Taking care of an Elderly Family Member

Grandma was born in 1923. They moved from Wisconsin here to Indiana and into this house when she was 3 years old. In 1947 she married my grandfather. She had two children a son (that passed away at age 16 of Hodgkin disease) and my mother. They moved back into this house when my mom was 6 years old.

We are not sure when grandma was diagnosed with Parkinson's but soon after she ended up breaking a hip and then both wrists. She was in the nursing home because of this and my grandfather couldn't take care of her. This is where I come in, I started taking care of grandpa first. After grandpa passed, grandma got out of the nursing home and I started taking care of her.

Grandma loved to sew and when she came home she did sew for a little while but I can't even thread the needle any more. She also loved doing crosswords and when she was in the nursing home she still was doing her crosswords but since she has been home she won't touch any crosswords.

In about march of this year I had to finally get the wheelchair out because she is having problems walking. You see grandma weights about 97 lbs and I weight just a little more so picking her up, and holding her up is really hard to do. So for the safety of us both I had to use the wheelchair to get her around.

Taking care of grandma every day can be hard and frustrating, I have found a routine is good to have. I started a routine hoping it would help grandma but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I get grandma up at 6:30am to give her her medicine. Then she goes back to bed
I get her up at 10am for breakfast. This seems the best or she wants to go to bed at 1pm.
at 2pm she gets lunch.
at 5pm she gets dinner. She sometimes says so doesn't want to eat but I tell her she has to eat something.
6:30pm I give her her medicine and then to bed. Not by my choice, I would like her to stay up later but that is as late as I can get her to stay up.

Grandma is getting worse. When picking her up she seems to bend her knees and bend at the waist. She seems to be in a constant sitting position which is hurting my back.

I have to becareful what she watches on tv also. She watches "Rachel Ray" and Rachel was making something and grandma asked if it was done yet. I told her it was the tv and that we didn't have any. Sometimes she realizes it's the tv by my confused look and says "oh it's the tv right?" and I say yes.

For the last 6 1/2 years I have given grandma a choice on what she wants to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, starting the November 8th I will be feeding her the same meal that I eat at dinner time. She will still have a choice for breakfast and lunch for now.

Why have I done this? Because for dinner she eats pre made frozen meals and I think she needs to eat healther. Hopefully she will eat what I make. I am trying to make sure that she likes the kind of foods I plan on making.

Feeding grandma is hard to do anyway, most of the time she doesn't want to eat, and when she does she barely eats anything. She says a small frozen dinner is to much for her.

I am hoping with the home cooked meals she will eat more than she does now.

Will keep you updated on how this goes.

Today I made Spanish rice with chicken casserole. Being that grandma has always been the cook in the family, I was really worried about how to was going to feel about my cooking.

She liked it. She said, " It was very good." I'm so happy. It means a lot to me to hear that from her. Tomorrow is Broccoli and Chicken fettuccine.

Not only did grandma like what I cooked but she ate all of it and still had some ice cream for desert and she was looking a lot better too. Glad to get rid of the processed food out of her diet.