WEBVTT

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[music]

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It was necessary to put
Betty in a nursing home.

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Uh… It was a devastating day in my life as well as
the life of our children uh… when that happened.

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There are some things that
happened along the way that

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I feel like we could\'ve been more up front about.
Uh… When my mother was placed in a nursing home,

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uh… we came into your office,

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a few days before as a family
consultation as part of her

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uh… being involved in the
testing program at Rush

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and the idea was brought up of mom going into a nursing
home and we talked about it, we round about it as to

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is it the right time, is it the wrong time,
is it\'s something that\'ll happen eventually

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and feeling was I thought coming out of the room
that it is something that\'s gonna have to happen,

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but we weren\'t necessarily umm… in
agreement that now was the time.

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Well, I found out a day or so later

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that the plans were already in place or
the… the original calls are already made

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for her to be placed into a
nursing home that following week

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and that\'s a little uh…
a little bit of a joke

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to… to… to find that out and to
know that what was going on there

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was really trying to set the
stage for us to be convinced

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and then a solution would be there for us.
This seems to have uncovered

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a great communication
problem in our family,

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umm… so that\'s been difficult because you
don\'t always know where things stand

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and you may or may not hear

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what\'s going on and you may hear it
differently than it\'s really happening.

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Maybe it\'s to protect us or to try to keep us
from having to deal with some of the issues,

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but in many ways it just…

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you can\'t… you can\'t be protected from the
impact that that decisions gonna have

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and… and it can only lead to other issues

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if we… if it\'s not all up front.
I really felt like

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we\'d gotten to the point where I was stressed
as far as I… I could go. I was ready to snap.

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Uh… But when it came time for the nursing home,
actually it all evolved around one night

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when… Well, for several months it was a
fight. I\'d have to dress her and undress her,

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and it was a point where she didn\'t want a man touching
her. I was no longer her husband, I was a man,

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and she didn\'t want a man to touch her. And
so I would have to get her in the shower.

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The time came when she didn\'t want a
shower. Finally, the day came one night

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when she wouldn\'t take her medicine.
I asked Joy our youngest daughter,

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if she would give it to her and Joy
came down and to give it to her

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and she smacked Joy and through the glass of water on
her and Joy came running up the stairs just crushed,

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broken hearted and she said, \'Dad I think
it\'s time for her to go to the nursing home.\'

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And so I went down stairs

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and said, \'Honey, this medicine is for you. It\'s to
help you, you know, we love you and care for you.\'

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And just out of the blue
she went (inaudible).

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And she just smacked me upside of the head and
jerked my head around, and just spontaneously

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I just pushed her on the bed and she
just kinda curl up in a little ball

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and started to whimper. And I saw that,

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it broke my heart because I realized
I was capable of hurting her.

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I never in a million years I\'d
never hit her in our married life.

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We have been married 38 years
in August and I never hit her.

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Never even I had a desire to hit her.
But in that flash of a second

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I was ready to do some real damage to
her and I just pushed her on that bed

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and then I realized, \'God, I\'ve
gone to the breaking point, \'

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and I felt like the kids didn\'t understand. I think
Joy knew the most because her bedroom was above

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and she would hear the yelling and
screaming. Kathy wasn\'t always there,

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but Joy was there most of the time.
And so she saw that

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and the other kids were away from home and when they did
come home, it was a happy time, you know, we made sure

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that it was party time when they came
home, but that was the breaking point.

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And when she zapped me and I just
unconsciously shoved her down on the bed,

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I was so grateful that there
was a bed there, not the floor

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that she landed on, but I realized I
had… I was at the breaking point.

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It irritates me every time I hear this story and I
wanna think about the things that we didn\'t do.

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Umm… We had made…

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dad had made some efforts to
get in-home care. Umm… However

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that had ended with the next door neighbor

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who was kind of a flighty lady

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umm… who had some… seem to have some
of our own issues. Umm… And, you know,

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that\'s an expensive thing to sort out getting
somebody to be able to spend time at your house,

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but I think that\'s an avenue we didn\'t
explore far enough… Professionally.

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And then right beyond a neighbor or a
friend from church or friend from someplace

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umm… I think we\'ve missed some avenues there that
we could have taken. It\'s a time of great confusion

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for everybody because not everybody\'s on the same
page and there\'s always a question of timing,

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this is the right time and
obviously there were differences

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about timing and process. Right.

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Umm… Obviously the nursing home decision
was painful for everybody here.

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I\'m wondering is that something that has
been smoothed over through the years

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or do you think there are
still some remaining issues.

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Like I\'ve explained, we… we kind of felt like it was
sprung on us, but as I… I didn\'t live at home at the time.

