into their files, though, and see test results, at least. There were no notes of any kind attached, which was very frustrating. The ER doctor had not only told my mother to start taking this one prescription again, but doubled another one, so she’s now taking it morning and evening – but no information as to why the doctor made these decisions!

The other information was there, though. My mother had Xrays done, and everything looked clear. The hospital’s blood work was done a week after my mother did her scheduled blood work after stopping the pill for 30 days, so the doctor was able to compare three different test results; the first one that identified a problem, then the other two showing any changes.

My mother’s results showed significant improvement in that 30 day period, and even more improvement in just the week before the ER tested her again. Everything is now right back where it should be!

The doctor has taken this pill off my mother’s prescriptions. If my mother starts to have any particular symptoms start, she’ll add it back, but only as a “take as needed” prescription, not part of her bubble packs.

My mother’s turning 93 this year and, for all her complaints about her health, she is remarkably resilient and has an amazing recovery time. It’s just amazing!

After her appointment was done, my mother had wanted to go to a particular grocery store that was on our way out of town, but she changed her mind as we were leaving. It turned out she’d only eaten a piece of toast for breakfast, and had deliberately not eaten lunch before this appointment. I’m not sure why! Needless to say, she was famished, so we stopped for lunch and shared a pizza. After that, she didn’t have the energy to get out of the truck again.

As we were leaving her town, I’d pointed out to her where I’d be going to get eggs later; part of their property borders the highway. My mother suggested I stop to pick up the eggs on the way, rather than driving back later. She even said she might want to get some eggs, too.

Of course, what she really wanted as to see was the egg lady’s place and make judgements. Because that’s what my mother does!

I ended up sending a message to the egg lady, because I wasn’t sure if she was even home.

She wasn’t, but she was on the way.

I told her about my mother being interested in getting a dozen eggs, too, and we worked things out. I was going to stop at a gas station and take my time about it, to give her more time to get home ahead of me.

Which worked out well. We got there and, as we were driving in, my mother got to see the guinea hens, and a couple of free range goats, without having to leave the truck.

She changed her mind about the eggs, though. Which I expected, since I knew that was just her way to get me to take her to the egg lady’s place.

I don’t think my mother was impressed. It didn’t look like a picture postcard, but an active homestead and home based business that also involved animals.

I’m probably going to hear about it later. At the time, she was just too tired to say much.

I got her home and settled in, but couldn’t stay long with the eggs in the truck; they didn’t fit in any of my insulated bags. Hopefully, my mother went for a nap soon after I left!

As we were driving into her town, though, I realized the farmer’s market was started. It’s every Friday, but I’m almost never in this town on Fridays. I saw my cousin’s truck there, too, so I wanted to make a quick stop.

But first, I wanted to stop at a nearby feed store. We haven’t been able to connect with the Cat Lady to pick up the kibble donation, and we were running low. I knew the grocery store prices would be insane, but maybe the feed store would be better.

Plus, it was half a block away from the farmer’s market.

So I went there first and looked around. Sure enough, they did have cat food – in 40 pound bags! (18.1kg). The price was a little over $60, though, which would have used up most of my cash on hand. They did have 20 pound bags (9.1kg) for just over $30, though. It looked like they had only one 20lb bag left, too! So I bought it and paid cash. Then I picked up the bag and set it on my shoulder to carry it out.

Which is when I heard and felt something very strange.

I pulled the bag down and discovered the sewn strip across the top had come loose. I’d just spilled kibble all over the floor!

Of course, I was very apologetic. What mess!

The guy behind the counter came out with a broom and dustpan to clean it up while telling the other guy (the owner?), who was in the office, what happened. They talked back and forth for a bit when the other guy said, “give her a 40 pound bag.”

??? !!!

In the end, the other guy came out and went to their storage building out back and got me a 40 pound bag himself, while the guy behind the counter finished sweeping up the kibble.

So I got to take home a 40 pound bag for the price of a 20 pound bag!

That was so awesome of them!

As soon as possible, I want to go back and pay the difference.

The one guy (the one I think is the owner) was also complaining to the guy behind the counter that almost ever third bag they’ve been getting, the stitching is loose at one corner, so this is not the first time it’s been a problem! As he was loading the bag into the back of my truck, he made a point of telling me this, and to watch out for those corners.

With such great customer service, I definitely plan to go back there!

Plus…

While the price per kg is slightly higher than what I’m paying at Walmart for the 9kg bags, and Costco has even better prices for that size, the price is SO much better than at the grocery stores. Factoring in the cost of gas to drive to the city, and it comes out cheaper.

So while we will still pick up kibble when we are already in the city to do our stock up shopping, when it comes time to get more, later in the month, it would be more cost effective to buy from the feed store than to drive to the nearest Walmart.

Best of all, I’ve already given some to the cats outside, and they like it. The last time I got kibble at a feed store, it was in another town, and they had 16kg bags (35 pounds) for an even better price. The problem was, the cats didn’t like it, at all. Even the outside cats didn’t want to eat it. They did anyhow, since there was nothing else, but this stuff is clearly a better quality cat food.

After getting the cat food, I popped over to the farmer’s market. I talked to my cousin for a while, and picked up some of his creamed honey. He doesn’t have a lot of honey right now; he lost all his bees when a neighbour sprayed their field for grasshoppers, and had to buy more. He doesn’t have much of an inventory yet. No 3kg buckets for quite a while!

Then, I made a quick stop at a booth selling baked goods and picked up a bumbleberry pie. It had better be good – it cost more than the honey I just bought, and more than twice the grocery store price!

While I was doing that, I got a message from my husband asking if I could swing by the post office. I had just enough time to get there before they closed.

All this made for a very long day, but a more productive one than I expected. I’m really glad I remembered this feed store and decided to check it out.

Ugh. I need to go outside and do my evening rounds. It’s now coming up on 8pm, and we’re still 27C/81F with the humidex at 30C/86F.

It’s going to be sticky out there!

Even our overnight temperatures are supposed to only drop to 19C/66F. I think I’ll be leaving my window fan to keep blowing hot air out, for the night.

There should be quite a few raspberries to pick, though, so I’d better remember to bring a bucket of some kind, and get out there!

The Re-Farmer