An Alzheimer’s & Family Update

Posted on January 26, 2025 by Professor Taboo

Some of you may have noticed that I have been around our blogging community less, perhaps noticeably less. You would be right. That has been the case for some 3-5 months now, I’m unsure really. Here’s why… well, several reasons why.

Life. And…

Immediate family, specifically my Early Alzheimer’s Mom and unfortunately and negatively my 61-year old sister.

Mom

Much of what I’ve been having to do to care full-time/overtime 14-16/7 hrs. per day, 365-days the past near four years for my Mom has been covered in these previous three blog-posts: Click here for the first post, then the 2nd and 3rd are all linked together after.

No surprise, she has declined a little more since my last Alzheimer update-post in November 2023. Hence, my free-time to write blogs, comment on blogs I follow, or explore new blogs I’d enjoy has gone by the wayside to this present day.

Mom has now reached the point where cognitively and physically she cannot and/or is unable to help me do anything at all around our apartment. None of the daily or weekly chores for both our bedrooms, the bathrooms, the tub/shower, cleaning the kitchen daily 2-4 times per day, preparing two meals a day, all the grocery weekly/bi-weekly shopping and pharmacy trips, vacuuming and mopping of the apartment, caring for all the plants inside and outside as well as my herb garden outside—all of which are dead now and most are dead inside—and the chauffeuring to quarterly or biannual doctor appointments; she no longer drives.

Regarding my hard work on my herb garden, roses, and gorgeous geraniums outside last year, this past summer, autumn, and now winter has been utterly brutal on all outdoor plants/gardens. In the summer last year we had one of the worst infestations of huge tan-brown-green grasshoppers that devoured everyone’s plants. Some huge grasshoppers were at least 4-inches long. Extreme boiling temps in the day and extreme frigid temps at night doomed my 2024 efforts. On top of this unmitigated garden disaster, for 8-days straight I was so deathly ill I could not get out of bed, ever. I struggled bad to walk to the bathroom. I never ate during those 8-days. Consequently, all the indoor and outdoor plants suffered horribly.

One of my top priorities this late January is reapplying for her Long-Term Medicaid assistance for her eventual admittance into a full-time Assisted Living Memory Care facility where here in the central Hill Country of Texas are all extremely expensive, between $4,800/mon. to $7,300/mon. Most are private pay only. I must get assistance for this third reapplication as I learned the hard way last year—by ending up in the hospital for four nights back in late June—by a Medicare family consultant to guarantee that Mom gets approved. She does incredible work and has tons of experience in this hyper-complicated politicized out-tha-whaa-zoo process here in Texas. That was part of the reason why I ended up in the hospital with serious heart and stress-hypertension problems.

Concluding with Mom I have this comparison…

I was a stay-at-home Dad when my son was an infant until he turned two and my daughter at the time was 7- to 8-years old in elementary school. In 1999-2001 I was the stay-home parent during the day when their mother (my ex-wife now) was at her 8-9 hr. job in downtown Dallas. We lived at that time in a nice starter home in Carrollton, Texas. When she returned from work, and I had dinner ready and homework done, I went to my graveyard shift security guard job at 7:00pm until 7:00am the next morning. I did this for 18-months. By far the hardest jobs I have EVER had in my life!

Now, since August 2021, I am caring for—for all intents and purposes—my last 4-year old child… Mom. Literally. The huge difference, however, between my stay-home-Dad days/nights and right now since August 2021 is that I have been and still am “A One Man Show and Bad Dance.” Back in my married months/year I at least had a wife-partner and parent. Not this go round. This is harder than those 18-months, much harder. The “end” of this rough go will eventually be very different.

My Sister and Her 48-Year “Disease”

As a footnote to my header up top, my sister now weights over 275 lbs., not that weight in the Xmas 2014 picture. And that is the least health problems she has at present.

My 61-year old sister is also a Schizoid-affective Bipolar of about 25-30 years with regular bouts of very manic behavior. She is also a 48-year drug addict and alcoholic. And she also has poor judgement, cognition, and temperament or composure in stressful environments, all due in part to her psychiatric diagnoses. She is also presently on about 6-7 various psych meds daily. There’s the introductory details of what I must often help with, manage, or try to stop the hemorrhaging, as it were, when she has a psychotic meltdown.

On October 9th through October 17th, 2024, she had a major meltdown on me that involved her calling the police department on me—for a 2nd time that year, first in Feb. 2024—and became physically violent toward me inside Mom’s and my apartment almost breaking down or through my locked bedroom door. However, this was after her public meltdown with me at Western Union inside the local Walmart. If you are not familiar with psychiatric-psychologically dysfunctional people with a long, long history of disorders, eight prior felonies, prior addresses of residence that include over 25 Halfway Houses & Shelters, homeless 3-4 times under highway overpasses, and a long list of low-wage jobs that are longer than an encyclopedia… then just believe me when I say this: During those breakdowns/meltdowns, it is pure chaos and a rollercoaster of manic behavior sometimes lasting for over 10-12 hours without medication or in some cases until she is arrested by law-enforcement.

