In short (too late) – I was celebrating breaking away and warning those to not let themselves decide that “can’t quit” must encompass all parts of ones life. It seems it was a horridly written post – but it did and still does make perfect sense to me, but then again, I did write it, so I’m quite biased. Regardless, the support was incredibly heartwarming – even if it might have been very lovingly misguided by my lack of clarity with my words.

Second, I am bouncing about like a PE class red-rubber-dodge-ball between “this will be fun” and “holy crap, this is the worst idea I have had in a while” when it comes to my high school reunion this weekend. If nothing else, there is an open bar for a couple hours and I have booked a room at the hotel, so hey, breakfast in bed on Sunday morning! No matter what, I suspect some fun will be had. :)

And finally – I joke about being the mother hen to my little chickadees that are at the pub when I am there, but at the same time, I’m pretty damn serious about it. These were the folks that were there for me as I came in for late-night bacon cheeseburgers & beer and explained that the reason that I was back in the neighborhood was cause my Mom died and I was moving back into the family homestead, and they provided shoulders to lean on and ears to listen when I needed them. And for that, I am very, very protective of my friends at the pub, and there is nothing that raises my ire faster than someone – anyone – messing with them. If you are someone I count among my friends, there is good reason that you are there – and that is why I get very upset when someone is messing with anyone in that circle. So, note to all – don’t screw with my friends, OK?

But, eldercare doesn’t come with an HR department or sane employer. So, you’re kind of stuck.

The stuck part will ooze it’s way into other parts of your life and you won’t even realize it, and you keep trying to power through it, because your brain has gone into “can’t quit” mode. Thing is – you may not even realize that it’s gotten it’s hooks into you – lord knows I didn’t until today.

In a completely and separate part of my life, I realized today, “This isn’t working. I need to just walk away.” It wasn’t some massive life changing portion of my life, just something relatively minor that I kept feeling the need to just power through instead of considering going another direction rather than running through the roadblock. I just hadn’t even considered the option of going another direction before today.

I swear, the minute I realized I was on the hook 24/7 with my grandmother (until I such time I could pass it on to *competent* caregivers,) I should signed up for 3x a week therapy so I could figure out how to keep it from getting into the rest of my life.

Let me be your cautionary tale: Don’t let yourself be trapped.

Apparently I did when I joked about buying a new fridge vs. cleaning the drip pan. Honestly, I thought it was just a gunky, disgusting drip pan overflow, and I was truly kidding about buying a new fridge vs. cleaning up the old one.

Except the drip pan theory was the wrong theory. And it took us a while to figure that out.

Night before last there was a small puddle of ‘god knows what’ next to the corner of the fridge. My brother & I both looked at it, and he said, “Cat puke, and I’m pretty sure it’s Carmen.*” I have had cats for 26 of the 27 past years, and cat puke is a very reasonable explanation for many kinds of ‘god knows what’ that may show up on tile or carpet. And we asked Carmen to not puke in the kitchen in the future, and it was cleaned up, and we thought that was that.

Except we were wrong. Which was the point where I though, “Ahhh, gunked up drip pan! We live in a house with 2 cats, a fluffy dog, and ME. Quite likely the coils are in need of a vacuuming, and the drip pan needs to be emptied and hosed off.”

Wrong again. Wherever the drip pan is, it ain’t at the front of the fridge. And we looked again, and again. Donald had already looked at the innards of the freezer in an attempt to find some item that had exploded/leaked or such and found nothing. And we then looked again. Oh crap. The leak had been melted ice cream, that had melted out of the (CLOSED!) container, onto the bottom of the door shelf, under the gap between the shelf and the “shelf wall” then down the interior of the door, and into the INSIDE of the door seal, and then dripping out the bottom of the door – which manifested itself as a leak from the underside grate, because I just couldn’t see exactly where the “leak” was coming from.

Well, I am fairly certain that melted ice cream is NOT a good sign. And then I noticed the ice in the ice tray had melted and refrozen. Not good either. (The fridge is still nicely cold for the moment.)

So, tomorrow is fridge/freezer hunting. Fortunately, little bro has said, “the kitchen is your domain, don’t go cheap, go with what you want” – while I will still be very conscious of price, at least I don’t feel that I have to go look for the cheapest fridge/top freezer combo on the planet, and we will again have a freezer-on-the-bottom-combo.