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I didn\'t know what day-today life was like
and as I learned more from our sister Joy

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or… or as I learned more from him, there was a
point in time in the past where I realized,

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you know, what as much as I didn\'t like how it was done,
I really personally felt like it was the right time

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with as bad as… as I was getting the picture
of what type… what life was like at the house,

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it was the right time for it to occur, and
the means may not have been the best,

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but… but we all make
mistakes and umm… you know,

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in hindsight maybe dad would have done things
differently, but I felt it was the right time.

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Really if we had had more time, you
know, (inaudible) at that point was

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maybe 10, 11, 10 months, you know,
only pregnant for 9 months…

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Oh, my God! You know, it\'s the 10th month, so she was like in
October so she was eight months, seven, eight months pregnant,

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umm… we had no time to turn around

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finding a house that would allow us to

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let my mom move in with us and
maybe Kathy move in with us,

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uh… but if we could… if we\'d had the time I
was very serious about pursuing the option

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of finding a spot that would be big
enough for Kathy and my mom to move in.

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At that point, we were in a two-bedroom
house that had two bedrooms, a kitchen

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and the living room, and that was it. And… and
there just was nothing… nothing we could do.

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We were hamstrung at that point.
I… I think that a couple things

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umm… I wish that the communication
could have been better

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that we could have understood that he was at
the breaking point before it was too late

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for us to be involved in helping

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more than our presence with physically taking care
of mom, but in terms of doing something like this,

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where we can, you know, where we
could have pursued a… an in-home,

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you know, nursing care kind of… a kind of a situation.
I understand that dad could not go any longer

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and… and I think we said that when we met with
you, we understood and he couldn\'t go any longer,

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but we felt like the choice
for us to be involved in

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maybe us going a little longer,
was no longer there for us either

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because the decision was made and it was gonna
happen and we weren\'t in a position to do anything

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umm… differently, and I don\'t know if
that\'s fair… I don\'t know if that\'s fair,

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I don\'t know if anything this is fair, but I know
that\'s fair because ultimately mom is dad\'s wife

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and… and… and ultimately, you
know, for better or for worse,

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you know, you get in an point where you have to
make that decision, but we really had hoped that

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we could have been more involved
and the timing could have been…

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could have been different. I had tried to communicate
to you guys that I was getting at the edge of my rope,

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but you all have busy lifestyles, you know,

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and there just wasn\'t time. It was hard
for you guys to get up to Crystal Lake

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and I\'ve never questioned for a
moment the… the love in our house,

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I think we all love each other, we all get frustrated with
each other sometimes because of the expectations that are met

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by any of us at any given moment,

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but I just knew there was no way you could take care
of her because we had tried to take care of her mother

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when we were first married. And I knew what a strain
it put on us and especially with kids in the house.

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I was not gonna lay that kind of stress on you guys.
I\'ll accept that. But that\'s… that\'s the little problem

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though with this we talked about communication being an
issue. Right… right. Uh… We can\'t know what he\'s feeling

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and we can\'t know what… and we
can\'t make decision for him

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likewise that\'s a two-way street.
I think we all come at it with

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our own expectations and our own
convictions about how things should happen

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and when we don\'t share the
same convictions, who\'s right,

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nobody? And nobody is wrong
and so… so sometimes

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a particular person is not able to live out
their conviction because everybody else

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isn\'t on the same page with them. It\'s just hard and…
and each person has to set up their own criteria,

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their own boundaries for
what are they committed to.

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And add into that the opinions of spouses
and… and what… what they have in mind

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for how that\'s gonna be and…
and just like Lisa said,

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it… it\'s just a matter of what it has
come down to a lot of times is saying,

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\'Well, this… this is the way I\'m comfortable with
it being and… and this is what I think I can do, \'

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and hopefully that\'s okay and if it\'s not, you
know, there\'s not much else I can do about it,

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but this is the way that I need to live my life and,
you know, there\'s so many different ways to look at

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it that you could look back and say, \'Well,
would mom want me to do it this way, \'

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and… and everybody can (inaudible) their
own perception of… of what mom would want.

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There\'s no question in my mind that
we all love each other very much

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and we are a family and we\'re not
gonna be broken up over this,

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having said that there had been a
lot of hurt feelings at times,

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there\'s been great mounds of
frustration at times, you know,

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but there have also been happy times, and fun times and good
times, you know. I remember one of the original things that…

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that I was read about Alzheimer\'s was umm…
that the second victim is the family,

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you know, the first is… is mom and the second
is the rest of us and I think a lot of us

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changed our thinking to being obviously keeping mom
at the forefront, but what can we do to help dad

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and I hope that that\'s
come through in some ways.