All In a Day’s Work, Part 3

Caregiver’s Log: Day 985

8:00 am       Take your mother out for breakfast and drink a shit-ton of bitter IHOP coffee. Give her a new napkin because the one she started eating is, according to her, “broken.” Marvel at how she can power down a stack of pancakes the size of a turkey platter, scrambled eggs and a blueberry muffin and still stay skinny as a skeleton. Notice the tumor in her pancreas is now protruding from her belly like a full-term pregnancy.

9:00 am       Return home to assist husband with a shower, making sure the waterproof sleeve you finally found at the third CVS pharmacy yesterday covers his catheter. Avoid heavy sighs when he complains that the towel is too soft and the bar soap slips through his fingers. Remind yourself to add shower gel to shopping list.

9:30 am        Field latest batch of text rants from your 87-year-old father—who you moved two weeks ago into a senior living community three thousand miles away—about his new 65” TV being too small and impossible to hear. Order sound bar for $250, sign him up for a year of unlimited tech support and text him back: “Go to Best Buy and get whatever TV you want,” because if you get one more text about his A/V bullshit, you’ll lose it on him like you did on last week’s rant about his new place being full of with “uneducated slobs.”

3rd in a Series of 7. Read the rest here