Healed, injured, back to work anyway.

I'm back to watching my Dad a few overnights, and maybe a few days a week. The nursing home gave him some intensive physical therapy and then sent him back home. I might blame our medical care and geriatric systems for that, but I must admit he's better. He's at least been able to stand up, with difficulty, and take some steps. That's minimally what he has to be able to do if we're going to care for him.

Although he's old and feeble, it's a paradoxical kind of feeble. He's not diabetic in the least, has a hearty appetite and weighs almost 200 lbs, even as his skeleton is falling apart. If he can't maneuver himself into a wheelchair with help at least, or can't stand up to let us help him get his clothes on, we're going to need power equipment. Or we have to get him into a care facility.

All nursing homes, though, have long waiting lists. We don't have money. His fortune got wiped out. We'd have to count on his Medicaid to pay for it when or if we can get him in one. Today I picked up two books from the library about caring for a person with dementia.

I suspect that the rise in Alzheimer's and other dementia has something to do with long-term exposure to air pollution. Scientists have found that metal particles in the air can travel from the nose, up the olfactory nerve and in to the brain, where the results look something like Alzheimer's. My father grew up in extremely polluted central St. Louis City, where he spent all his summers playing baseball on a coal cinder lot, i.e. a toxic waste dump. 

Meanwhile, I gave myself another injury. costochondritis. I had it a few years ago, a terrible, persistent ache in the sternum and side. I thought it was a heart attack.

Assembling a new chair by myself, I braced it against my ribs while I allen wrenched some bolts into place. The cartilage in my ribs gave just a little. I didn't feel it then, but I ever so slightly treated my rib cage like movable joints. It got very painful this morning. It hurts when I breathe too deeply. Fortunately, costochondritis responds to aspirin (I can't take Naproxin or Ibuprofin). If it didn't, I'd probably go to the ER, and they'd think I was there trying to score painkillers. They'd be right, but it would be for the right reason.

However, even with all the injuries, and even with having to care for my Dad, I've become very self-disciplined and self-managed. I'm getting a ton of writing and reading done. And I've been learning, right now about OpenOffice and some of its more subtle labor-saving tricks. I'm also working on getting a GoFundMe for Dad. My writing and learning is spread out over several projects, yes, I do have that ADHD thing. But I'm confident now that I'm  going to get them all done. Every day I schedule myself, and I keep track of projects with a spreadsheet. I know that sounds eccentric, it's why I suspect I'm on the Autism Spectrum somewhere around Asperger's.