But really, I was just kidding about buying new vs. cleaning the drip pan!!! Totally joking! Seriously, it was a total goof to say it…

Here’s to helping the economy with a new fridge.

*I have apologized to Carmen. I think Donald still owes her an apology as well.

- First, I woke up before my alarm clock, and NOT because of the trash trucks coming through!* It was one of those, “roll over, realize I’m awake, and I am totally OK with the fact that I am awake” moments.

- Despite waking up before my alarm, I felt GREAT! Can’t remember the last time I had such a spectacular night’s sleep like last night. (And I wish I could say I’d done something different before bed, but I didn’t.) It’s much more fun to have entertaining dreams when you’re running about with Raylan Givens** blowing things up in the name of law enforcement than having dreams where your dead relatives are showing up saying that they’re “taking Grandma to go shopping” and you wake up wondering if that was some otherworldly sign that Grandma is dead…

- When I came downstairs, the dog was exceptionally mellow. Lately, he’s been a bit hyper in the mornings, and he was quite content to go out, come back in and just chill out while I checked my emails and paid bills.

- Carmen was just hilarious today with her reaction to the rain. She was an ANGRY little sleeper. (As it is, she naps with great passion.) She came downstairs, FLUNG herself into my lap, scrunched up her face and slammed her head into my knees and went back to bed in my lap. When Lily came around to see what she was up to, Carmen shoved a foot into her face. Not so awesome for Lily, but hilarious for me.

- I LOVE my new phone. (I went with the Android, and it was the right decision.) So many very spiffy and shiny apps to play with! So far I think my fav is the whitenoise app – nice to go to sleep with the sound of the ocean! (And I’d used it before last night, so I can’t say it was the surefire reason for my excellent sleep, but it could have been a contributing factor.)

- Realizing that this particular phone can easily replace my aircard – I returned the aircard, and being within the 30 days of when I had to replace my previously exploding & catching fire aircard – no termination fee! (That surprised the gent at Radio Shack, but hey, 30 days guaranteed satisfaction is 30 days, and I beat it.)

- Got some cute shots of the kitties today with the phone. (Still kills me that my PHONE now has a camera with as many megapixels as my “good” camera, which is huge and weighs a ton comparatively.)

- Got all the “I really WANT to get this done today” stuff DONE.

- Chicken salad on croissants for dinner. (And lunch tomorrow.) ‘Nuff said.

- Joe Saunders pitched a complete game! No, I’m not an Angels fan, but he went to my high school, and it’s always nice to see a local kid do well. :)

I won’t hold my breath that tomorrow will measure up, but it could still be a fair amount worse and still qualify as decent.

*Seriously, I’d be exceptionally OK with once a week trash pickup if for no other reason than to cut down on noise pollution. Or 5:30 AM wakeup calls.
**Watch Justified on FX.

Well, now it’s summer and we’re having one of those August-in-June heat streaks, so the fan really did have to go back on. This did not sit well with the little princess, and she sequestered herself in the upstairs hallway and the dining room for the better part of the past two days. (And it’s damn hot upstairs for normal creatures. For me, it’s lovely.)

Well, it seems that in the last couple hours, Carmen went to ManUpCamp. I was sitting on the couch and heard a “Mrrp, mrrp, mrrp!” and looked over and she had ventured into the living room and was making her way to me across the back of the couch.

She had decided “Screw the fan, I need lap time!” and we had a nice snuggle session and she’s now draped over the back of one of the chairs. And I know overcoming the ceiling fan was a Big Deal for her with all the fur she left on my shirt, but it seemed that she must have believed it at least one of the times I told her, “Come August, you are going to be SO happy we have these ceiling fans!”

I am seriously so happy she’s back downstairs mainly because it just breaks my heart when any of my pets are scared of anything. I’m glad she’s over it.

First being the damn ants. They’re a little late this year, but they are here. They’re the teeny-tiny sugar ants and I can’t for the life of me figure out where on earth they’re getting in the house, but on the upside, they only appear right around the kitchen sink. (I suppose that means they are getting in somewhere around a plumbing conduit, but I couldn’t tell you which one.) The irony of this nonsense is that I have a bottle of “earth-friendly” grapefruit multi-surface cleaner that doesn’t clean for shit, but it will kill ants like nobody’s business. (I suspect it is just a matter of the force from the spray nozzle, but I still find it somewhat amusing. And the sink area is extra clean due to the ant massacres.) Ant trap/killer things are on the grocery list for the next trip to the market. (A couple years ago when I was buying ant traps at the store, the clerk said, “Oh, you must live in Burke! It’s ant season!”)

