This was certainly an interesting week. A blog waiting to be written for sure. Please check the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com - later this afternoon for my post vacation blog. I learned this week that the "us" Joan/Sid vacation is gone for good and will never return. I am planning to write it after I unpack and go next door to check on my father.
We did go to some fun places at night, and I will post a few pictures.
We've all been thinking about you and hoping that you had a well-deserved break from the daily routine. Glad you're back and looking forward to hearing more about your time away.
The blog is posted. I invite you to log onto the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com - and read it. Please post comments and your own vacation stories and observations here.
We too have taken our last vacation. It is too stressful for me to make sure he is OK in the public bathrooms or doesn't wander off while I'm paying for something. We also have good friends that have traveled with us even up until recently. I could tell that our friend was not getting a chance to relax as he followed my DH around the resort and kept him entertained while I relaxed......or tried to. It's just not a vacation. It's just trading spaces.
Our "normal" vacation is going to my hometown & visiting relatives. However I highly doubt that we will do that this summer. Last year he was confused & angry a lot of the time. We stayed with my sister & BIL & although they know the situation & tried to be supportive, at times they just didn’t know what to do. I never thought of visiting relatives as a vacation, because I was never comfortable not helping with meals etc. & now it’s worse. People want us to come & visit anyway, but they have no idea how much work it would be. I agree, it’s not a vacation, it’s just trading spaces.
Glad your vacation went "well" all things considered. My husband and I had our last vacation 2 years ago. We went to Virginia Beach with his family. I knew it would be our last but I didn't know it would be the vacation from he**. He tried to get out of the car on he interstate while the car was moving. We pulled into a truck stop and followed him around for over an hour in the pouring rain trying to get him back into the car. He left the hotel room while I was in the bathroom and it took me and all the other family members a long time to find him several floors away. We had several wonderful vacations during our life together and I try to remember them and not that horrible last one.
Had I thought of it myself, I would have titled the blog "Trading Spaces". Perfect way of expressing it.
Years ago, when everyone's kids were young, we had friends who used to rent a house on Cape Cod for anywhere from a week to a month during the summer. I used to think it was an idiotic idea, because for the mother in the house it would just be "trading spaces". Still cleaning, cooking, laundry, and taking care of the kids. But at the beach instead of in the suburbs. And the beach meant more laundry and more cleaning up beach sand. Not a vacation. So now it's taking care of an AD spouse instead of kids. Not a vacation.
I took my last vacation with DH last fall and was sure it would be. With the help of a friend and some family, it was a very pleasant trip for all. (We were very lucky). I took precautions and brought a plastic mattress cover that he hadn't needed up to that point. But it turned out he did need it, and has been fully incontinent ever since.
We've taken our last major trip, and we won't take any more trips involving planes, but we still take car trips. Yes, the different hotel stops can be confusing but as Joan said it would be the same 'groundhog day' questions even if we were home. I used to drive 750 miles to our son in one day, each way, then it was 2 days each way, and it is now 3 days each way. Why? Because my wife sleeps so late these days that we don't get on the road now until almost 11 a.m. and since my cataract surgery I don't like to drive at night anymore (headlight glare). So, now I only drive a few hundcred miles a day. But ... whereas it can be very stressful at times for me, especially at night and in the morning when my wife forgets where everything is in the hotel room, we still enjoy listening to our CDs as we travel, still enjoy making those stops for Dairy Queen blizzards, etc. I don't know how much longer we can continue to do this, but for as long as we can and I don't go completely bonkers ... we'll keep doing it!
I can not even think about a vacation. The only ones we ever took were to see his family or his kids. The kids are all grown, and the family is down to his brother and father. Staying in his dad's house is hard now, his dad is unable to clean very well. So the last time I went back I did the cleaning and shopping. His dad did take us out to eat a lot:). My vacations have never been vacations, just doing what I do somewhere else. We did do 3 weekend trips in the last 30 years that were not family. They were heaven. And I have a girlfriend who a few times we have done weekend getaways, they were great. But with DH we have never really done vacations.
We did do a quick trip to OK last year to see my DD graduate from basic training from the army. It was very hard keeping up with DH. I had 3 extra people helping me. I don't see how I could do it alone and have fun or enjoy myself. If we do something now it is a day trip. Fun for all and home in the evening and back to normal for DH.
The hard part now is for our younger DD, she is still wanting to do the things that other kids do. She is 14. So now I send her with other people to do things. Friends are very kind and ask her along, it is a way for her to have fun. Sad that we can't do these things with her.
Blue, I can't imagine going through this with younger children let alone taking a vacation with all that is involved. As a child we never really went on vacation but I babysat for a couple who only had one child but they had relatives my age and so they would take me along on vacation with them. I remember those fondly so I am sure you DD will enjoy her away times. You are blessed to have people who are willing to take her.
acvann - have you tried amber sunglasses? I have used them for years in sun, rain and fog. At night they cut the glare. My sister has started wearing hers all the time when outside after her cataract surgery. In rain and fog it makes easier to see. You might want to consider having them just in case you have to drive at night. The type that works best for night is more yellow than amber.
Thanks, Charlotte ... in fact, I do use yellow/amber sunglasses and they do help tremendously. And I do weat them around town at night wehe doing local driving. But interstate highways where there are no overhead lights, with areas where you must watch for deer, where there can be black ice at night, etc. ... I find I just can't see clearly enough at night to wear those glasses under those conditions.
Talk of long ago vacations, brings to mind Goldie Hawn in that now period movie, "Private Benjamin." Ditzy Judy Benjamin joined the army and after basic training realized that it was nothing like the recruiting brochures. She said something like, " I want to wear sandals. I want to go out to lunch. I wanna be normal again."