Changes on the Horizon

Mom has been living with us almost for two weeks. It's been quite an adjustment for us all. She is still not independent mostly due to the fact that she doesn't know the area well enough to drive herself anywhere. Her hearing has been getting progressively worse over the past few years and she confuses easily. Even if she did have a good grasp of Los Gatos and the immediate vicinity, for the safety of herself and the general populace, I'm not sure if she should be driving anyways.

My days, since she arrived, have been filled with shuttling her to her doctor's appointments, running errands with her (they are countless), and trying to plan more structured meals than we are used to. J and I normally eat on the fly and dinner often occurs at 9 o'clock or even as late as 10. Sometimes we're so frazzled we skip dinner entirely, or we find a late night restaurant (rare in our area) and grab a midnight dinner. We are completely used to this sort of life, but my mom is not. She's used to enjoying her meals quite literally before the sun has set, and then she settles down for a night of television ("Jeopardy", some "Raymond" show, and "Wheel of Fortune"). Remember, she's 89, so this lifestyle suits her to a "t". But just the idea of the mundaneness of her routine makes me a bit queasy and I now am happy that we put her "TV room" in the furthest corner of the house as I'm not sure if I could bear to listed to the game shows in the evening when we're trying to wind down and relax.

Today we went to another of her myriad of doctor's appointments...today it was to get her hearing checked and to consult with a new ENT. Mom becomes nearly rabid whenever I question her hearing abilities but oddly she's fine if the doctor tells her that she can't hear well. On the way to Kaiser, I suggested that maybe she didn't hear her prior ENT's instructions and she literally had a tantrum. I kid you not. She clenched her fists, wrinkled up her forehead, all the while shaking and screaming at me. In that moment I wondered if this is how parents feel when their toddler drops to the floor and kicks and screams with abandon. I was taken aback at her reaction.

The new ENT (Dr. G) was wonderful, funny, and understanding and confirmed that her hearing ability is reduced across all frequencies and let us go. Upon returning home, however, she was greeted with some rather dismal news in the form of a letter from her new primary care doctor at Kaiser: apparently she's become diabetic. Her fasting glucose was obscenely high in her most recent blood test and while they're going to retest it, this means major changes in our household.

J and I are vege-fishe-ovo-lacto-tarians. J eats dairy, I don't (I'm allergic). I eat organic meat, J gripes about it, but sometimes eats it. We both do fish and eggs. A few items that we can agree on are things like pasta and rice dishes. But with the new of mom's newfound diabetes, meal planning is going to become a lot more challenging than it already is. So now we've got to cut high glycemic carbs out of her diet and because I essentially do ALL of the cooking, dinner time has just become that more complicated.

Mom will have to do one more test to completely confirm the diabetes, but if the test yields similar results, then major changes are in order. I only hope that we can manage this with changes in her life and that I won't be required to give her insulin shots each day.

However, she'll have to get her own needlebox...mine is nearly full.