That my beloved 85-year old grandmother’s moderate stage of dementia is going to get worse sooner than later. We have this precarious balance of care with her - a roommate that works 4 days a week, a nurse that comes in every other day, visits from family filling in the blanks. However it seems like she’s a bad fall, oven left on, or other horrible accident away from having to have 24-hour care. Her short-term memory is COMPLETELY gone, she asks the same questions 15-20 times in a row mere seconds from the last one (“Who lives in this house?” “Rebecca”. Pause. “Who lives in this house?” “Rebecca”. Repeat up to 20 times but it won’t matter anyway because she doesn’t remember the answer), she has no idea if she’s eaten or not and can’t seem to recognize hunger cues although she does not seem thin or malnourished. She is forgetting to bathe, though, and it’s an incredible struggle to get her to do so. She has no idea what day, time, season, or year it is. Her roommate will often find her getting ready for bed at 3 PM because “it’s so dark outside!”. Sigh. What a truly amazing, gentle, and loving person she was for her first 81 years.
My other worry is a mixed worry/excitement. Mr. Winnie and I are happily expecting our 2nd son in January. First son is 6 years old. It’s getting hard for me to imagine loving another child as much as I love the Boy. Very hard. He’s had me all to himself for 6 years now, and I worry about finding the same level of love in my heart for the new baby that I did my first son, and have a lot of worry about first son feeling short-changed from the sudden shift in attention and time.