Hi, everybody (assuming anyone is still out there)...
NOTE: This isn't going to be a terribly happy post, and it's only adoption-related in terms of us being an adoptive family.
First and foremost, the Pipsqueak's okay, doing well (she finished 6th grade with straight A's, a feat hitherto unknown to my immediate family), and the subject of several updates I'll post over the next few weeks (at least two of which already exist as long-dormant Blogger drafts).
For a long time, I've been referring to problems or issues or complications or other euphemisms when trying to explain why my posting has slowed to a new level of crawl, and have repeatedly promised to explain more fully at some point in the future. I even have a half-complete draft of that particular post in my account in which I try (with little actual success) to wax poetic and describe things eloquently...
...but the truth is that I just don't have the energy (or all the time) to write that way right now, so I'll keep it short.
Life around here for Miriam -- yes, that's the Pipsqueak's full first name -- and the rest of us has been complicated beyond the bounds of our imaginations by the fact that Dad is suffering from dementia. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease almost three years ago, although we'd begun to see signs as much as two years prior to that. Since then, AJ and I have come to suspect we're dealing with a different form of the disease, but the bottom line is that Dad is suffering from advanced dementia.
I've seen a lot of diseases, especially with my starting out originally as a pre-med student in college and then working in a nursing home for more than a decade, and I have many impolite, colorful, and/or negative adjectives for them... but there's only one I refer to as an actual obscenity: dementia. (Alzheimer's is the most widely known, but is just one of many varieties that differ in detail but follow extremely similar paths.) It slowly, inexorably and unavoidably destroys an individual while their body remains mostly intact and functional, all while that individual's friends & loved ones watch, absolutely helpless to do anything but maybe -- just maybe -- slow its progress in the earliest stages until Death steps in to end the torture.
I still have online privacy concerns so I'm not going to go into much detail right now other than to say that the situation sucks. It is emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially debilitating in ways I only thought I knew back in my nursing home days.
You may have heard the term "my better half" when someone a little older was referring to their spouse, but in my parents' case it's a literal description of their relationship; they've known each other as friends for over 70 years, and this past April was their 67th wedding anniversary. There are no words that can convey the pain the situation is causing for Mom, who has taken on the role of primary caregiver. We have some help for a few hours each day but the exorbitant cost of certified help more than a few hours on weekdays (and a family friend who happens to be a certified GNA willing to cover nights an extremely reduced rate) means Mom has to shoulder the vast majority of the associated work herself. (For reference, the weekly base salary of a member of Congress is roughly $1,200 less than the weekly cost of three full standard shifts of in-home care... and anywhere from $500 to $2,000 less than a full week in most memory care facilities.)
I'm not going to waste much time talking about the effect it's having on my life other than to say I basically visit my own house for a few hours on most days so I can lend a hand to Mom. AJ's job is already a soul-sucking exercise in exhaustion, but now she has to come home every day to stories of what went wrong this time, or "what did he do now," or the tale of the latest billing/insurance/health coverage SNAFU, all while trying to be a loving, caring single mother and stepping in to help as best she can with her expertise and her list of contacts.
Much worse is watching the effect this is having on Miriam who is -- to use her own words -- watching Grandpa melt away in front of our eyes. She's a very mature 12-year-old with an old soul, about to start 7th grade (a milestone I have to admit is sort of freaking me out), but when she talks about the situation she can't help but swing back & forth between rage over her powerlessness to help and deep sorrow over the slow, painful fading of the loving grandfather who taught her to love history and to always look up at the moon. She holds them back well, but tears are a lot more common than any of us like.
So... I'll ask y'all to excuse my long absences and the gaps between posts. Most of the time I have to scrape minutes from the day just to do laundry, clean the dishes out of the sink, or do the bare minimum I must do in response to nastygrams from my neighborhood HOA; finding time to type something even vaguely coherent here is a rare luxury... and to be totally honest, on most of the too-rare occasions when I do have the time, the physical and emotional exhaustion just makes it too difficult to even bother trying.
So... yeah, I'm still here, and I still have some thoughts & stories to share (all with my niece's permission, for those of you wondering). They're just gonna come a bit far between for a while.
Thanks for understanding, and please stay healthy out there.
