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You Gave Me Permission

You Lifted Me Up

http://forhisgloryandpraise.wordpress.com/

Bonita nominated me for this wonderful award today. It is called, Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award. Is this not the cutest little picture on this award?

Thank you so much Bonita, for thinking of me when you were nominating awards.

Do you realize that I have now been blogging for nine weeks? I was so sad and down every day because it was just me and Al. God brought me to this site. I don’t know how he did it, but he knew that here, I would be able to have christian brothers and sisters. He knew that I would never walk this journey with my brother, Al, ever again. He made everything perfect for me. The perfect settings, the perfect friends, and the perfect support. I am so blessed. I don’t even want to use the word lucky, because luck has nothing to do with this. For anyone who thinks there is no God, all you have to do is look at me. Look at the situation of caring for a brother, and adult man, over six-foot tall, and over two hundred pounds. I have watched him stumble and fall, fall into a Christmas tree, fall into his closet doors, breaking the mirrors, falling into me, running into the furniture. I have watched him not be able to climb over the bath tub any longer. I have watched him not be able to dress himself, or get out of a chair. I have seen so many tears shed, tremors take over his entire body. All this I have done alone, until God sent me here. On top of all the wonderful people I have met, I am even blessed more with these wonderful awards. I still have trouble seeing the stories that you see when you read them. For me, it is struggles in my life, trying to survive, trying to keep Al out of a nursing home as long as I can. God bless you Bonita, for this award. God bless all of you for allowing me into your lives.

This doesn’t say that I have to tell anything of myself, I need  to nominate people who would love this as much as I do. How can I do this? I think everyone would love it! I will nominate a few now.

Lily- onemoremorning.wordpress.com

no matter what I say she has a kind word for me.

francineinretirement.wordpress.com

sweet as can be, a true friend and full of comfort to me

Diane-hometogo232.wordpress.com

I love reading her blogs. A true friend til the end!

Buck, my nickname, lol-buckwheatsrisk.wordpress.com

another wonderful person. check out this blog page!

Debbie-iftodaywehear.wordpress.com

I get to read this blog daily. Great reading for me.

Again, thanks to each and everyone for pulling me out of the dark hole!!

You Gave Me Permission

dreams and wishes. 62/365 (Photo credit: nicole.pierce.photography ♥)

You gave me  permission to cry, so I am doing it, just a tear or two but still a cry for me. I didn’t sleep that well last night, so when Al took his nap, I decided to take one also. I knew the caregiver would be here at five, so I had an  hour to nap. I didn’t fall asleep right away. I must have been too tired. I had not been able to talk to Al yet on the hopes of the chair, and I was thinking still about how he was so upset with me. Maybe now that I still haven’t done it, I should wait to see if he actually gets approved also by the neurologist on Friday. I must have finally slept, because I had this dream that Al was bending over me calling my name. I heard him call my name twice before I said, what do you want. He was crying and told me that no one cared about him anymore. That he must be doing something wrong to chase the caregivers away. I don’t know exactly what I had said, but I remember mumbling to him, to go back to his bed, the caregiver would be here at five. It wasn’t time yet. I rolled over on my side, and he sat on the couch beside me and cried. I sat up in my dream and was surely showing him my dissatisfied side. I was exhausted from constantly trying to assure Al that people loved him. That people didn’t make fun of his tremors, that they didn’t stare at him. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone. He got up and walked away, and I changed my dream from aggravated to something nice. I don’t know the time that went by but the dream came back. There he was standing over me again. I could feel his tears dripping on my face. I wiped them away, and tried so hard to have my peaceful dream, and much-needed nap. He said no more, but then I heard the front door open up. This scared me awake, and I noticed he was actually going outside. I wasn’t dreaming anymore, I was wide awake. I jumped off of the couch and went to the door to see what he was doing. He was going to get the daily newspaper. Geesh! Give me a heart attack! I watched him walk back in, and saw that his face was full of tears. He sat beside me on the couch and we just looked at each other without saying any words. His mind was wide awake, and mine wasn’t.  I looked away from him and looked at the clock. It was five thirty, No caregiver. I got my phone and called her number, and it was being forwarded to her message center. I hate that with a passion. If you are not going to show up, for heaven’s sake, give me a call. Don’t force me to call you and then you have no guts to answer the phone. I realized by looking at Al’s tears, comforting him that I would give him his shower, and no caregiver, this had not been a dream. I was back in the reality world, again.

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I Got The Look And I Didn’t Ask For It

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They Won’t Go!

Just To Say Thank You

http://forhisgloryandpraise.wordpress.com/

Bonita, at forhisgloryandpraise, nominated me for this beautiful award. I am not going to say anything else about me, only because I don’t know what else to add. I am going to nominate one person who is one of my newer followers and their blogs are very enjoyable to read.

http://chris9911.wordpress.com/

check it out and see what you think!

