What's Eating Me . . . STRESSSSSSSSSSSSS

The Unwilling Caregiver - - Equals STRESS !!!!!!!

Hi. For those of you who don't know me, I have my 85 yr. old mother-in-law living with us that I am charged with caregiver for. She was not brought up in a normal family situation. (They lived in the woods and by the time she should have been well into her school years - - welfare discoverd the family & that they weren't sending any of the children to school. After finishing what school she got, the family didn't want her to leave the pack, and then banished her for doing so. She never learned what normal is for living in a house with regular values. Not even the basics of bathroom etiquette or table manners or putting ones dirty laundry in a laundry hamper.)

This has been a pains taking process of teaching her just things that "NORMAL" society expects of us as she sees no need for any of it. It grates on my last nerve sometime and I get stressed to the MAX (and yes I do fly off the handle). She and her husband did not plan for retirement. He cashed in & spent the one small life ins. policy he had before he died. He died leaving her broke and for others to take care of, so here we are.

She now has a better quality of life than she has ever experienced and since moving in with us and eating properly, she walks for exercise 1 hr. every morning and has lost 58 lbs.. Her Doctor is majorly impressed. Her borderline diabetic condtion has been reversed and she's been told that she no longer needs medication. (She still takes it so she can eat candy bars mind you.)

This has been a long and difficult journey for us all. I am sure I will continue to stress over the everyday occurances that continue to crop up, but my real fear is that I will wind up as my late namesake aunt did: taking care of everyone in the whole famdamnly, becoming used up myself & then dying.

I pray for peace within.