Lane Morris Buckman's Blog

A Twinkle on the Barbed Wire

I have a list of things I need to do for my mom that is about as long as my arm. Every one of those things involves a minimum of two phone calls that will probably last at least 5 minutes each, and should culminate in an appointment scheduled. The scheduled appointment will mean me having to take time off from work. Every one of those appointments means going to collect my mother from her home, getting her in and out of the appointment, then getting her back home.

It’s a lot just in the steps...

Jailbreak

I need to get my mom to a doctor’s appointment next week, and I haven’t had her out by myself since June 14, so I’m a little nervous. I’m a lot nervous. She’s a lot of work. To practice, I am going to take her out to breakfast tomorrow. I’ve been planning this in my head for days.

If I want to get her to breakfast at her favorite place (Old West Cafe) before the rush, I need to get her there by 8AM. This means I will need to arrive at memory care by 7AM because I’ll need to be sure she is dre...

Geezer Love

When my parents split up, my mother fell to pieces. I spent literal years mopping up tears and offering sympathy, empathy, and listening to things no daughter should ever have to hear. She swore she would never love again. My father was the one and only, and if she couldn’t have him, she would have no one. No one! Augh! Dramatic flounce!

She would never love again, never trust again, never even look at another man–she swore it. And, for the better part of 27 years, she kept her word. Then,...

Prepared for Nothing

When I found out I was pregnant with Thor, I got right to work. I had daycare sorted out before my second sonogram. I had my ready-bag packed before I was showing. I knew where the best school districts were, and what it was going to take for us to be able to move into one by the time the Braxton Hicks started. After he was born, I gave myself 2 weeks, then I started practicing time management for how we were going to get up, get dressed and get me to work on time while he was eating, poopin...

Well, This is Alarming

November 9, 2017, my son was diagnosed with strep throat and I breathed a sigh of relief. Since finding my mother, dazed and confused, I’d been trying to talk her into going to the doctor, and she had kept refusing. Having had Thor coughing in her face for days, I finally had an excuse to drag her to the urgent care. She was not happy about it, but she agreed that if Thor had strep, he had probably given it to her.

The strep test came back negative, but after three different people (an RN, a...

Ducks, Depression, and Just Doing It

As I’ve said, I pretty much hijacked my mother’s life in 2017. Between the last of September and mid-October, with her active permission, I took over her finances, took over getting her moved into Independent Living, took over her healthcare, and started working on getting her house ready to sell.

It was a huge undertaking and I wasn’t sure where to start, or how I was going to get it all done. I guess my first lesson in caretaking was that prioritization is key. You have to have your ducks i...

We Don’t Hit

Dementia surprises me on the regular. I meet aspects of my mother’s personality that were previously hidden to me. We have conversations I don’t think we ever could have had before, but now, I’m having those conversations with someone who cannot understand what they do or mean to me.

The week we moved my mom into memory care, she had a really hard time. After helping her with a shower that she did not want, I started helping comb out her hair. She’s tender-headed and I was being as gentle and...

The Call Is Coming From Inside

Hindsight is 20/20. 

 

Looking back, my Mom was exhibiting behaviors symptomatic of dementia as many as five years before the day I found her wandering around her house in a state of pantsless confusion, and hijacked her out of the 3-bedroom house of my childhood and into an independent senior living community. 

 

My mom has always been a little…weird. Her behaviors have never followed any kind of norm, or been at all regimented. Her moods have always swung wildly between delight and despair....

My Mother’s Keeper

You’ll notice I haven’t posted here since September of 2017. I hadn’t even realized that until I came to make this post, which works out because the reason I stopped posting is also the reason I’m coming to post today: My mom.

On Facebook, I’ve been sharing a lot of the journey I’ve been on with her declining mental health over the past two years, but especially the past three months, and I’ve had so many people reach out I decided to share with a wider audience.

So, let’s start in September...

Falling off Bikes and DACA

Thor and I like riding our bikes. Last night, I skidded out on the downward slope of a gravel incline and went over my handlebars into a metal railing and tried to mop up all the rocks with my leg meat. As quickly as I could, I scrambled up and off the bike path, Thor hurrying to catch up and make sure I wasn’t too badly damaged. It was pretty grim.

I ended up looking like someone had taken a cheese grater to my legs, and forearms, and had to take off a sock to staunch the blood flow from the...