My mom died on September 14th of heart failure. She was 74 years old and had dedicated her life to taking care of my dad. For the past 8 years she had set her own health aside and focused on him, doing everything she could to take care of him. I had began to notice that her health was starting to fail her, had began to ask her to go see a doctor, but it was too late. Days before we were going to get her in for a checkup she suffered a massive heart attack.

My sister and I rushed her to the local hospital where I tried to tell the nurses at the desk that she was having a heart attack – they asked what made me think it was a heart attack and I could just stare dumbfounded at them. What kind of question was that? Shouldn’t they have assumed I was right and treated it like a heart attack until they knew it was not one? They had me get her into a wheelchair, then one of them took her into the ER to get her settled and ready for a doctor to see. Some time later one of them came out to get me or my sister because they were having difficulty getting information from my mom. The doctor determined she was currently having a heart attack and went over some paper with me about this that and whatever else concerning some kind of medication that they wanted to give her – only to waste all that time and THEN figure out she could not be given it because was over 12 hours since first onset of symptoms.

I don’t know if things had gone different then if thy would be different now, I just know that I am so not ready to have lost my mom. We had so many plans, we were going to do so much, and now…

And now trying to think of the what-if’s is just driving me insane.

I have began a journal, a Letters to Mom online log where I can send out writing into the vastness of the Internet on things I normally would have talked over with my mom. It is a way to let me write through my pain and hopefully find some kind of healing balance point.

The Family Caregiver Info website is once again operational and I am working on getting things uploaded onto it and sorting out what is needed for the site. Feedback on things that other caregivers would like to see implemented into the website would be greatly appreciated, just let me know here or in a comment to the forums what you would like to see included on the site. Thanks.

Anyone that has visited the main page of this site over the last few days will know that it has been frelled up.  Last Friday I dove into a major rebuild effort and, well… it didn’t go so well.  The program that I had uploaded was all messed up and my efforts to sort out the problem all failed.  Last night I went for a complete uninstall and reinstall of the whole shebang and it is now, finally, working.  ::collapses in relief::

Today I am going to be working on the main site and get that organized, so please, a little more patience, it’ll be worth it, I promise.

My feed has been hijacked by a caregiver e-book for sale site that is running a blog of feeds from caregiver sites to draw traffic in to help them sell their e-book “Today’s Caregivers Guide” – yes, that’s right, for only $27 you too can be told useless information that has been culled from who knows what sources to drop a few bucks into some guy’s pocket.    I personally advise my readers to not go off and buy any e-book on being a caregiver unless they have some cause to believe that it is a good deal (and don’t take that it’s in any comments on any blogs as being proof it’s good).  You want to know what it’s like, how to cope with situations, what you can do to help… there are plenty of sites online that can help you find out more and they don’t charge you $27 to share the information.

Stick around here over the next couple of days because I am going to be uploading a program in a few minutes here to this site that will let caregivers network with one another and share knowledge on caregiver information – and it’ll be free for you to participate and use.  A much better investment than $27 on a e-book that may be completely useless.

Okay, life sort of sidetracked me from what I was up to with my site here, but I am trying to get back to it.  It’s just a little bit slow getting things sorted out and organized, but I am going to do my best to get things moving here again on at lest a post a week basis if not closer to 4-7 posts a week (yes, my goal is actually a post a day here wow!).

I’m not making any promises, but I am back to where I can get out here and make posts and will soon, I hope, have the changes I was talking about in place.  Stay tuned for those.