Wednesdays with Grannie: Field Trip!

Today I brought Grannie to her weekly hair appointment (more about that next week) at 2:30. We got done early and had time to kill before her doctor appointment. I asked her if she wanted to go anywhere and she couldn't really think of anything to do. Also, her little leggie was hurting so I didn't want to drag her out for no good reason. 

As we were driving in the direction-ish of her doctor we passed by my sister's school so I suggested we go and see if Leslie was around so Gram could see her classroom. She was VERY excited about that idea.

So after stalking my sister I finally found her and she let us in. 

Here is Gram checking out pictures of Leslie's students that she has in a school bus in the hallway. 

Here's Leslie giving Gram a tour of the room. Gram was very interested and couldn't stop looking around and asking questions. She was so cute! She said schools had changed a lot since she was a kid! Overall we stayed for about 15 minutes. It was the perfect stop before we headed on to our next appointment!

Wednesdays with Grannie: Puzzles!

My grannie LOVES puzzles. She is a master puzzler. Every since I can remember she's been known to have several puzzles up per year on a card table in her living room. Anyone can contribute to the puzzle you just sit on down and start looking. When I was little I loved to help her. Somewhere along the way I realized I thought puzzles were kind of boring and I didn't really enjoy them so much. But no matter how I feel about puzzles personally, there's always something nice about sitting down with Gram to work on a puzzle for a little while. She especially likes it when I cheer for myself about how awesome I am at finding pieces. Think full out Super Bowl touchdown victory dance. It cracks her up. For the rest of my life, whenever I see a puzzle, I'll think of my grannie.

Wednesdays with Grannie: Whoops!

There are a lot of sad things that happen when someone starts showing signs of Alzheimer's. But luckily, I'm going to spare you those details today. Sometimes you have to take sad things and make them funny. One day I had to take grannie to a doctor's appointment for something or the other. Being that we live in Indiana and it is winter I made sure she was bundled up like Nanook of the North and my car was heated up before I shuttled her out of the car to take off. I loaded her in, loaded in her walker and purse, climbed in and we took off. One thing I did NOT do before we left the house was look down. 

Whoops. We were already half way to the doctor before I noticed and not wanting to embarrass her I didn't mention it. We made it all the way home and had her settled in her chair before she noticed (it was about 4 pm). She was like "OH GOODNESS! Here I've been running around town with two different shoes on! How embarrassing!" I reassured her that I didn't notice so I'm sure no one else did. It was a little white lie. I didn't notice...at first. Luckily she thought it was the funniest thing ever so she pretty much told everyone who came over to visit that day about her little mix-up. Besides, she isn't the only person to do this. One year my aunt worked the night shift before Thanksgiving and showed up at Thanksgiving lunch with the family with 2 different shoes on and she was in her early 40's. After this incident with my grandma my sister said that one of her fellow teachers came to school with two different shoes on and she's in her 20's! So I told gram not to worry, it was just a funny story that gave us a good laugh. No harm no foul.

Wednesdays with Grannie

My grandma has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It wasn't really a shock because her mother had dementia and eventually Alzheimer's and for the past year or so my grannie's memory has been in the shitter. It started out with little forgetful things and has charged into repetitive stories and questions that loop over and over and over again. It's both annoying and sad and everyone seems to be dealing with it in different ways. I have a very high tolerance for annoyance so I can hang out with gram and hear the same 3 stories 187 times in a few hours and answer the same 5 questions every 10 minutes and not get too frustrated. Others can't but they do their best. 

In addition to her deteriorating mental state, her little body is getting worn out too. She's been having some back issues that have led to some walking issues and pain but overall she's still sputtering along with the help of a walker for balance. My aunt lives next door and shoulders most of the "burden" of helping care for her. When I got home from Nigeria I realized how much pressure she was under so I volunteered to help her out one day a week for a few hours. So every Wednesday I hang out with grannie from around 2 pm until about 8:30 pm. Sometimes she has doctor's appointments to go to or shopping to do, but most of the time we just hang out at her house and watch tv and chat. 

My family recently decided to talk to her about moving to assisted living. She's on a lot of different medications and with her memory problems they are worried about her overdosing or harming herself in other ways. While they figure all of these things out we continue with our weekly hangouts. I know that things could progress quickly so I wanted to take some time to blog about my gram so I'll have some happy memories to think about when things take a turn for the not so happy. 

I've been thinking about this for a while but just haven't gotten around to posting so I have a few posts in mind from the past few months which will hopefully carry me through even if I don't get any fresh ideas every week. But my gram is hilarious and chatty so I'm sure I won't have too many problems coming up with new material. Looking forward to next Wednesday!