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Saturday, July 14, 2012

Status Quo for the most part......

DH continues to function much better since a) I took over the setting up and ordering of his meds and b) since he stopped working.  I have struggled lately with trying to come up with something new to write about--there doesn't seem to be much new in my life!

My mom is still declining in her Alzheimer's.  She now has difficulty processing what she hears.  I think she hears fine, but that her brain can no longer make sense of what people say.  So she spends a lot of time saying "what?" and a lot more of her comments and sentences make no sense.  But most of the time she can still say "I love you", and most of the time she is still happy to know that "Donna Mae" came to see her :-)

My aunt Judy, who, as I wrote around Christmastime, is suffering from lung cancer, despite having quit smoking in 1987, is still "with us".  However, sad to report that the whole-brain radiation that she received in order to shrink the brain tumors, has caused her to fall into dementia.  She is now "living" in a hospice center, and they have stopped all treatment.  She is pretty much where my mom is cognitively now.  But physically still in relatively good shape--it appears the treatments have really done a number on the cancer.....at this point it is unknown whether she will actually die from the cancer, or if the dementia will get her first.  But say a prayer for her family, if you are the praying type....my uncle Neil, her husband, just found out two nights ago that he has multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood plasma.  I guess the median survival rate is about 5 years, so it's not "as bad" as lung cancer, but jeez, when it rains, it sure pours!

I came very close this week to giving up on trying to get all this stuff paid off, and I called a bankruptcy attorney to ask some questions.  But she had to call me back, and in that time I realized that I just cannot do that.  I just have to concentrate on keeping the spending low and maybe sell some stuff to get the debt down to a manageable level....after I realized that there was no way I was ready to give up and file bankruptcy, I felt a renewed resolve and a huge amount of confidence--so I guess it was a breakthrough moment for me....I'll keep you posted on that...

Anyhow, since there really hasn't been much going on at our house, you'll probably see more posts that don't have much to do with bipolar.  I hope you don't mind!