Caregiving: I am taking care of my husband and my Mother.

My husband has dementia level 5 and he also had a kidney removed because of a cancerous tumor 4 months ago. My husband also has prostate cancer rated a 8 on the Gleason scale. My husband was very forgetful before the kidney removal but never like since the operation his dementia has really advanced since then. I had also been taking care of my 86 yr old mother who had broken some ribs and back 4 yrs ago. she recovered pretty well and was doing good but would not use her walker no matter what I told her. Well a month and a half ago she fell again and broke her hip. I live one block from her. After a month in the hospital I brought her home for she is able to walk slowly with a walker and I got her a medical alert pendant. I had to take care of her full time for the first week she was out along with my husband until my sister arrived to help with Mom. My sister will be here for a month. My husband takes a lot of caring for and must have constant supervision by me or he get's all upset and frightened and disoriented. 2012 has been such a bad year, My close childhood friend died of pancreatic cancer on Jan 3rd I had been visiting her several times a day from November 2011 in the hospital, bathing her bringing her food and just holding her hand and crying and laughing what ever was appropriate. I was also visiting my mother several times a day for she needed attention too. In Jan my husband was diagnose with cancer and with the dementia. I'm 61 yrs old and in pretty good physical health. I need to tell someone, I'm tired, I'm scared, I feel lost, I feel guilty all the time cause I think I'm not making the right decisions for my loved ones. When my children married and left home, both myself and my husband were in good health, so we decided to adopt two children siblings. Amanda 6 and Chuck 13months old. Chuck is now 16 and living at home and I feel so bad for him for it looks like he will have lost two fathers now. Amanda is now married and has a baby. As you can tell by this post I am all scattered and my thoughts are running all over the place. I can not tell those close to me all I am feeling for they are all carrying their own burden and the last thing they need is to be worrying about Mom. Since we moved this this new community 3 yrs ago and brought Mom with us and got her an apt close to me, my childhood friend was the only person I knew here and now she is gone. I need someone to talk to and to tell what is going on in my life but I can not afford a counselor. I love my husband so much we have been married for 36yrs now and I am slowly losing him each day. He is very gentle and each time he remembers to tell me he loves me I cling to this like a life raft because I know that soon I will not hear it no more. The other day, I was lying on my bed crying and my husband came in and layed down beside me and asked, why are you crying? I said, because I'm so sad, he put his arms around me and he started crying too. I asked him, Why are you crying, and he said, because I feel so lost all the time. So we just layed there and cried our-self out. Then when we were finished I said, I'll go make us a cup of tea. He said oh that sounds good, he said to me "You know" we should get married. I laughed all the time I was making the tea. I thought he was joking but that night when we were ready to go to sleep the last thing he mumble to me was, " we really should get married". I don't know what will happen but maybe just being able to write down these things will help me.

Emilie