Our new runaway

Hey! So back we are from Canada. We had fun hiking with all the Low's in Waterton National Park, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park. There were deer walking around the whole town we stayed in, they were not afraid of humans at all! One even licked Rich's hand (scandalous!)


Anyway, after a long drive and a trip to BYU-Idaho to see how it's doing, we are home. A couple nights ago, one of the ladies who's new (the one who would stare at her wall), was having a rough time. She is known to take all her clothes out of the closet and put them on her bed, and then we usually just hang them all back up. But this day, she was taking all her clothes outside. "Hey Jean, where are you going? Let's help you put these back inside." We put them all away, but when we were done, I couldn't find her! So I look down the road and I see her about a block away, struggling to walk through some sprinklers. "Jean! Where are you going? Did you want to play in the sprinklers?" It was kind of a cute site, she was wearing this adorable blue house-dress that looked hawain along with purple slippers. She was very timid, and wouldn't really respond. Once I tried to put my arm around her to help lead her back home, but she swung her arm around and tried to slug me! But I ducked just in time. She ended up tripping over a little cement wall and got herself back up on the grass.

"You keep pushin' and pushin' me!" She said. She continued to walk briskly away, down and away on the street. Meanwhile, richard finally made it outside and decided to just follow her to make sure she's safe. I ran inside and called her family to ask for some help. Anyway, about an hour and a mile later, she made it home safe. It was quite dramatic for her to snap this way. Amid her Alzheimer's she made it all the way to her own home! She remembered where it was. That was quite impressive. Anyway, the next day during another person's shift, she did the exact same thing. Jean can't be reasoned with, due to her disease. So it turns out that she cannot stay at our facility due to her running-away. Her family has agreed to put her to bed in the evenings, since she tends to get funny at that time of day. I feel so bad for Jean, she can't help what's going on in her head. Nothing will make her happy, and depression medicine just makes her act very, very strange. So it is with Alzheimers, you can just never predict what will happen!

And that's our latest adventure!

IKEA

Well, thankfully things have calmed down since that last post...the lady "Mildred" is healing just great after some major doses of antibiotics. We are so glad she's doing better and her foot is healing great. I was joking with Dani about how we don't have a child yet to write about in our blog, but I guess our old ladies somewhat count! I should write more of the funny things that we experience here more often. I promise we have more hilarious experiences than bad.

Rich and I decided to cure our July 'blahness' by re-arranging our room (which we are kind of confined to on the weekends while other people work our shift)...and have managed to make it cleaner, more organized, and so much more functional! And this is all thanks to wonderful IKEA. :-)

Rich and I have been considering moving out of our nursing home after we've been here a year (which is what we promised them), but we do like this job when it's not so crazy, and the benefits are truly great. After going to Sam's Club this afternoon (where I worked for 4 summers), I was reminded about the fact that any job has his downfalls, and our job seems to have so little compared to it's benefits.

So we figured, maybe we can cure our feelings of being 'cooped up' on the weekends in our room by making our room a better place to be. So today we ventured to IKEA and bought a really cute loveseat so we could have somewhere to actually sit comfortably in our room to watch a movie or read a book. We used to drag the Beehive home's lazy-boy chairs from the living room all the way into our room on the weekends, and they were bulky and took up so much space. Our new loveseat is the perfect size for us to both sit on and cuddle, without taking up the entire room. It makes our room feel less like a bedroom but more like a modern-styled living space, which juxtaposes our very old-fashioned nursing home. This makes it a true escape, and so far it doesn't feel like we are always at work. Even though we don't technically have our own place to call 'home' quite yet, I am reminded of what Richard's mission president told him:

"Live the first ten years of your marriage like nobody would like to live, and you'll be able to live the rest of your marriage like nobody can afford to live."

This gives me hope. It's true, I've seen this manifest itself in so many other people's lives. So here we come, Beehive home, ready to stick it out another 6 months and continue to think long and hard whether we want to remain here another year after that or not. It's worth the effort, I think. We'll hope for the best.

