A week without TYG

Honest to gosh, I hadn’t expected or planned to be away with Mum (and offline) so long.
My original plan to go up last Tuesday through Friday transitioned into a Tuesday-Tuesday trip when it became obvious Mum’s partner wasn’t up to taking her to the neurologist Monday. I wasn’t sure she’d be comfortable going with the 24/7 nursing aides so I extended my stay to take her along. I’m glad I did, but I hated, hated, hated being away from TYG for almost eight days. I’m not sure I’d have done it but my sister put me up in a hotel over the weekend, so that gave me a mini-break (I spent it mostly working on eHows and running Mum to Target). Unfortunately the WiFi was unsecured so I didn’t want to use any more passworded sites than necessary (I can’t think of anything someone could gain by hacking into my blog, but still). And mother’s computer and Internet is … substandard.
The good news: Mum is doing much better. She’s much more herself than the last time I visited, though still very disorganized. I think that’s more age-related than anything particular to her, but it remains a problem: I had to take her and the aides on a lot of trips because she didn’t have any cash or current credit cards to pay a taxi (I hadn’t thought I’d be driving, so I didn’t rent a car. The taxi company loves me).
One slight drawback is that as she’s able to do more herself, I let her and, like many older people … she’s slow about getting stuff done. I have to make an effort sometime not to just take over and do it for her, which I don’t think is a good approach. But that is a very minor drawback.
The downside is that her cognitive problems could recur (though she would recover over time). But for the moment, our goal is a level of assisted living where they can help if she has problem, but she doesn’t have people actually in the apartment 24/7 most of the time. This seems like the optimum and it’s more compatible for her (having the aides there constantly—a requirement the home has imposed—is driving her nuts, even though they’re very good).
Mum and Partner would prefer to stay where they are, but the drawbacks are that with Mum’s 24/7, it’s insanely expensive; without 24/7, the home doesn’t have any solution for problems other than sending Mum to hospital (that’s not a criticism: They’re just operating at a lower level of care than she’s come to need); and as long as they’re there, it’s difficult/impractical for me to help if there’s a crisis. I am working on finding more ways to help from here, because I’m not willing to keep going up on a regular basis, and it’s all too easy to wind up doing more and more without stopping (some discussion of this will follow in the next post). Still, as long as she can afford to stay, she’s certainly free to make that decision.
A further complication is that Mum and Partner still hope to go to Portland if they move, where Partner’s daughter lives. Daughter (as I’ve mentioned) doesn’t feel up to coping with both of them. Which doesn’t prevent them moving, and 90-85 percent of the time they’d be better off together … but what about the 5 percent of the time Mum needs hands-on support? I guarantee you, popping out to Portland isn’t going to happen very often.
To further complicate, Partner has short-term memory issues and keeps forgetting what her daughter told her. So when they talk about Portland I’m not sure it’s a considered, well-thought-out decision, or just confusion.
So we’re not sure where Mum’s going, or when. Stay tuned for further developments.