subject: Caring For Aunt Emily [print this page] Caring For Aunt Emily Caring For Aunt Emily
Eddie and I not so long agobecameCare Givers for one of our family members, our Aunt Emily. We added onto our house, a bedroom and bathroom and connected it onto anexisting unusedroom in our house, for her privacy. In the beginning everything was fairly normal. Aunt Emily was mobile, even to the end. So at first we shopped together and always ate together finding out what each other liked and disliked. Also Aunt Emily was able to manage her own medications. Aunt Emily was ninety years old when she came to live with us.
A couple of years went by and we had learned a lot of our family history, but at this point we were taking care of managing her medications. When we went shopping it was too much for her to walk all around the grocery store so she drove one of those carts for disabledpeople. Oh, did I mention that Eddie was also disabled. So here we were traveling around the store with one scooter, one disabled grocery cart and me, what fun and interesting things started to be. This worked for a little while until Aunt Emily crashed into a couple displays at the end of the aisles. Now we asked for other relatives to come sit with her while we went shopping. Our niece Judy at this point was a life saver.
Vacations were needed. We found a couple of people at a time that Aunt Emily liked well enough to stay with her while we were gone. We also had a dog. Aunt Emily dearly loved animals and this was good. Aunt Emily also loved to read, so we went to the library once a week, and got enough books to keep her busy for a good week at a time.. While we were gone we always called in to see how everything was going.
Four years now and she now has a walker. Her health has actually improved. When she first came to live with us she was only about ninety five to ninety eight pounds. Now she is about one hundred eight to one hundred ten pounds. She looks better. She really didn't like to cook, but her husband did. He passed on at one hundred and two years of age. He was a very talented man. Although her health hadimproved her family stories started to change. In the beginning, the extra room we gave her was her sitting room where she would watch her TV and read, but it wasn't too long before she joined us in our living room to see TV and read, and we were glad to have her join us.
It is now five years. I am now giving her showers. When adding on her addition, in the bathroom we had one of those showers that had a seat in it if needed. How happy we were to have done that. It became a chore to convince her that she needed a shower. She also was now using Depends, twenty four-seven. She didn't want to go to bed until we were ready to go to bed. She slept a lot while watching TV. We think she was afraid to go to bed by herself. She also was hard of hearing and had been wearing hearing aids before she came to live with us, although they didn't always domuch good. She would tell us we didn't need to put the sound up on the TV anymore because she couldn't understand it anyway. She also didn't always hear what we said correctly.
Four months and a few days after her ninety sixth birthday she passed away.During that time she had failed a lot and I was up with her during the night a lot because of her delusions. All in all we have many wonderful memories of family get togethers out on our deck. Where we live there lots of trees that Aunt Emily loved so much. When our dog died at age sixteen, it saddened her very much. It was wonderful having Aunt Emily with us but also stressful when your loved one changes and passes on.
