Caregiver of the Year
During my years in student affairs I always joked with Emily Boling that we could write a book titled “Well What Happened Was…” The book would be the numerous accounts of students who had made a series of bad decisions. Occasionally it was a tale that had the best of intentions but ended up being the worst scenario. This happens to the best of us sometimes. And it’s exactly what happened…
Yesterday, after five days of Grandpa being overly hyper and agitated, I waived a white flag. And by ‘white flag’ I mean Grandma called his doctor who called in a prescription for xanax. The goal: reduce his hyperactivity, reduce his agitation and re-gain our sanity. Spoiler alert! None of these things occurred.
Grandpa endured TWO WARS and RECEIVED TWO PURPLE HEARTS. During one heroic act he jumped on a tank (with a gunshot wound to his arm) and fought off the enemy. I don’t think he even knew how to drive the tank. In the process he hit a landmine but managed to keep fighting. He’s kind of a bad ass. Yesterday Grandpa met his enemy = .5 xanax. It was like he had vertigo or like I was watching that video of the drunk guy in the mini mart. But the challenge was that since he has full Alzheimer’s, he kept forgetting that he could not walk. So basically we had to sit with him for five hours and keep reminding him “NO! Don’t get up!”.
Lesson: Don’t slip Grandpa “special memory pills”.
