by Sheroe

Created on: June 14, 2008

A Rough Start: What Next?
Maybe I Shouldn't Tempt The Fates By Asking

"GOD DAMN IT! Don't ask me again! That's the FIFTH time you've asked me and I don't want to talk about it anymore!"

I hear my father shouting at my mother as I walk carefully down the worn steps leading away from my upstairs bedroom.

"Oh no! It's only 7:51 a.m. and she's up?" I think.

The first five weeks after I moved home to care for my parents, I had to wake my mother from a sound sleep every morning at 9:00 a.m. The time change occurred last Saturday and I thought she would transition well to it, sleeping an extra hour each morning. But this past week, she has woke up earlier and earlier each day. I can't seem to get up before her, even when I set my clock.

"I just want to know why I can't have ANY COFFEE!" my mother snaps back at my father. She is diabetic and has not had her fasting blood sugar test yet. My father is denying her coffee until I get up and test her.

I step on the carpeted floor of the hallway, walk quickly down its two bedroom length and turn the corner into the living room.

My mother is leaning forward on her green velour lounge rocker, with a frustrated look on her face. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's three years ago and cannot form new memories easily. Lately, she seems to fixate on one question or comment and repeat it throughout the day.

She is dressed in the black pull-on pants and printed blouse that I laid out in the bathroom last night. I discovered that if I leave a pair of protective underwear on the shower seat, in front of the toilet, she will put them on if she wakes in the middle of the night and finds herself wet. I applied that idea to her clothing and started putting the next day's clothes in the bathroom closet at night. She has found them on the mornings she gets up early and has dressed herself.

My father is leaned back on the new, tan couch. He is visibly upset and angry. Earlier this year, after his second bout of chemo for lung cancer was finished, he began to hallucinate. The doctors did tests and told my father that the cancer had spread to his brain stem. The hallucinations have been brought under control with Thorazine, even as the inoperable cancer grows. Last Friday, he began to hallucinate again. I have added another Thorazine to his bedtime dose and the increased dosage has made the little girls in white, who poke needles in his eyes, disappear.

I stand in between the green rocker and the tan couch. "DAD, YOU CAN WAKE ME UP WHEN SHE GETS

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