Then also imagine the stress, distress, crying, and emotional exhaustion she puts my elderly Mom through each episode, and you have a slight glimpse of what Mom and I have dealt with since 1978.

Should any of you wish to read the email (Page 1 click here, pg. 2 click here, short pg. 3 click here) I had to send to my sister about this latest 9-day/night psychotic meltdown on me—she was impossible to speak with civilly or maturely and logically those days and nights that I had to get a hotel room 2-nights when she wouldn’t leave Mom’s apartment—so consequently we have yet to speak to each other either in person or by phone or text message. She’s been and still being a royal, immature, asshole to me over a situation I had no control over whatsoever. As is often the case with arguing family members, the initial issue and subsequent meltdown at Walmart had to do with money, her portion of money Mom said she could have from the sale of Mom’s 2007 Toyota Avalon XL Sedan that I had completed after 4-months listed, all by myself, on Oct. 5th, 2024 for $7,600. The rest of the insanity is available via the “click here” links above.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Therefore, the moral of my quick post here is that my “free-time” has been slipping further away the last 8-26 months as Mom continues to decline, my workload in everything around here increases because I have zero help—with the small exception of Mom’s professional hospice team that visits 3-times a week for 30-40 minutes at most, not on weekends or holidays—and my sister with her horribly shitty attitude and refusal to help out with Mom, much less help me with Mom with anything simple… just eats up every bit of every day now. And it doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.

My apologies my friends and followers. It is the hand of cards I’ve been delt for the moment. 🤷‍♂️

P.S. Oh! Almost forgot, my two kids in the header picture above. Since Oct. 6th, 2019, both of them no longer consider me existing. They have been heavily brainwashed and influenced by their mother’s and their maternal grandfather’s radical evangy-fundy Christian nationalistic theology and behavior to all non-believers that “God’s and Christ’s truly saved people should not and cannot be of the world [of sin and Satan].” They must totally separate themselves as “truly saved ones,” from all non-Christians. My two kids have not uttered a word to me or sent me even a text message since Oct. 6th, 2019. And they haven’t once answered my calls, text messages, or birthday cards sent to both since Oct. 6, 2019. 😔

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

Aging and the Aged

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Professor Taboo

My daughter & Mom – college graduation 2016

As some of you may have noticed, I have not been around WordPress and my blog as much as before. Lately, finding time to imagine, consider, research, ponder, gather images, then type away in a format and style that is minimally interesting for you and acceptable quality for me has been near non-existent. Well, not true exactly. I could do it late in the evening when I’m fatigued and must nevertheless wake just before sunrise or daybreak whether my mind and body want to or not. And since my last blog-post was June 9th you can see how well that is working. What is going on you ask as you all are banging down my front door? (sarcasm) What has changed?

Answer: Life.

Life apart from the world-wide-web. Life beyond the internet and technology. Organic life of which sometimes/often affords us little time of our own. The epilogue of one life, the pre-epilogue of another life (my life) and the prime of lives for others, loved ones. This is what has changed.

“The Earlier Revision Needs Revising”

Around 1997 shortly after marrying, Mom and her second older (and quite wealthy) husband found a luscious 2,850-ish sq. ft. Ranchita-home on 10.5 acres on top a big hill overlooking the Guadalupe River. The vistas from inside the house through 34 windows or outside on the large back-patio shaded or semi-shaded, with daily or every other day or evening southerly breezes… are the stuff of epic tranquility and living. For two hard-working retirees, it was a dream come true.

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And then as they say, Nothing stays the same.

Mom has been widowed since 2006. For a few years after her late husband’s crippling heart-attack which put him in a wheelchair and months later his decline and death, she took the time to enjoy her life more, travel, and spend more time with good friends and family. She absolutely deserved it! She bought a newly used 32-foot RV or mobile home to travel the U.S. However, while doing these five years of domestic and world touring the home and property they loved so much became increasingly neglected. Meanwhile, one of those good male friends became a “very good friend.” They traveled together everywhere. Very good at first, but whose title gradually changed over the last four years to infrequent companion given later developments. Circumstances for romance and the altar which seemed unimportant then, became very important. Nine years later it can be deduced that Cupid’s Arrow — with attached gold ring — had in the end missed its mark.