Thank you again Bonita!!!!

I Got The Look And I Didn’t Ask For It

When you think you are helping someone, you get the look! I called the Scooter Company, while my brother was eating his lunch. I wanted to see if there was any help for him to help him be able to go more places and keep some of his independence. I got the look. The shaking of the head back and forth in a no direction. Al hates being talked about. Only if it is something good or funny that he doesn’t mind. He got so angry with me because I was answering their questions. Actually, I have been afraid to see if we could get him a chair. The cost of them even with medicare, leaves us with a twenty percent out-of-pocket expense. He heard me telling the representative about his diagnosis, and his age, and birth date. He finished eating and went straight to his room shaking his head all the way. I tried to ignore him, as I knew this would better him. By the time I got off the phone, he was already fast asleep. I also worry, because I won’t be able to pick this new chair up, if he is approved. Medicare will pay for it, this is approved already, now it is  up to the doctor that we now go to see on this Friday. If he is willing to fill out the paper work. I think he will be, but you never know for sure until you hear the word yes. In order to be able to use this chair to take places I will have to do something about our car. I don’t know about a lift, and what it costs, or if it will even fit on our car. I guess I will pray about it and worry after I know if he gets the chair or not for sure. I had run Al and me to the store and bought a new stain for the rocker. It was a quick in and out of store thing, so Al didn’t have any problems with this today. Here is a picture of the finished rocker. It is outside drying, and soon they will be able to take it home and the little one will be able to rock all he wants. It makes me feel good when I can place smiles on others faces. It makes me also feel useful. I think this is why I have mainly been only a mom and a caregiver most of my life. I did have my antique business, but it was more seasonal. I would love to get back into this one day. It is nice and quiet in here with Al sleeping, so I think I will go out in the yard and water my flower bulbs. Out of twelve, four are now peeking out of the ground. Talk to you soon.

They Won’t Go!

Illustration of the Parkinson disease by Sir William Richard Gowers from A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System in 1886 showing the characteristic posture of PD patients (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It scares me when I hear Al speak of the things he would like to do this summer, as it is hard for me to push his wheelchair to outings, that contain a lot of walking. Last night, after a very quiet day, he let me know of a few places he would like to go. I don’t know how to fix this yet. I am going to be calling the scooter store after I write this and see if they can help us in any way. Yesterday, Al was in a quiet mood. Depression was here for him after lunch. It was like shutting off an alarm clock. He was talking and smiley in the morning, and after lunch, he turned from that into depression, and sometime later in the evening he came back to me. When he does this, he lies on his bed, and sleeps off and on. He always wants to read the daily newspaper, but even that didn’t perk him up yesterday. I spent my day stripping off two coats of paint from my family’s child’s rocker. I hate it when a prior company or person paints on raw wood. It slows down the process of removing the paint and causes a lot of extra sanding. I got that finished and let the chair rest in the sun, trying to bleach the wood out a bit for a more even look. In the early evening I put a finish on it, but with so much raw wood, the finish looked good at first, but after soaking into the wood, it looked terrible, so today I am going to go buy a darker stain to put over it and even it all out. When you are working with wood that is not old, companies tend to use cheap woods that are not from the same tree. They realize that they are going to be covering it with a baked on finish that will hide  the cheap mixture of woods, so I have to put a little more creative touch to it to help it look it’s best. Last night, family and I built another fire, and sat around and roasted some marshmallows. I always enjoy looking into the fire’s eyes. Flames bouncing off the wood, providing a romantic, if I was in that position, and a calming effect. Hearing the crackles and pops of the wood is something I truly enjoy. When we were all finished we all got up to part ways for the evening. Al got up and  could not move. I thought it was from sitting on the swing too long, but he kept standing there not moving, even after having adequate time to adjust to the standing position. After many seconds, his feet began to move, but not good. He started to fall forward, and I raced over to him. His body began to have major tremors as his mind tried so hard to get his legs to move. He was having THE FREEZE from his Parkinson’s. His legs didn’t go anywhere again then, and he once again started to fall forward, as if he felt as if he himself moved forward, the legs would follow. I asked my son to come grab him from the other arm so we could keep him balanced until he could move again. It took several moments, but finally they moved. Thank you God! He finally made it and we got him inside. Al was very upset with himself, getting angry at his legs for not listening. He kept saying to his legs, MOVE, MOVE YOU DUMB LEGS! This kind of crap that is from Parkinson’s just makes my blood boil! I also, want to scream at it, but I am forced to plaster a smile on my face, and be encouraging to Al, letting him know it is alright, that we will just take our time, until the legs move. I knew it didn’t help him, as he is not stupid, he knew that his legs weren’t moving, so what was I talking about. So this was our day yesterday. Hoping for a better day today.