Second – Moxley has got the seasonal itchies. Every year it is the same – a hotspot on one of his front legs and a incredibly itchy stomach. This year, I told him, “Mox, we’re gonna conquer this without having to go to the vet!!” I was confident in our abilities to take care of this on our own. I went to PetCo and got some non-steriodal treatments and we were gonna kick this without veterinary assistance. (Not that I don’t love our vet, but Mox is getting a touch older and I’d like to avoid steroids if we can for the AwesomeDog.) I wouldn’t put my approach at epic fail, but partial fail. I got some lidocaine/antiseptic/antibite spray which has worked quite well for his leg – it’s already healing quite nicely. For his tummy I got a Vitamin E/B and Oatmeal anti-itch/soothing spray. I didn’t use the other spray because I think if I asked 10 guys, “Is it OK if I spray lidocaine all over your genital area?” I’m pretty sure the answer would be, “Oh HELL no!” Hence, the herbal/organic solution for that. While he isn’t biting his leg anymore, he’s still decidedly itchy elsewhere. (I can’t say how thrilled I’d be if Dr Alt said, “Sure, you can use the lidocaine spray on his stomach.” But if not, whatever makes him less itchy. The biggest problem is that the lidocaine spray is not for dogs *and* cats – and the cats do enjoy attempting to groom him.)

The newest sign is Carmen chilling in the dining room rather than the family room. It was quite hot today and I had to turn on the spinning blades of death from above in the family room, aka the ceiling fan. Last year when she first noticed it, she decided she was perfectly content to hang out in the dining room, but it broke my heart that it scared her, so I turned off the fan. (It was fall, so it was no biggie.) After a couple days, she was fine again. I’m hoping she can get over this with in about the same time with the fan *on* instead of off, cause I really don’t want to try to get through a DC summer without a ceiling fan. (I will if I have to, but I’d like for her to discover the wonder of a ceiling fan in August.)

The final sign is that I am itching (sorry, Mox) to get to the beach. The checks have been cashed, the linen order is in, and I am so ready for an extended change of scenery. We have the same house as last year and it’s an adorable little place (or as I like to say, Cindy-sized) and I am just beyond ready for the salt air and napping on the deck and talking with people who do not give a rat’s ass what I do (or don’t do) for a living. I also realized tonight that now that my grandmother’s situation has been really stabilized – I won’t be that gal sitting on the beach answering her cell phone every 5 minutes – which is something I could not say about the last two years when we hit the beach. (Selfish? Yes. Do I feel guilty? No. Two years of being on call 24/7 cured that.)

Now, if I can just figure out how to not have summer end, I’ll be set.

The article is here: Alzheimer’s costs to soar without effective drugs
The Alzheimer’s Association Report referenced is here: Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer’s Disease: A National Imperative

Alrghtly then, I’ll attempt defer to my less bitchy side, but I cannot make any guarantees that by the time you finish reading this that you won’t be thinking, “Good grief, this woman needs some intensive therapy on many, many levels.”

The report by the Alzheimer’s Association estimates that “the number of Americans 65 and older with Alzheimer’s will increase from 5.1 million today to 13.5 million by mid-century.” ie, 2050, when I will be 78 years old. Well, again, No Shit Sherlock, we have a Baby Boomer generation who is approaching a little thing called old age, and yeah – a chunk of them will outlive every other thing that could have killed them first.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that Alzheimer’s is what gets you when nothing else has been able to kill you first. (The exception being early-onset Alzheimer’s – 5% to 10% of all Alzheimer’s victims are just screwed no matter what.) My grandmother is 87 years old and she has never had a healthy habit in her life – I don’t have a memory in my brain which doesn’t have her lounging on a sofa with either a cup of coffee or a beer or glass of wine in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. (As one of my cousins once asked at a young age, “Does your Grandma ever sleep?” He seriously thought she was a vampire.) Exercise? Oh hell no, it might have mussed her hair or nails! Eating healthy? That was for hippies! She didn’t have any particular aversions to salads, but “cholesterol” was never in her vocabulary. Honestly, despite the fact that she makes me completely batshit crazy, I love my grandmother, but the fact of the matter is – she should have been dead at least 10 years ago. Having escaped all else, Alzheimer’s has come in for it’s final revenge.

