I am a nerd. I love school. I love reading my assignments. I love learning. I love doing my tests. I was so excited when I first read the class syllabus and saw that we got to write a paper for our Mid-Term. I prefer writing a paper to doing just about anything.
However, I just turned in 5 pages of crap. I am so worn down and exhausted from this past month. My grandmother was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and naturally, all the work with getting her back and forth to doctor's appointments, securing a place in an Alzheimer's unit at an assisted living facility, lining up people to help sit with her and make sure she stays on track until she gets moved...all those things fall to my mom, who is dealing with health issues of her own, which means that the overflow falls to me. I work full-time and since my employers can't dig their heads out of their asses, I am working both 1st and 3rd shifts every week. I don't know when I am supposed to be sleeping, which leads to super fun migraines which take the life out of me, not that I have much left. Plus, it's mid-term week for all my classes and I am blowing them all. This all in addition to the fact that I live an hour and a half away from my mom and grandmother.
What makes this topic so frustrating to me is not that I have to help my mom help her mom, but that it is already falling to me to do so because my mother's siblings won't step up and help my mom. Her two older brothers are both of the mind that she just needs to go into a nursing home, because really they just don't want to deal with her. My mom's oldest brother asked her why she keeps taking my grandma to the doctor and getting new meds and having more tests run when "her life is already over?" SHE'S 69!!! And he has just given up because things finally got a little tough. And my mom's other 3 siblings just listen to him because he's the oldest and he's a man! My heart grieves for my poor grandma because my uncle is easily her favorite child and she doesn't understand why he doesn't come around anymore. I am not upset at the sacrifices that I have had to make to help my mom and my grandma because they both love me and took care of me my entire life, but I am furious at the injustice of my aunts and uncles throwing away their mother because her care is finally going to cost them more than a card on her birthday and a cheaply chosen gift at Christmas.
And to be honest, the selfish part of me wonders why I have to go through this now when I know that I will have to go through it with my own mother in another 25-30 years. Isn't it enough to have to watch one person you love deteriorate in a lifetime? If Alzheimer's is indeed hereditary and my mom ends up with it...
Sorry for a rant that has nothing to do with anything. Basically, I am going for broke with my final assignment for Mid-Term week. I just don't have anything left in me.
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