A-Z Disability Challenge | C : Be Truthful To Your Children

Howdy!

This post is very close to my heart. Since my sister found out she was pregnant with my nephew, I wondered how we were going to explain to him about my disability. It’s kind of easier to explain to children in the grocery store about how came to be like this. Our go-to is “god made me like this” or “I was born like this” but I have a feeling Nolan isn’t going to let those explanations slide. I think it is important to talk about disabled people with young children.

I’ve never been able to hold him like everybody else because of my arms, so imagine the expression on his face when I started basically wagging them in front of his face when he was about three months old! He was mesmerized that these large hook-like arms that were just swinging back and forth. He’s been practically in love with them ever since. He has expressed his interest in my feet recently, one day he was on the couch and I started waving at him with my feet and he just starting waving with his foot! He’s starting to realize how different I am compared to his mom and dad. We have a special connection.

Children are both very curious and honest creatures. They haven’t been in this world long enough to see the bad unless they’ve been taught it since they were in the womb! They like to figure things out for themselves, and only ask their parents or grandparents when they’re a bit lost for words. I’ve seen a lot of kids in various ages, stare but also try to shield their faces so you don’t notice them. They usually wait to ask questions until I’m fully out of view, but I’ve realized if I tell them “hi” or I wave at them, they’ll just put you on the spot right there and you just have to go with your gut and hope their families will fill in the gaps the best they can after you leave. Here’s my advice to parents who would rather dodge this discussion because you think it might be too difficult for them to understand; if you’re comfortable then explaining the differences between a girl and a boy’s anatomy and/or race, then saying something how a person could be in braces from head to toe, standing in crutches, or rolling around in a wheelchair will be a piece of cake.

How do you explain to children about disability? Where do you stand on educating people on how to talk about some of the more common disabilities, like spina bifida, blindness, deafness, or even cerebral palsy to children at home or even at school?

My Papaw Has Dementia

Hey guys!

Today, I’m doing something very different. I don’t normally talk about serious matters of the family until I have permission, but I finally got my mom’s okay to do this post. I have two reasons why I wanted to write this: in case anybody needs information for somebody close to you that has dementia. My second is I really needed to talk about it out loud before I explode!

I wanted to give you some background about my family, or at least my mom’s side of the family. I’m hoping that after I’ve gotten this one out, I can finally share those posts I have been saving since November about the great aunts. I know more information about her side since I’ve been around them more later in life. My papaw (my mom’s dad) is very interesting and I hope to God I don’t sound bias or anything, but he is!

He was pharmacist for 47 years! My grandparents have been married for 50+ years. Every anniversary, they would always celebrate it by going to Red Lobster. Our whole family took them to eat out at Red Lobster for their 50th anniversary in 2011. It was very cute and nice to be out fancy with my family. Everybody ate like kings that day! My papaw has a train room in the house, unfortunately it’s upstairs but it doesn’t stop him from going up there. He’s ordered and made a lot of model trains and tracks. He’s obsessed but in a good way! Whenever we would come over after school, he would be sitting in his desk and painting a side of a train so delicately!

We’ve been noticing a sight change in his behavior. I say “we” but it’s mostly been my mom and nana. He’s been forgetting a lot of different things in the last several months. My nana has had to explain a few things, like where everybody lives and where everything is, especially in the kitchen. More recently, the changes has increased; now he thinks somebody is going to take them back home, when he’s already home. They moved all over Indiana, spending most of their time in central Indiana before moving into the aunt’s house down south. My nana also thinks whenever he takes a bath and eats breakfast in the mornings, he should be going to work but he hasn’t been to work in a long time.

When he first started going a little loopy and I mean that in the bad way. He was mean to basically everyone. He wasn’t napping, drinking coffee/water like he normally does in the middle of the day either. He ultimately went to the hospital. I don’t necessarily know what all happened for him to go there, but I’m pretty sure these were the basic reasons. They did tests on him to see why he was acting the way he was. The main reason was he got mixed up with different medication and took too much. Now everybody watches over him like a hawk. He hasn’t been medically tested for dementia yet, but my mom thinks it’s very mild.

We’re mostly afraid of the bad really days, because we don’t want him to spend the rest of his life in a nursing home. He’s not going to like that. What hurts me the most is that I’ve been trying to comfort everybody and full myself up with as much of his stories of Hawaii, family, hear fun times with his friends Harold and Dick, etc as I can and I’m still scared of the inevitable. I know it’s going to happen, they’re both end up in a nursing home. If one goes, they both go because the house is too big and everybody’s already in agreement on that part. It’s always been known in our family that once they’re out of the house then it’ll be set for safe and that really bothers me, despite the fact that the living room and upstairs creep me out! I’ll explain that story on another day! I’m not ready to see my grandparents go into a nursing home or see somebody else living in their house either. I mean, all the holiday and family gatherings spend there. I’m pretty sure that’ll hurt me a lot.

I want to end this post on a good note, so I’ve decided to include some funny stories that my papaw has done throughout my life and some recent things that has happened while on his good days where he’s slept and drank lots of fluids.  My parents only allow me to go over there whenever he’s “normal” and not combative with everybody.