The only thing that will keep these potential costs and # of patients down is that the current BB generation is willing to try new things that might kill them before Alzheimer’s hits, such as skydiving and basejumping. (If I live to be 70, I will be taking up basejumping or some similarly suicidal hobby. I am not kidding.) The other thing the BB’s have going for them is that they know this is a definite possibility for their future and they know the more active you keep your brain, the more you can slow down their brains turning to cement. Kids, keep playing Scrabble and Sudoku and doing those NYTimes crossword puzzles – even if you have to occasionally black out empty boxes to make the words fit.

There is a line in the article that really hit me right upside the head: “They estimate that a drug that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years would decrease the total number of Americans age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s from 5.6 million to 4 million in 2020. And if a drug were discovered by 2015 that slowed disease progression, it could cut the number of people in the severe stage of Alzheimer’s disease in half to 1.1 million by 2020, and 1.2 million in 2050, down from the projections of 6.5 million.”

How do I say this nicely? Well, I’m pretty sure I can’t. The rest of the first of the above sentences is “and by putting off Alzheimer’s by five years, we are going to save some serious coin because there’s a damn good chance that something else will kill them first, and much faster than a terminal illness that takes 5-7 years to run it’s course and requires intervention damn near immediately once symptoms present.”

I can see how some may cry “death panels!!!!!!” But it’s not that. Take a minute and think about it. If you could have 2 years with a loved elderly relative who was in the present and loving life and they kicked off while walking out of a salon with a perfectly coiffed ‘do and lovely manicured nails (as my great-grandmother did) vs. having that relative around for another 3 to 5 years beyond that where they essentially ended up no more than a zombie – which would you choose? And if you were said elderly relative? As much as I’d love to see things from the zombie side of it all, I’m not down with it if it entails my family going through hell on earth.

The part of the report that bothered me the most is the fact that unpaid family care amounts to roughly 20 hours a week per Alzheimer’s patient – with no consideration of what people have to give up to provide those 20 hours a week. If you have a 20 hour a week commitment creeping into your life while trying to hold down a 40 hour a week job, well guess what – in this economy, your ass is going to get bounced out of your 40 hour a week job. So not only are you providing a 20 hours a week, $20/hour service for free, you’ve also lost any income to offset it from your 40 hour a week job. Were my mother still alive when things went south with my grandmother, she would have had to quit her job, and tend to my grandmother at no charge. She would have been down $92K a year. Had I still been working, I would have only been down $72K a year, cause my Mom pulled down more a day than I did. The only reason I didn’t have to quit my job when my grandmother went off the rails was that I had already decided to take some time off from Corporate America due to burnout and the fact that I was still trying to cope with the fact that I didn’t have a Mom anymore. And I was in a situation where I found that I couldn’t even reasonably consider even the most intriguing offers of employment – because I couldn’t say, “Well, I’m kind of on call 24/7 for my grandmother, can you handle that?” and expect any level of interest in my copious random skills. So, while the 12.5 billion hours of “free care” for 11 million people a year may be accurate, the full costs of providing those 1136 hours of care per year aren’t taken into account.

The costs of Alzheimer’s will certainly explode, but I don’t think anyone is taking into true account the cost of not just “free” caregiving by family members, but the cost of caregiving plus everything else that has to be given up to provide said caregiving.

That being said, I will still sell everything I have to make sure my grandmother has the care and comfort she needs in whatever time she has left on this mortal plane. I just don’t like the idea of anyone thinking it is “free” in any way, shape or form. It takes it’s toll not just on checkbooks, but on everyone’s mental health and well being that is involved.

And yes, were there a magic drug that could have staved off Alzheimer’s until some other ailment quickly kicked my grandmother onto the next stage of whatever it is that comes after life, so she could enjoy her time left on this earth without being paranoid about her taxes and bills being paid and terrified if there was ever a mistake? I’d be calling her every day at 5PM to make sure she took her pills.

He agreed that an exploding battery was not good, not normal, certainly unsettling and they genuinely did want to look into it and figure out what happened.

They’re sending me paperwork so I can send the whole thing back to them so they can test it and see if they can’t find out what on earth went wrong here, and they said they’d keep in touch with me to let me know what they found out.