OH, PS...I will post a pic of our new room once we get the right cover for our loveseat. We accidently bought the wrong size...that store can be so confusing!

drained

Phew. I love our job here at the nursing home, but lately it's been very draining.
Here's my chance to moan out my frustrations!

One of our lesser anxieties is the new lady who doesn't really do much except sit in her room and stare at the wall. She worries over the fact there is too much light in her room. It's somewhat depressing to see her so blank and desolate, and have this constant worried look in her eyes. She refuses to watch TV, read, or any other activity we try to have her do. I really feel bad for her, I can't comprehend what makes someone so out of it. Alzheimer's is a very real and scary thing.
Our biggest anxiety is a lady (let's call her Milda) who is so shaky most of the time she will drop whatever she holds. For days she could not walk at all, and was going undiagnosed with whatever condition she had. Diarrhea, vomiting. It wasn't the prettiest picture (or smell). I really did feel bad for her. It was especially frustrating when this happened over the holiday weekend when all the doctor's offices were closed. Even on our one day off the worker woke us up twice in the middle of the night to help her pick up Milda after she had fallen like dead weight on the ground.

Meanwhile, we haven't gotten a stress-less night of sleep for the past week due to this, and she's not showing any improvement. They've finally diagnosed her with a bladder infection (which I suspected from the start) and she is on antibiotics. She still cannot walk, and she will fall involuntarily out of her bed in her sleep. Every morning I find her on the floor.

I guess you have to be there to see it. I just get upset because her family is kind of oblivious to how bad she is sometimes. I can't stand to see someone suffer, so I spend alot of time in her room just fixing things up and organizing things because she can't do it herself.

random thoughts

Yay! So my bread turned out great, I was happy about that. And it doesn't even crumble when you slice it thinly, that's what made me most excited. Spring finals are coming up, and then I'm off to Indiana to see my family! I miss them alot, it's hard being out here without any parents or relatives, I'm used to spending weekends with a grandparent at least once or twice a month. I also wish I could see my brother and sister grow up, Phil is apparently quite the talented guy. I secretly hope he doesn't study music when he goes to school, because I think he has alot of potential in other careers. It's so hard to stop developing a musical talent that you've invested so much time in and that you could potentially become a professional in.

I still mourn over 'giving up' flute, but at the same time I feel secure knowing that I chose a career that I have a passion for and is still very practical. I wasn't passionate enough about flute to carry it out through college professionally, that drive just wasn't there. I think its great that other musicians have a drive because they need that so much. But science really attracts me, I love how there are so many areas of study that directly apply to your every day life, and there is an endless frontier of discovery and information to learn. Not only does it apply to our every day life, it is crucial for our health and the environment.

Music seems to have a sort of finite existence to me, although you can always become better at your talent and find new and better music, I simply find it to have some sort of an end. With flute, for example, I would simply become good enough to maybe get accepted into an orchestrea, and then teach flute to highschool students. Maybe teach at a college level if I was really good. But again, I am not much for teaching it, because most students don't even practice near enough and don't care enough past getting the 'chair' they want or the grade in the class. Or to not look like a fool at a recital. It's just a frustrating thing, I think.

Then again, I have to remind myself that music is important. It brings joy to you and others, it brings confidence to those who master it, and it is a very good skill to develop one's creativity, motor skills, and makes you cultured. So it all depends on if that's your driving factor to teach.

Home-made bread

I am so excited, Richard's mom spoiled us by giving us a wheat grinder and a bosch for our wedding! We have finally decided to start making homemade bread together once a week. During the school year we were pretty busy and had alot on our hands, but now that it's the sumer we are looking for projects and healthy things to do, and I am just way excited to learn how to do this. At first I was intimidated when Richard told me he wanted me to make home-made bread every week like the way he was raised, but now that I appreciate the healthy-benefits and cost-benefits of making your own bread, I am ready to get started. I heard whole-wheat bread is the hardest to make, but I'm willing to keep trying until I get it right. When we went to the bosch store to pick up the nutramill, I saw there was a bread-making class so I dragged Richard there after his root-canal surgery and we watched a lady quickly prepare some bread. It seemed simple, but we also noted there are many things that could possibly go wrong if you are not careful. Bread is a tricky thing.



