Daring to travel, leaving him home alone

storycrafter

It feels very daring and somewhat risky to decide to leave my dh home alone while I travel to visit my new granddaughter who is two weeks old. I've been encouraged to go by others. So. I finally acted on their advice and am going for it. It's an experiment; a grand adventure. And perhaps some healing/personal growth opportunity for me. We shall see.

We have a son who lives about 25 minutes away, and some very nice neighbors who look out for each other. I plan to call every day at least once or twice to check in on him. Often just an easy interruption is all he needs to help him break any negative thought patterns. I've let other people know and hope they'll follow through with discretely checking in on him.

It's my first getaway on "Grandma Deployment!" Just wanted to tell someone who understands; no explanation needed. Thanks for being here.

bishophome

Good luck on your trip! I share your dilemma with regard to leaving DH alone while I travel.

Joydean

Congratulations on your new granddaughter!! What a blessing they can be. You definitely need to see her and all the hugs and kisses you can give to her. Hope everything goes well for your dh. Best wishes for all of you.

Mint

Storycrafter hope you have a nice trip and hopefully you can have someone on call. I hope to take a trip in august and my BIL has volunteered to be on call for problems.

ImMaggieMae

Storycrafter, Congratulations on your new granddaughter! How long do you plan to be away? Since your husband is still in the early stages, why not bring him along? Seeing his granddaughter and other family members might be good for him.

eaglemom

Congratulations on your new granddaughter. I'm certain that you've thought this through and feel as comfortable as can be with your decision. With people to check on your DH and calling to check on him those are good things. Enjoy that new precious life.

eagle

PookieBlue

Story Crafter,

About 4 years ago, I left my DH home for 7 days when I drove to Winnemucca, Nevada to help my niece care for her 4 children. Her husband age 49 had passed away unexpectedly. My daughter lived 20 minutes away and his daughter a few hours away from DH. I called him twice daily and the girls checked in on him. I had food in the refrigerator for him.

When I returned home, I couldn’t really tell if he had eaten much. He said he had soup from the can mostly. That night, I was fixing dinner and had lit a candle on the table. I looked and he had tossed a hand towel on the table and it caught fire. We were lucky it didn’t happen while I was away. He didn’t seem to notice the burning towel. It made me second guess leaving him alone for a week.

harshedbuzz

Congratulations on the new baby!

It sounds like you have a plan in place, and I truly hope it goes well.

Will your son be driving the 25 minutes daily to have eyes on him daily? Can you return easily if things go sideways? I hate to live up to my screen name, but I really wonder if this is a safe decision. I often find a primary caregiver may not be the best judge of how competent a PWD will be on their own because 1) they're too close to the situation and 2) cannot appreciate the degree to which they scaffold for their LO.

My mom made a similar decision and it did not end well. This was before he was even diagnosed (because she was fighting me on the need to evaluate); 2 months prior he'd managed to drive from FL to MD so fairly "high" functioning in her mind.

Her sister died and she wanted me to drive her from MD to Boston; I offered to send her on the train and stay with dad for a few days, but she really wanted me to go. He'd had a minor psychotic episode the week before and the local ER cleared him for a stroke and sent him home with a referral to a neurologist scheduling 6 months out. She arranged for dear friends who lived across the street to check in-- they had him for dinner and the wife stopped by in the late morning as well. He was generally fine alone for hours at a time at this point.

Three days in, the neighbor called and said dad was tanking. He was refusing to go to dinner. He was talking crazy. We attended the service and started home. We made it as far as my house in PA and she got up the next morning to finish the drive to MD arriving just before 9am. The house was trashed-- there was broken glass everywhere. He'd developed some sort of psychosis seeing people looking in windows and in the artwork on the walls. He believed he'd killed someone. It was awful. It took most of the day to get him into the car so she could drive him north to the university hospital ER an hour south of where I live.

I'm not saying this will happen, but be sure you have a contingency plan and someone competent to step in. We were fortunate that this couple understood dementia having been through it with their own moms.

HB

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Ed1937

There are many reasons you should be able to get some time away. But like some of the others, I'd really be concerned about leaving him alone. Too many things can go wrong in the blink of an eye. Is it possible to have respite through a stay at a facility? If something happened to him while you were gone, you would have a hard time living with the decision to go.

Congrats on the new family member.

Marta

Storycrafter: do you hear the words of caution and concern these board members have for you? I, too, regret leaving my husband alone while I attended a two day medical conference. I rushed home the second day and found him emotionally distraught. He was totally lost without me. I was, like HB wisely stated, too close to the situation and hadn’t realized how much scaffolding I had been providing