For some this year was extremely disruptive.  For me, it wasn't.  It was the crises of caregiving as usual.  Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise.  Being a caregiver means being a recluse pretty much.  There's not time for friends, especially making new ones when...

Oh my.  We have hit a new stage of hours of whining.  I checked everything like food, thirst, bathroom needs, pain, etc...  All was well.  Just the bad habits of life magnified.  Just as the good ones are as well (my mother is the most considerate person I know). So I...

It's now 7 years since my mom's mental health exploded with LBD.  I only started blogging in 2016 but it started before then.  It's just that in 2016 things got really bad with broken hips, femur, infections, drama and more.  Oh my that was a bad year.  It's the kind...

When I read LBD blogs of the dying process, it is nothing other than horrible.  From the beginning, this is the thing I've dreaded the most.  It's a horrific death. I have prayed that my mother would die peacefully.  Or some other way than choking, gasping for breath...

It's the Fourth of July, our national celebration, and I admit I really would love to be part of a party or a group.  Lately I've found myself struggling with loneliness.  It comes with the territory.  The cumulative exhaustion of many years of caregiving is so far...

Lately I've struggled so hard to get out of bed.   The fatigue has been rough.  My muscles tense and sore.  And I've had other issues though no coughing or fever.  But concerned I called the health clinic and told them my symptoms.  They told me I'd better come in for...

It's a sad day when your family doggy dies.  Mom cried for a few days and she kind of knows and kind of doesn't.  All day she kept calling to the doggy and telling the doggy to be careful.  She sort of knows and sort of doesn't. I think I'm affected more than her. ...

I always want the before/after photo where the "after" looks amazing.  I didn't get that recently. Prior to this journey someone thought I was 18.  I had looped that number twice and then some.  And after years of caregiving someone the other day thought I was almost...

I moved recently and during the move I wrenched my back somehow.  I've been bent over and hurting for over a week now.  And it makes caregiving really, really hard.  Hard to bend over, hard to lift her up, hard to transfer her.  Harder still is her constant needs that...

The only thing that looked worse today than my mom was the family dog who has perhaps only days/weeks left to live.  Mom was tearful, fearful, confused and her legs just didn't want to work.   Getting her in and out of a car is becoming much more difficult. We went on...

There are days like today where I feel like we are under the most severe caregiving issues of anyone I know.  There are many things people don't know about in this journey.  I feel crushed as I have many times, beyond the ability to keep going on.  And yet I remember...

  While the brain knows what you should and shouldn't say or do as this isn't them or within their control, the frazzled exhausted body, mind and emotions after 6+ years seems to take over...

When this journey happened upon us years ago, I began to research and saw that most LBD people died from aspiration/pneumonia.  The family had to decide whether to put a feeding tube in or let them die of pneumonia, starvation and dehydration.  I was utterly horrified...

The other day mom started choking violently.  I leapt up and she indicated to perform the Heimlich maneuver.  On a more generous sized person it isn't as easy as you would think.  I tried a few times, slapped her on the upper part of her back and tried the Heimlich...