I’ve slept on the couch for the past 3 nights with mixed results. He has still managed to get up or almost out of his chair before I wake up. He’s very quiet when he’s doing this. I think in some part of his brain he’s thinking he needs to be quiet so I can sleep and doesn’t realize that I’m there because I want him to wake me. His dementia is much worse at night which means he doesn’t make rational decisions and can’t explain what he was thinking at the time. He’s also experiencing a lot of anxiety, mostly at night. We have appointments next week with his new neurologist and follow up with his surgeon.

Tonight we are going to try to get him comfortable in our bed, which I think we would be much safer for him. At least he could get out of the bed without having to climb over anything. We’ve added suction grab bars in the showers and an elevated toilet seat with arms to make bathroom trips easier for him.

We also have started making definite steps toward downsizing and moving to a smaller, 1-story home. Our next door neighbor is a very successful realtor in our area and she has started searching for potential homes for us. She’s coming over Monday to help us develop a plan for selling our home and make recommendations for needed updates and repairs before listing it. I’ve asked SIL to come and help us purge unneeded items and she has agreed to come for 2 weeks, starting the last week of this month. DH has finally agreed to part with his beloved camper and 1 vehicle, as well as his gun collection and some of his larger tools that take up a lot of space in the garage. He’s finally realizing that he’s no longer physically able to use these items and they need to go in order to simplify our search for a new home.

Pam - wow, you've certainly got your hands full. I hope you can get the therapy going better and make sure there aren't any unknown medical issues.

He's so lucky to have you.

DH had his first post-op checkup today and he is healing well. We will be discontinuing the home health services as of Tuesday of next week, which will be very nice. They have kept us busy with someone coming almost every day since he got home. He still has a lot of restrictions, but is becoming a little less dependent and needy and that is helping me a lot. Our biggest struggle remains sleeping since he is still sleeping in his recliner. I'm sleeping on the couch next to him to keep him from doing anything that might cause an injury when he awakens in the night because he is disoriented. He did manage a couple of hours last night in our bed, so I am hopeful that we will soon be able to sleep there all night.

We are also proceeding with our house hunt and getting our home ready to sell. Our neighbor and realtor has been a huge help in this effort. We’ve seen a few houses so far, but nothing we really liked. At this point I think we are going to focus on getting our house ready to list, then start looking more seriously for our new home. We have a long list of projects, including renovating our master bathroom, that need to be done before we will list the house. Again, our realtor has been hugely helpful there in telling us what it will pay off to do and what not to do and providing a list of contractors she personally uses and recommends. If we do the things she suggested, we should realize at least $50,000 more than if we don’t do the work, at an estimated cost of around $15-20,000. So we will be very busy for the next few weeks. Our goal is to be ready to list the house by the end of March.

Pam - wow, you have your hands full. Good luck with the renovations and the house hunt!

We are continuing to make progress, but it has been challenging. We had contractor drama this week when one of the contractors we were planning to hire for our bathroom remodel refused to work with another contractor we had already hired to do work in other parts of our home. He wanted the whole project awarded to his crew but as I explained to him, we had already hired the other contractor and I didn’t feel it would be fair to him to back out at this point. I offered to work around their schedules so they weren’t working in the house at the same time, but he refused to negotiate at all. My realtor had recommended him to us and she was really angry that he was being so difficult. I think she had a pretty strongly worded conversation with him because he did finally agree to make a couple of his employees available for some smaller parts of the job that they specialize in. She also provided us with another referral who seems like a good fit, but we are still waiting to receive his bid. We’ve also hired someone to do the landscaping work that is needed and he will start on Monday.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on cleaning out our master closet, which was crammed full of clothes, shoes, and purses and miscellaneous other things that we needed to get rid of. So far we have filled 9 large trash bags with clothes, shoes, and purses that we’ve donated to a local charity. And there were several bags of trash where the clothes or shoes were too worn to be donated. I had no idea we were such packrats! I still have a couple of shelves in the closet to go through, but it looks 1,000 times better. After I finish this closet, the rest will be much easier. Besides a coat closet, none of the other closets in the house contain clothing. I hope to start on the kitchen next week and at least make some headway on a few of the cabinets there.

Today we have a representative from a flooring store coming out to show us some carpet samples and take measurements for replacing carpet in our master bedroom and closet. I’ve ordered and received all of the new lighting fixtures. Today I should receive the tub filler (faucet) and I’ve scheduled the new bathtub to be delivered on March 4th. It’s been a whirlwind, trying to keep up with everything!

DH has been very little help with all of this, but he’s been very cooperative with the decisions I’ve made. I’ve consulted him on most of them, but for the most part he just doesn’t really seem to care about it. We both have tried to adopt the attitude that we aren’t doing this to appeal to our taste, but to appeal to the potential buyer of our house, which makes it a little easier.