Other than this, we have been doing pretty good. Richard and I are taking classes this spring and recently Richard had to fix a failed-root canal. He went to an endodontist who actually took out some bone to get to the infected area and remove more of his failed root-canal stuff. I still don't really understand all that happened, but I do know it costed an arm and a leg! I'm so grateful it didn't affect us too bad, we are lucky to have the jobs we do.

Richard is basically shadowing dentists for hours and hours as well as taking a physiology class, and I have been taking a jogging class, a field botany class, and a genetics class. In fact, I'm going to take a 4 hour genetics test in about half an hour, but I think I'm pretty ready so i thought I'd write in here. Jogging is my least favorite, it's hard to run in the morning because I have early classes, and running at night in spanish fork really isnt very safe (nobody has flood lights! It's incredibly dark!). I refuse to run in the middle of the day because I always feel soo sick afterwards. I am going to Indiana in a couple weeks, which I'm really looking forward to. I have to leave Rich behind because he needs to watch the old ladies and finding a replacement for us is very expensive, we'd have to pay them $80 a night when we are gone. Add to that a plane ticket and it's just to much. We will go to Indy for Christmas so that will be nice, we are willing to suck up the cost for such a special holiday & to keep our job :-) The only thing stopping us from living there is if I get pregnant, which we dont plan on letting that happen for awhile....

10 looong daysss

:-)
It really hasn't been as bad as I thought. The first two days were rough, I definitely ached for my hubby wubs. But then once school started up again and my job kept me occupied, time went by faster and I interacted with people constantly all day to help fill the gap of where RIchard would have been.

Weekends are the worst, though. School and work do not happen on the weekend, which is normally a welcome blessing, but not when I don't have my Richard it feels pretty empty and lame. I'm glad nothing can replace him. :-)

I have scrapbooked, geneology-ed, exercised, studied, read "The Host" which is a very interesting book (thanks dani!)...it is somewhat dark but I've heard it gets better towards the end. I'm halfway, I need to read it faster! Also, I have cleaned and ran lots and lots of errands that had been building up since the crazy winter.

I am so relieved that Richard is coming home this Sunday, and also relieved that our summer schedule lends us a break to relax and revive ourselves for the Fall instead of making us burn out before then. I guess when you have two years of school left, it kind of looms far in the distance and motivation tends to creep away once you've realized how much more there is to do.

I am so glad, though, that Richard was able to go to Guatemala. He has had some very touching experiences helping others. Not all of it has been dental work, although 85% of it has. He was able to visit his mission companion "Otto" in Guatemala City, which was a miracle! And he even did his dental work. He told me that he was able to visit a couple very, very poor families in destitute conditions, bringing them food and toys for their children. He had some very personal experiences and conversations with them and really felt the spirit. I can't wait to hear more. He will be flying to Tikaal tommorow to see some ruins, and from there flying home to me on Sunday!

Richard did alot of x-rays and diagnostics, but his favorite part was assisting the Oral Surgeon. I am so glad he was exposed to so many dental situations and professionals, I think it will give him added motivation and a surety that this is really what he wants to do for the rest of his life. I know that he needed to be there, and everything worked out so he could. He has wanted to go to Guatemala, ironically, ever since he and Otto were companions. He must have sensed that they'd see eachother again soon.

Guatemala

I'm trying to come up with ideas of what I can do while my hubby is in Guatemala doing dental work for a week! Since we're still newly weds, I don't know what I will do without seeing him most of the day. It's pathetic, I know.
Here are some ideas:

• Train for 2 half-marathons I'm registered for (although they are in August and September)
• Family genealogy/ temple work--lots left to do
• Scrapbook our wedding/engagement/honeymoon pictures!
• journal and study ahead for school
• FIND A JOB for the summer!!!
• find some good books to read
• find discount prices for my summer-class books (same for RIchard's books)
• Sell tons of Anatomy books that Richard has been collecting. (hopefully this will make bank!)
  
• Play computer games (civ, nancy drew, whatever)