As noted in a previous post, I’ve been pretty busy of late, though not with the things that I’d like to have been doing. For a start, pickings have been very thin in the casual teaching arena, but, on reflection, that’s probably a good thing.
For the last 20 years or so, my wife and I have cared for her mum and dad. First in a granny flat in Canberra, and here in Wollongong, in our own home. And, I guess we have always known that they were getting on in years and that ill-health would start to creep up on them.
However we didn’t expect (I suppose) that it would all happen at once. But that’s what has happened. My mother-in-law has had to have triple bypass surgery and a repair to a heart valve as well and is presently recouperating in a hospital in Sydney. However, her many other health problems combined with her advancing years has meant that recovery is very slow and accompanied by several worrying setbacks.
At the very same time, however, my father-in-law, a bright and highly intelligent man, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia which has seen him degenerate rapidly from a person who reads encyclopedias for fun to someone who can’t even remember how to make himself a cup of coffee.
You can imagine what a shock it has been to our family and how stressful this has been. While mum has been in hospital, dad has had to be put into respite care because we would have been unable to care for him at home.
So we are travelling back and forth to Sydney as work committments allow and visiting dad in the nursing home on the same basis.
The purpose of this post is not to elicit sympathy, nor to assume, in any way, that our situation is worse than a lot of other peoples’. It is simply to record the fact that, when one decides to take on care of one’s ageing parents, one has to assume that things like this are probably going to happen and one should be prepared.
So, we struggle on from day to day and hope that things will get better. I sincerely hope that they do.