In my job as a telefundraiser (yeah, go on, shoot me) I happened to talk to someone yesterday who managed to put all of my petty miseries into some perspective.
Mrs. Hamilton was apparently an elderly lady, and told me that she had ‘buried her daughter’ on the first of December this year. It’s bad enough to think of your children dying before you, but further gentle enquires on my part revealed that Mrs. Hamilton’s daughter had passed away from Alzheimers disease.
And Mrs Hamilton (and her husband) who were both 87 years old had nursed their daughter at home (with only brief respite care) for the last three years of her life. There was no adequate nursing-home available, and they took it upon themselves to care for their now non-verbal and incontinent child. She was only 63 when she died, and had previously had a full life working as a school librarian and, whilst she had never married, had a very active social life as well.
I’ve contemplated the idea of one of my children dying before me, and it’s not a nice thought to say the least. But my heart went out especially to Mr and Mrs Hamilton. They are at the age when they are considering their own mortality, having then to about-face and not only grieve for the child they lost when Alzheimers first made an appearance, but to say goodbye physically as well.
You sure she isn’t just giving you the Alzenheimer’s yarn to make you stop calling? Not to sound like an asshole here, but it would be a creative way of getting rid of telemarketers…
Actually, Incubus you dosound like an arsehole. This was not meant to be a thread to hang shit on telemarketers…go do a search though various other Pit Threads if you wanna do that.
Sometimes people cop a lot of shit in their lives. This thread was about an old lady dealing with the illness and death of her only child, and how fucking shitty it must have been.
My occupation was but an incidental feature. :rolleyes:
Well. Part of my job is telefundraising, and I do get a lot of excuses from people. Sometimes it’s like “didn’t your wife just die last year? and now she’s dying again?”
And sometimes it’s a genuine story. kambuctka, the world is cruel to make parents bury their own children…and I’m not even a parent.
Not to sound glib but I’ve always joked that if I got alzheimers I would take up sky-diving in the hopes I would accidently pack a waffle iron instead of a parachute. There aren’t too many diseases that can strike a greater fear then that one.
The thought of someone having to put diapers on me AGAIN would absolutetly make me nuts. Just as the thought of a child seeing the person they loved and respected disolve into a drooling idiot. Life is always unfair in some respect but alzheimers is an injustice nobody should have to endure.
Howzabout we all just assume that Mrs. Hamilton is a real lady, that her tragedy was a genuine tragedy, and that she reached out to a stranger in her pain?
Yes, kambuckta, some things genuinely DO suck. Don’t feel too guilty about your petty miseries. No doubt Mrs. Hamilton had some of them, too, before life dropped “the big one” in her lap. We’re all just whistling in the dark, trying to pretend the hammer won’t come down on us.
The same thing happened to me at work today. I called a lady to tell her she has a basal cell skin cancer (a minor thing relatively speaking) and she went on and on about her problems. She’s going to have to have her bottom teeth pulled because they can’t put dentures in and she spent her whole life taking care of her children instead of doing things for herself like going to the dentist, but now nobody will help her; she needs spinal surgery and she doesn’t have any home health care, and so on and so forth. She started crying. I was probably on the phone with her for 15 minutes. I felt bad for her. So bad, I’m considering calling her and volunteering to do things like help her with housework or taking her to the store. That would be seen as a very odd thing to do in my office, but I feel such empathy for her.
As for Alzheimer’s, I’ve seen alot of people with it, as before I started in Dermatology, I worked in an Internal Medicine office (primary care for older people). I’ve often ruminated on how incredibly horrible and sucky it would be to spend 40 years or more with a person, parent or spouse, and then there comes a time when he/she no longer is themselves, doesn’t know who you are, and doesn’t share your memories of spending your lives together! HOLY CRAP, THAT WOULD SUCK.
