Saturday, August 13, 2016

Settling

I'm working part time now. I run a both at the farmers market for a local bakery on Sundays. I drive Uber and Lyft at least a few hours on mom's dialysis days and around six hours on other days. The arrangement allows me to be home to prepare breakfast and dinner every day. With the dementia, mom isn't capable of using the stove safely. I've seen her set dish towels and pot holders on fire trying to make hot cereal, so I set everything up so she only needs to microwave her lunch or put sandwich bread in the toaster. 

In facing two big challenges right now. The first is paying bills, of course. I'm trying my best to piece together enough income to cover a fairly minimal existence. Most of my earnings go to food, gas and tolls. A Mercedes isn't the ideal rideshare vehicle. I have my first student loan payment next month, I'm 800 miles from the next scheduled maintenance on my vehicle and I gotta make tax payment arrangements in October. 

If mom would just do the few things that are required of her, I could find a way to make this work. However, she is not only trying to bend the rules at home. She has been intimidating the dialysis attendant to disconnect her from the machine before her treatment is completed. She doesn't think that I know what I'm talking about when I tell her that there are serious consequences to this behavior. I need to prepare myself for the doctors to step in and place an order for her to be institutionalized. I'm starting to accept that it is unavoidable. She is the kind of person who cannot be trusted to make her own decisions. That probably should've been obvious by now.

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