Ramblings Of A Solar Powered Insomniac

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  Posted by Lungs February 10, 2013 - Filed in Personal Journal - 818 views
  

  it's Sunday, which is never as fun day in my house.  I care for my brother,  year older, the survivor of major strokes and a disabled Viet Nam Vet.  Monday - Friday he is in an adult daycare about 8 hours total he is out of the house, and he loves to be there.  He's established close familiar relationships with the people that work and go there over the last years and there is no other place he's rather be.  So M-F he is content.  Up between  6-6:30, groomed and taken to "school" (as he calls it) by his home health worker, bather, babysitter etc. (her name is Dolores, he calls her Ralph) a day with his friends, home on the bus, dinner, spongebob cartoons, a good sleep and do it over again.  He loves routine.  Saturdays he watches TV, eats, naps off and on, walks around the neighborhood  or the little park, and he's a little antsy but not overly.  Somewhere between 4-6 a.m. Sunday, the fun begins.  He wants his cane, he wants a hat, suspenders, and he's going out, over there, anywhere, but he doesn't know where or why or what he'll do when he gets there.  And since he can't, he goes to the bathroom instead. Over 100 times a day, open the door, close the door, stand just inside the door, open the door, close the door. ad nauseum.  He imagines he should have had 3-4 full meals and 3 snacks by 11 a.m., and nothing, meds,food, TV, NOTHING soothes him.  By 4 p.m. I have usually caved to his nagging for sleeping pills and supper, and he begins to wind down.  To get ready to do it all again next week.  Bless his heart, he is for all intents and purposes, a 6'2'', 200 lb toddler.  VA has changed the label on his illness so many times, no longer quite sure what the descriptor would be, but it is some form of dimentia.

  At some point past this, I fall asleep.  Deep dreamless sleep. Awake feeling like it's been hours, to find it has, 1 or 2 hours and now I am up for the day.  And TV sucks, the dog is indignant about the lights, and thanks to cool damp weather, my hands won't work well for crochet.  The things I'd llike to do, clean the house, start the laundry, refinish some of the furniture, rearrange some of the furniture, anything I would find productive, mainly out of the question.  Can't take the chance I'll wake him and he will be in the agitated wanna go anywhere cycle.   So I look around Facebook, post things about patriotism, bikers, guns, and a lot of inanities I find humorous.  But then what, more sucky TV, hands now functioning enough to crochet, but even my interest in that wanes as I fight the dog to (repeatedly) get off the yarn, don't lay on the piece I'm workin on, etc.  Smoke too may cigarettes, drink too many diet Dews, despite the knowledge caffeine and nicotine only add to the inability to sleep.  And always the same thought comes to mind, I want to be back in Arizona, on the back of a bike, in the sun, out for for the weekend, where the days are too hot and you freeze your butt off after the sun goes down.  And I want my brother back,  My brother was a talented musician, crazy dry sense of humor, a husband, father of 5, and all that goes with a full life.  But this guy, this stranger, in adult pull-ups, who won't brush his hair, changes his clothes until he has gone throuh everything he owns so we lock the closet, demanding his way, makin constant loud noises, spitting food, putting forks and spoons in the dvd player, all the odd and aggravating things he does...I don't know him. He doesn't know him. But here he is, ...and i'm wide awake.