In answer to what I think someone asked above. I am on medication. I take amitriptyline for depression and hydrocodone for pain. For a week, now, I've doubled the A.D. It hasn't relieved my depressive tailspin, but it has quite amazingly helped my lower back pain. (Elavil is prescribed quite a bit for pain.) Meanwhile, I am taking doses of Vicodin (hydrocodone) just for the mood elevating impact it has on me. Both these drugs are highly constipating, so I am downing laxatives every few hours. All this pounding down of drugs might have been made to seem unnecessary by just a few nice things, said in the right way, at the right time.
I tell him I need moral support, and I feel zero empathy from him. I keep asking myself, "Could he really be this clueless?" and "Do I really want to maintain the huge commitment to him that I've made, when I get so little in return."
I think it's wrong to threaten an elderly, sick man with mild dementia . . . . but I find myself telling him, "You are going to be back in a nursing home, if you don't make it a little nicer for me to be around you." And that is the truth. His response: "I just won't go back there." He thinks he's got everything under control, while utterly not realizing how totally at my mercy his entire life style is. The guy just doesn't believe in worrying. Maybe, I could learn something from him.
Also - while he was in the nursing home for 3 months earlier this year, I was there almost every single day (for hours), giving him care and bringing him home cooked food. Plus, I took him home every weekend for dinner. I was so worried he would get depressed. If he goes back in, I'm not doing all that again.
As someone above said, I do for him what I would like done for me. But he's not me.
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