Two Years in Edgewater

It is hard to believe that nearly two years have passed since Debbie moved to Edgewater. I have become very comfortable with the ebb and flow of life there. Edgewater is in my backyard just a block away and I can see a glimpse of it from my back deck. The facility is about 18 years old and some major remodeling is in progress. A water fountain feature and an endless path of overlapping figure eights with nice landscaping was added. It is very nice and it was built with donated funds.

As I look back over the last few months it is easy to notice Debbie’s continued cognitive decline. But at the same time the tragedy of her cognitive decline is offset by her being calmer and I dare say happier than she was even six months ago. Perhaps it's because she understands less about what she's lost or maybe we are doing a better job of taking care of her needs. Regardless, I'm grateful for her current happiness. At this stage, peace and comfort feel like victories.

One unexpected source of comfort has entered Debbie’s life. She has “adopted” a baby doll who we call “Baby.” She treats it like a living baby, talks to it a lot and apparently it is talking back to her because she holds conversations with the doll and it makes her very happy.

Debbie has been sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day which is not uncommon for a resident in memory care. The problem was Debbie often slept those hours consecutively and that was causing her some issues with incontinence and preventing her from taking her medicines at a regular time. I contracted for additional help for Debbie to come four hours a day from 10 am to 2 pm. This person helps Debbie to get up in the morning, take a shower, get dressed, take her medicines, and eat lunch at an appropriate time. I am certain that we are doing the best we can for Debbie, that she is living her best life, and everything else is up to God.

Even amid the challenges, life continues to move forward around us. I still find work at the Iowa FAIR Plan both enjoyable and rewarding. I am looking forward to the birth of my first great grandchild in June. My granddaughter Allison graduated from the University of Nebraska and has been accepted into medical school at Des Moines University. So, she will be in Des Moines for at least the next three years!

I've made two trips to Kearney, Nebraska to see family over the last three months. When I return from my trips and walk in the house it now feels like home. I greatly appreciate that feeling. I am still meticulous about keeping the house clean and tidy, e.g., when I return from a trip everything is unpacked and put away while the washing machine is going strong. Within a couple of hours, you would not know that I had ever left home. I must need that type of orderliness. It gives me comfort, and on reflection perhaps that is because so many other things in my life are out of my direct control.

As I get older, perhaps even wiser, I refrain from giving unsolicited advice and often defer when asked for advice because it is so often ignored. But I am going to break my rule and reiterate the advice given in a previous blog. One lesson this journey has reinforced for me is the importance of having affairs in order before a crisis arrives. Everybody reading this should have a living trust and/or a will with appropriate powers of attorney documents for healthcare and for financial issues along with a living will in place today. If you do not have that in place right now or it hasn't been reviewed for years, take care of that today!

Onward and Upward! Bob

Conroyisms – Part 3

Some just have to be told.

Here are my current offerings in a continuing effort to come up with an original thought that might be quotable hundreds of years in the future: 

• The hardest thing to endure is an obvious truth that others have decided to ignore.

•  Beyond “Fight or Flight”, when faced with more options, a person tends to freeze.

• Dust and smoke in the atmosphere create beautiful sunsets and then attack your lungs while you sleep.

• A well-timed kind word is a precious gift.

• Just when you have things figured out, it doesn’t matter.

• Time spent with grandchildren is the big payoff.

• In a rational world, the self-treatment of depression and anxiety by abusing drugs would only appear in fiction novels and the movies.

• We build truths out of the bones of those that defy conventional wisdom.

• Suicide is the ultimate method of reducing one’s carbon footprint, anything short of that is some degree of grandstanding or self-delusion.

• Ignorance can be replaced with knowledge and eventually, knowledge can become wisdom.

• I offset my carbon footprint by not attending professional sporting events.

Ramblin’ Man

No theme to this post, just a bit of stream of consciousness that has been carefully edited to protect the guilty.

She did it… Our big news since my last post is that Debbie retired from her corporate job and is now working full-time at our agency!   Her last few months were hectic as she valiantly tried to transfer years of experience, judgment and wisdom unto half a dozen people, all of whom already had full plates.  Such is the state of the corporate world these days.  Being able to “retire” (defined here as getting retirement benefits) on her 55th birthday was a great reward for her years of planning, budgeting and faithful adherence to our long term goals.  She has jumped into our new agency and is already running quotes, learning our agency management system (AMS 360), and decompressing from the corporate “bends”.

Legos and Waffles… We had a great, albeit hectic, week with the grandkids.  It was the same week Debbie retired and started working in the agency.  There were a lot of “have to’s” and the kids were troopers when required.  Such a delight they are in our lives.

Two years = a lifetime… At least it does to Garmin.  I bought a lifetime subscription for traffic and news on a Garmin GPS a few years ago.   They have discontinued the service and told me that since I had over two years of service they owed me nothing.  I owe them nothing except to tell others the truth about how little they value their customers.