Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Routines


I recycle the Lipton Diet Green Tea bottles. I am using half Ocean Spray diet cranberry juice and half tea. Cranberry juice helps prevent UTIs. My husband loves this drink and I tell him that along with regular showers (two minimum per week) and cranberry juice helps.

Before he got over this UTI infection, I thought that both shaving and showering would be a problem. I bought a $4 estate sale shower chair shown at the right. I put it in the shower, but hubby wanted nothing to do with something that makes him feel old and he really has bounced back and gotten his strength back.

In fact, I can't tell that this UTI infection made him go into a further stage of Alzheimer's. He is the same fun self and I love spending time with him. He likes to go on errands with me. He lives in the now like I should. Buying that shower chair was premature.

What is not premature, is working on good routines. Even though there is a check list on his clipboard, he doesn't always abide by it. I read we caregivers need to reinforce good routines early on and we will be thankful we did later on. I am continuiing to enforce shaving every other day and regular showers. The routine of taking pills is not easy. He doesn't like to take them. Thankfully I have neighbor Kenny to get him to take his pills when I leave the house in the morning. Sunday night I went to bed, before I saw him take his pills, and I found them in a napkin Monday morning.

I have been so impressed with how Davina is taking care of her mother-in-law. I asked her about showering and she gave me these pictures of the shower put into the mother-in-law's house with a seat and grab bars.
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In addition to grab bars, they have the portable shower head.

Caring.com here and Carole Larkin here on the Alzheimer's Reading Room offer tips on bathing and showering our loved ones with Alzheimer's. So far hubby is able to do all of this for himself. He doesn't want anything that looks like this product either.



So for the time being, shaving and showering is not the problem I thought it would be while DH was recovering from the UTI and he seems like his old self, still fiesty about taking pills, but seemingly in the same state of normal as before his hospitalizations and infection. He just asked me, when are we going to bed? I told him when he took his pills, and he took his pills!, although earlier in the evening he had complained about those pills.

Thank you, LORD! Help me to navigate
this caregiving with insight.

5 comments:

  1. So glad he came through the UTI with no lasting effects! You are amazing and inspiring, as always. :)

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  2. It's so good to hear that life is a little better for now. Your doing such a good job of being a loving caregiver.
    Hugs and prayers,theiviemind

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  3. Tell him the shower seat is for you. So you can wash your feet. But, he can use it too if he wants.

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  4. I LOVE what Mariarose suggested...I think she's a pro.

    Sorry to hear about the UTI! Poor guy - I hate those.

    You are doing a great job. Every day. Even when you don't think you are. Just so you know.

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  5. Today was one of three times this week hubby didn't take his pills. It's not that he wasn't reminded. Kenny reminded him. Sally reminded him when she and Jake came by, and I called him at noon when I received Kenny's text that he hadn't taken his morning pills and of course reminded him. Scolding doesn't work, but he was having a bad day according to Kenny.

    Meanwhile I was having a rare bad day substituting in a hard school; two out of seven classes were disrespectful and one girl even wrote swear words in permanent ink about me on the desk.

    Sally was having a hard time with their new dog.

    I have to have a scan of my thyroid after an ultra sound revealed a nodule.

    Appreciate those of you who pray.

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