When Caregiver's Don't Care - How My Knee Replacement Effected the Care of My Disabled Daughter

We are almost 2 weeks past my surgery and already I can see that what I thought might be a story, isn't really much of a story at all. Because I was the primary caregiver for our daughter, and because her disability requires so much staying on routine, I thought caregiver changes from myself to Denise would be much more stressful for us all.  Generally, at least for Anna, that has not happened. In fact the opposite is what happened. Anna's transition to sleep at night, some of her behaviors, basically many of the things that were problems in the past have not totally blown up and totally disrupted our home like I thought would happen.  Things are not perfect but things haven't got to hell either. Granted Denise's life has gotten a little more hectic, but Anna has for the most part been just fine. I don't know what else to write about. 

Time for an update, I'm just doing this as I can. As far as Anna and Denise are concerned I believe things have gone much better than I had originally thought they would.  Anna's behaviors, her morning routines and transition to bed at night; for the times when it is just Anna, Denise and I in the house I think it's going well. Nights are actually better, heck I'd say from an overall standpoint nothing is worse.  Denise might not agree with this and I plan on having her add her own post to this blog shortly. Night time has always been an issue. The problem(s) that I see at night and what I thought might get worse with Anna's care, all of a sudden I'm thinking it might be me that causes issues, how I manage and deal with Anna... We just got through our first full weekend after my surgery where I was entirely out of the picture care wise.  Weekends in general are just long, Anna becomes bored and we constantly are scrambling to find something of interest to her. T...

 Well I'm home and now almost 2 days post surgery.  Denise is fully in charge. Yesterday when I got home I didn't feel that bad, but I knew that was primarily because the surgical nerve block had not worn off yet.  As I write this now (approximately 40 hours post surgery) I can tell the honeymoon on pain is over and the next few days I will be helpless for the most part, the pain is quite intense in spite of my following the pain management plan given.  Surgery night (Tuesday Sept. 10th) was hard on Denise, Anna had a rough evening, difficult sleep transition, some screaming; all they typical behaviors when there is a change in the house.  Denise did give Anna an extra sedative dose and she did get down at 10PM and did sleep through the night. Wednesday morning Anna had a good morning, Denise said she had a large BM (her agitation many times is a sign that she has a full colon) and was sent off to her day program with no real issues, per Denise. Our caregiver Gi...

  Minus 1 I had hoped to have more in this by now, and I have no idea why or what I am comparing this against. In this section, which will be the last before my actual surgery,  I’ll talk a little bit about something that I’m thinking about, something that is unexpected. Last night was another up and down night with Anna so my sleep, as usual, was in 2 or 3 hour slots. At least when I do sleep it is deep because I had 2 dreams last night, both of which stick with me even now at mid day. Usually, if I do dream, by mid morning the whole memory is pretty much gone.  Not these. In both dreams I had in some way or another lost Anna, either by her going away or by being lost somehow, and I could not do a damn thing about it. I can’t help but think about how, as a parent, you get so ingrained into the care of your child that you literally do loose track of everything else. No matter how much you bitch and moan about what you are doing, how long, repetitive, wearing, wha...

  T-MINUS 7 At some point I do want to summarize Anna’s current schedule and what her caretaking needs are, but first I thought I would talk about how things have gone for the last week (the time we have actively tried to work Denise into more of Anna’s routine), and bring up an important something we both forgot about out as we “planned” this transition. Turns out we haven’t planned very well at all… Denise has started to block out more time with Anna, but I need to make it clear what that really means is I have given up some of the control of Anna's care. In spite of Denise many times being more than willing to do whatever care needs there was for Anna, I very often would say “no, you go do your thing I’m handle it”. That is not true, I see it now; I don’t really. Here comes confession time; For a very long time I have taken on more than I really needed to, taken on much more than what might be considered the equal 50/50 split. I’ve done this to allow Denise her free an...