Hi, my dear friend,

How are you? I really enjoy reading your many responses to others. Now you, Johanna, are the one with wisdom and an astounding ability to share it with such clarity.

Just wanted you to know I was thinking of you.

May the rest of your day be beautifully blessed.

Love and thoughts and prayers,

Joyce

HERE-HERE!!!!

ttt

Joyce

I think Johanna has some good ideas, too. I come across some good, sound thinking on these message boards. --Jim

Dear Friends: Thank you. Isn't it funny how differently we see ourselves from the way others see us? I don't see myself as a person of clarity. I just see me jumbling about with shades of gray everywhere with every issue.

Dear brilliant Joyce - I am doing alright. The alright portion waxes and wanes. Still so many balls in the air with Mom and now with Step-Dad who is going for his outpatient surgery Monday. Being that he is 91, I am concerned regarding the effects of his general anesthesia. We'll cross that bridge if the water rises! Of course we are caught in the HMO Catch-22 should he have needs.

One would think my mother's placement would solve most issues, but no. Issues continue to abound and honestly, why in the world does it take so much time to address and resolve them? Cosmic law I guess.

I need a ton of work on me. (Ha! No pun intended.) Back to Weight Watcher's tonight to get myself on the right path again so to speak. I have to laugh, my logic center, my Super-Ego, is demanding this be done, "Now, right now, and strictly!" However, my Id is whining incessantly about wanting what it wants and it wants it now!

The human predicament. We want what we want without consequences.

It has come to mind that I have actually become rather isolated. I don't even get "out" much anymore. Friends have all but disappeared over these last few years. Of course, some of them HAVE moved. When the heck did I become a recluse? Well, I shall have to rectify that. Soon. Well, relatively soon.

Unfortunately, today there are appointments re Mom, tomorrow there is a SNF Care Plan meeting re Mom and then her visit, the following day is the consultative appointment with Mom's new MD re Mom's meds, etc. Following that is the visit to step-dad to get things ready for Monday. I am also behind a few weeks with my monthly Financial Accounting Report to the out of area and out of state siblings.

In between, I just wish for peace and quiet. I would love to have three to four days of nothing but reading,(with someone bringing me my meals - Id meals.) I want to loll about and be pampered by just being quiet and escaping into the pages of a good suspense novel. Or maybe a good film.

It would be terrific to do this at a luxury hotel and sit outside on a chaise, good book in hand with a soft breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees and a burbling waterfall in the background. My version of, Calgon Take Me Away!

Anyway, I do realize how blessed I am in the life I have. I'm not really complaining. It is just so odd in how I have become "lost".

JOYCE - GUESS WHAT? Gail Sheehy's office has called and one of her assistants interviewed me with questions for a new book she is writing. Her assistant asked if it is okay for Gail to call me should she need to. What, you think I said "no?". Of course I said yes. I don't know if this is a continuum of her "Passages" books or whether this is separate from that. I forgot to ask.

Ms. Sheehy is now coordinating care for an ill loved one and she is facing many of the issues we are facing. Probably with more financial assets than most of us, but still, with all the barriers and lack of, well; information and "everything" is confronting her. She wrote an interesting article re her experience in the Parade news magazine.

It has to be miserable for such an independent woman who is used to slaying dragons in a single blow to be facing the dry furious winds of care coordination. If this is a chronic condition; soon she will find herself abraded by the sands blown by this wind just like everyone does sooner or later. I do wish her well. I am sure she will grab her care issues and wrestle them to the ground one by one.

Her assistant discussed Ms. Sheehy's interest in how women "lose" themselves in all of this. Well, I agree this has happened to me. The assistant discussed how much of our identities are who we are in the workplace and how much of our socialization also comes from that venue.

Once we are no longer engaged in that we do not always know who we are. We need to remake ourselves and most of us don't have much of a clue as to how to do this. I do have to agree with much that she said.

It just so happened that I "retired" my Adminsitrator-ship just about the time all of my care coordinating duties began. So, I never had the time to reformat myself. I just flew headlong at warp speed into all that was facing our parent(s). And here I am after years of care coordination without a name tag!

She asked me what I did just for myself and I couldn't come up with much of anything. When that happened, it astonished me. Clue phone Johanna - it's for you!

I hope this book is very good and very much written at where the rubber hits the road for the middle class woman in middle America; not just for the Manhattan or Larchmont women who move in a different mileau from the majority of us. Not that they don't have similar issues, but the sheer magnitude of the numbers of middle class women who are trying to deal with horrendous situations, well . . . there is where the whole truth of this matter lies.

I think the issue of remaking ourselves is just as true for the woman who has been at home raising family and suddenly the nest is completely empty. It is the same for the person who has been caregiving for a very long time and then their loved one dies. Who and what am I? Well Joyce, you would know about that particular scenario because you are living it.

We shall have to wait and see where Ms. Sheehy goes with this book. I wish her great success in her writing as it could benefit many women.

How I wish there was a women's group in my area where one could meet with like-minded individuals for discussion about our lives. But I do not know of one anywhere near. I want one unconnected to caregiving. That has defined me far too long - it's past time to see who I am outside of that. While it is definitely part of me, I am beginning to understand it should not be all of me.

Please, I blush; also insert the word "man" where the word women is - I did not intend to lock out the male gender of those who are providing/coordinating care.

It is my belief based upon his behaviors, that my husband expects me to recover from this situation of care instantly. Mom's in a nursing home. Though he has been somewhat helpful, he has many issues with my Mom. He truly has no clue that after so many years of the extremely high stress dementia and care coordination brings, one does not just instantly get over it - SNAP!!!

It is going to take a bit of time to sort myself out. But of course, it's NOT over yet. Mom is still with us as is Step-Dad. I'm still highly involved out of sheer necessity - the elder's and the healthcare system's. The issues and needs have not gone away, they have just changed their location!

Wow. DPOA - who'da thunk about what all of that would entail?

Good heavens, ENOUGH about me! How about you Ms. Joyce? How are you doing and how are your days going now? Have you found the "real" Joyce yet? How have you found the "real" Joyce has changed at the end of all of this?

Maybe the "real" us is not supposed to be static - maybe we are supposed to be like quicksilver. Darn! Where did they hide that handbook of directions?

I think of you and wonder if you have been able to gain any resolution to the losses you have sustained. You are a very smart, very bright person. (There's a difference between those two words, you know.) You think outside the box, you think outside yourself, you think on many planes - that makes you a rare person. It is also of high value.

Anyhow, let me know how you are. Sorry for the ramble, it just happened. But you know me, why say something in 20 words or less if 10 pages or more can do the same?

Thank you for asking, it is delightful to "know" you.

And Jackie - the same back to you! Thanks.