Tricky part to caregiving

One of the tricky parts to caregiving is keeping tabs on your parent without them getting on the offense and feeling as if your monitoring them or going through their stuff.  One thing I respect is my dad’s room is his room.  I merely go in to clean and put things away.  His birthday is tomorrow and hubby and were thinking of what we could get him and with winter fast approaching we thought some more winter related clothing.  We simply can not afford to end up with a huge left over electric and gas bill like we did from last winter.  We just simply can not!

Well while check the tags for “sizes” for what my dad wears, the mind isn’t what it use to be, with remembering all his medications and routine and schedules, I can’t always remember the size of clothing!  As I was looking in one of his drawers I found a bottle of a laxatives.  I took the bottle out and the count was 120 and counted them.  There is only 45 left!  This really explains a lot.  My husband and I were just discussing about getting myself a colon cleanse product to try since my IBS has really been acting up as of late and how I said I wish I had the natural powers that my dad has!  Come to find out, his isn’t natural at all.

My father has an abdominal aortic aneurysm which last CT scan showed it measures 4.3 x 3.6 cm.  Laxatives are definitely on his list of CAN NOT have!  Approaching the subject today was most difficult because I wasn’t snooping mind you, but glad I found them but he can’t take them.  I just simply could not just “take them”.  I told him I know with all the medications he takes he is allowed to take a softener, but not a laxative and those were here on hand.  Of course he denied taking them and said he hadn’t touched them in “months”.  Trust me when I tell you he takes them weekly.   When your a caregiver and he has lived with us for the past eight years, you notice a huge change like this, and we knew he had to be taking something, we just couldn’t prove it.