Another development of which I have shared and posted about here a number of times is that of my sister and her 35+ years of drug addiction, rehab, relapse, law-enforcement, incarceration, repeat ad nauseam. Over the last six years this has really taken a toll on Mom’s mental and physical health. While I was up in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area teaching Special Ed, the plan for Mom, my sister (who moved to the Texas Hill Country very soon after Mom and her husband moved here), and Mom’s “very good man-friend” was to begin serious preparations from the inside of the house to the outside and all over the property to sell the house soon. Of course, the very good man-friend (living over 2-hours away) was not going to be capable of helping more than 2-times a month or less — he had to maintain his cattle ranch of 1,500 acres that he does all by himself! Therefore, in reality it was up to my perpetually recovering sister and my 76-year old Mom. HAH!

Five years later and after finishing the 2014-2015 school year in DFW, I make my summer return to help out. In complete shock I find my sister has moved in with Mom! Anyone who has dealt with acute drug-alcohol addiction of over 3-decades knows that addicts MUST BE at the very least in a daily and weekly program, routine, and support group! Mom’s hilltop retirement resort is the very last place any addict needs to be living — there has been no consistent structure and set schedule for Mom since, hell… 1995! Furthermore, she is not even close to being a qualified licensed A&D counselor! Simply put my Mom not only cannot handle my sister’s addictive pathology, manipulation, and regular relapses, she’s not mentally or emotionally strong enough or cunning enough to manage an addict! On top of this defective lousy living situation, not hardly anything is getting accomplished toward the sale of the house and property.

I become infuriated.

What soon follows about two months later is my sister’s gradual ump-teenth relapse. Due to the pressing overwhelming work and tasks that must get done first in order to sell the house and property, Mom’s inability to PUSH my sister to stay consistent and accountable to an AA/NA and MHMR (mental health rehabs) program, and her hilltop retirement resort being 4-miles outside of town making Mom her only real transportation anywhere… my sister was doomed to relapse anyway! I find out a few weeks into my return that my sister actually moved-in the previous December! By February 2016 sister has relapsed badly, again, and this time the county sheriff’s department and TDCJ (Texas Dept of Criminal Justice) are done being merciful. She is sentenced to 9-months in their penal drug-rehab program — now the only and last hope for her.

I am now BEYOND infuriated! No wonder the house and property have not been significantly maintained or prepped! I was never told because they both knew how I would react. Funny how we manifest our repeated thoughts and fears.

At the end of June 2016 while at a wine-n-snack get-together with good local friends, Mom unloads to everyone the precise timeline of her absolute move-out: April 2017 or sooner. How did we lose 5-years when she told me in December 2015 — relative to her retirement funds and trust-fund — it would last through 2021? Everything, except Social Security and her small monthly Mobile Oil pension, runs out next April. I thought my entire upper body just dropped into my stomach when she announced her deadline. This was not good at all given how much needed to be done to and inside the house. I’m thinking to myself trying not to appear distraught to everyone… What if the house doesn’t sell for what it’s worth these next 9-10 months!?

Days later I ask Mom if she’s got any better idea and plan as to where she will move and live. She is no closer to those decisions than she was a year ago. Given everything she’s had to deal with concerning my ~~god-damn~~ sister, it’s understandable.

The original revised plan has to be revised again.

My original plans for a continued life up in the DFW area will have to be put on hold. My regular routine to blog, consider, research, write, and comment must also be reduced or postponed.

Aging and the Aged

The end of this life is inevitable. Everyone is approaching it the day we are born and take our first breath. The average American lifespan is around 78-years old; 76 (I believe) for a man, 81-83 for a woman. Therefore, somewhere around our 40’s is the halfway point. In the better scenarios the late 40’s. As those older dear ones and loved ones begin to pass away around you, one cannot help but reevaluate, reflect, and remember what makes us truly alive so that death isn’t so painfully unwelcomed. What should our final decade of life be? Of what should it consist?

Mom, July 2014

These last four years I have noticed how much more my Mom has aged. If this rate continues, she is in her last 5-7 years — and that might be optimistic. And that reality forces me to pause and prepare. It forces me to reevaluate, reflect, and remember what, on a soulful level, is TRULY important. For that single reason… death should not be such a total stranger.

Over the last six years I have gotten to know my Mom in ways and to levels I likely would not have been able living 5-hours and 320-miles away 300-days a year. Many of those days have been fun and hilarious — her senility can be quite entertaining along with her sense of humor that has enjoyably not waned as a result. Though I am increasingly managing and helping her with her weekly and monthly responsibilities, these last couple years have noticeably aged me. For all intents and purposes, I am becoming a one-man team if not already there. And this will probably not change anytime soon, or it could change tomorrow… all things considered.
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Do you have aging or aged parents? What have been or what are your experiences? How does it effect your own life? Why do family members these days live so far apart? I may not be able to quickly reply to your thoughts and comments, but I am curious to read them if you’re inclined to share!

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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