Activities of daily living (ADL’s)

Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL’s)

Conceptually, I knew about ADL’s, but if you put a gun to my head, I may not have gotten them all right before today

I didn’t know IADL’s were defined as such a thing…..but they are

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living

• Ability to use telephone
• Ability to shop
• Ability to prepare food to eat
• Ability to do housekeeping
• Ability to do laundry
• Ability to drive or navigate an alternative mode of transportation
• Ability to handle medications
• Ability to handle finances

At this moment in time, Matt is unable to do, independently, pretty much this entire list

He tries…..like house keeping….but the results are not what you’d expect, so while it pains me to do it, I have to give him a failing grade on his independent ability to do that

Activities of Daily Living

• Personal hygine
• Dressing
• Eating
• Mobility
• Toileting
• Continence

Ok, the ADL’s above were the ones I had in mind when I started my journey looking at this morning

Why am I looking at this now? I am trying to sort out what the right next resources are that we need to pull in

I spent the weekend chewing on trying to determine the root problem I am trying to solve, having realized that I have been primarily focusing on trying to fit solutions into our situation rather than having the problem I, we, are facing define the solution set

The problem: I am unhappy providing all of the support Matt needs and as a result, I am unable to be the best I can be when I need to be my best for him.

I have one role that I need to be good at: his wife, his lover, his companion

Frankly, I am failing miserably at being anything close to good at any of those roles (IMHO, and yes, I am my own harshest critic.)

So, I ask myself, what the heck are you going to do about it? Now that the problem is defined, I can begin to solve it

Hence, looking up existing tools to use as guide posts, guard rails, structural frameworks, so I can begin to get to it

To my surprise, when I read the IADL list, Matt is unable to do the entirety, some of these items are hugely important, but which do I do and which can I get help to do?

He is making his way through the ADL list too, most of these I would give him a mixed score on right now, the only one he has in spades is mobility

As I chewed on this today, I got sooooo fired up

First I was hot angry: why is it that we are 3-4 years into this and no one, no doctor, no social worker, no care support person ever ran me through these lists, helped us score the situation and helped us understand the meaning of the score?

I am sure someone in the mix of it all had a checklist with these thing on it, but no one ever flipped the screen around and walked us through it in any shape or form

Had someone taken this role, introduced us to this, enabled me to track the progression, see what may be at risk up ahead, it would have made a difference, I believe

Its hard to say how and for sure, there are definitely strong possibilities that it may have been harder to digest this at points in the past than at this moment, but it really feels like it could have been monumentally helpful a while ago

With this list, I am able to pick and choose what I am good at, what I enjoy doing, get on the road to finding happiness in the midst of this unwanted situation

With this list, I can see clearly what I do not like doing, what brings me unhappiness, and therefore it defines what might be good for me to have someone else engage in

If he is going to get frustrated doing some of these essential things, we should pay someone else to deal with his momentary frustrations. I can then play the loving, understanding wife on the other side—the yen to the yang—things would be so much better if I wasn’t doing some of the things that end up in a bit of a tussle with him

There may not be perfect solutions here, but there certainly are better solutions in this new lane of thinking

I feel in more control again, I feel like I have a choice, I feel like I know what needs we have that I need to match a resource to

This is a much better place than trying to choose between resources and have the most attractive resource define my problem………a much better place than I was Friday