My mother comes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where I'm making her breakfast. I look up to see that her hearing aids are in the wrong ears, sticking out like the bolts on Frankenstein's monster. I sigh. This again.

"Mom, your hearing aids are in the wrong ears," I tell her calmly. The Alzheimer's makes it difficult to explain things to her. It's not so much the confusion, but the hostility that goes with it. "You need to switch them around."

"No they're not," she insists.

The hearing aids have color-coded lettering on the inside of them to help her remember which one goes in which ear. She still forgets, though, and gets embarrassed by her poor memory. I have to tread carefully but I'm not the most patient person in the world. Events like this leave me worn out emotionally. I know this isn't my mother, but what can I do?

"Mom? Which is your right hand?" I ask her. She promptly holds up her left hand. I sigh again. The toast is done. "No mom. Try again." It's important that she be allowed to do things on her own. She holds up the left hand stubbornly. I can see a small pout begin to cross her features. I try a different tactic. "Mom? Which hand do you write with?" She holds up the other hand. "You're right handed mom." She looks at the betraying hand in bewilderment. I butter the toast and direct her to the kitchen table. "Go take out your hearing aids and put them in the other ears." She begins to do this while I finish breakfast.
I watch my dad begin to get the morning medications ready. His mind is fine; it's everything else that's the problem. Mostly it's his heart and diabetes. They're both diabetics and the medicine parade is something else. I'd long since given up on bottles of pills and directed the pharmacy to make up "bubble packs", packs where the medications that are taken at a given time are already sorted out into various bubbles. It's one less worry for me. Only my mother is on insulin and that is the only medication I really have to monitor.

It's all a balancing act, really; trying to allow them to maintain as much independence as possible while still functioning as their caregiver. They monitor their own sugar levels and give themselves their medications and yet I'm always there, hovering in the background waiting for something to go wrong. It feels a little ghoulish at times.

I watch my father out of the corner of my eye. I have to be aware of what's happening with him. He has congenital heart failure, a problem

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