I feel like everytime I talk about my grandparent’s, I’m mostly talking about my nana. It’s not that I try to do that, my papaw and I have a special bond. I only watch sports with him. We share the interest of Butler basketball, cookies, storytelling and running our wheelchairs into walls. I love my papaw and enjoy being around him. When my mom started to hint that he was showing signs of early dementia, I kind of brushed it off. I didn’t think she was serious, even though she is a registered nurse, I still didn’t want to believe her. In my defensive, I don’t think I was the only one in my family that didn’t want to believe her either!

The other day, we really knew there was something different about him when he had to be taken to the hospital I think like, two or three days before Christmas. I wanted to come right out and say why I was asking for prayers for my own family on my social media accounts, but at the time I didn’t know how serious it was. Unfortunately, I suck at gaining information about it. My nana has said she’s been reading up about it. She’s been reading about how to act around him and his behavior towards others. My parents cook their meals, mostly breakfast and supper. They’re getting spoiled on breakfast with my dad (he does make great breakfasts!) and my mom takes me over there around lunchtime on certain days and we eat lunch with them and I feel like he’s been missing that. We used to it that every weekend, but then we stopped.

Every week, we would get a call at our house, he usually leaves a message on our answering machine making sure my dad knew that he hadn’t gotten lottery tickets and that he was going to win the big bucks! However half the time he calls he’s not addressing anybody in general, he’s talking to our dog ChiChi. He’ll literally go “Hi ChiChi, please tell your daddy or mommy that we need lottery tickets today. ” If you got this on your machine, it would warm your heart into a little puddle.

In 2009, he had to go to the hospital because he got a really bad infection in his foot. He is losing feeling in his feet, so if he sticks himself on accident with anything sharp, like in this case a staple that went right throw through his sock and shoe. He got an infection and ultimately lost his big toe on his right foot. After he came home, he did PT to learn how to walk again, but only to use a walker for a couple of years and now he just stays in his wheelchair. I got to see his foot after he had his toe amupteed, it was disgusting! I had front row seat too! It looks so good now! It’s a little weird that he’s missing a toe, but it’s more cool than gross.

He was a pharmacist in the army, we are always hearing stories about him being stationed in Hawaii He is a storyteller, now you all know where I got it from! It doesn’t matter if there’s a lot of people around or the same two people that were hanging out with him the day before, he’ll tell you a story about the funniest things ever!

The other day, my mom was doing errands and my papaw was talking about a time when was working in Hawaii, they had a dog that would scratch at the door. Her name was Amber. Somehow we got on the subject of baseball and like I’ve said before, I don’t watch sports. I don’t know anything about basketball. My sister does, definitely more about baseball than any other sport except maybe cheerleading! She would have loved what we were discussing that day, however he couldn’t remember the pitcher’s name, but apparently he was in Hawaii too or something like that, and he has the perfect play for a Dodgers game once and he was very upset that he couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but what got me was after he left the room he found pictures, one of them was a Buick convertible with him and a friend in the army overlooking mountains and ocean of Hawaii, plus a little doggy named “Amber” in the front!

I’m sorry for making everybody cry while reading this post. You’re used to more positive stuff on here and wham! I publish this one. I needed to speak out about it though. So I hope you didn’t mind it that much! Thank you for reading this post! 🙂

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Bloglovin

55 Fun Writing Prompts

After this past week, our internet has been off for most of the week and on Wednesday I had remember that I saved a file on my laptop of a bunch of different topics to blog about and even though I couldn’t exactly publish it right away, I did work on a couple and saved them to when our internet decided to come back on. So yesterday, I had one of those thoughts about what if it happens and I want to write a story instead. I went on my Pinterest and looked on Google for different websites, Writing Forward helped a lot. to get some more writing prompts for a case of emergency. After I was finished, I put a tweet on my Twitter right before I went to bed and one of my fellow blogger friends, Talicha J. sent me a tweet this morning asking for me to share them. I went for ones with adventure/sci-fi/personal prompts. Those are usually my favorites and I can express myself fully. I actually worked on one this morning and I already have three pages of it saved on my laptop. The prompt I’m using for that one is a man pulls a gun out on you. I’m pretty sure I still have Thor: The Dark World flowing through my head because I’ve got a bit of Loki and Sif running through my mind, plus got a vibe of Selene from the Underworld movies. I couldn’t just made something simple, no, it has to be more complex than that.

1.  Write a scene that starts with the word “blue” and ends with the word “face.”
2. Write about the morning after the day she died.
3. Write a short story where the main character has to face your worst fear and where the character’s nemesis is the hero.
4. Create your super villain alter-ego.
5. 22nd Century City.
6. A woman with an axe.
7. Write the following death scenes for your protagonist:
8. 1. A peaceful death as an elderly person.
9. 2. A violent death.
10. 3. All alone.
11. 4. By your character’s worst fear.
12. Create a character that is a villain to both your antagonist and protagonist.
13. Margaret Atwood was asked, “What will be the fairy tales of the future?” She answered: “Dark, those fairy tales of the future. But fairy tales have always been dark.”Make up your own fairy tale of the future. Or retell a fairy tale you know, in a future world as you imagine it.
14. Write about a coffee spill that caused trouble.
15. Write about the opposite of grief.
16. Write about Number Four.
17. Your antagonist  has four children, name them.
18. Not all haunted places are houses.
19. She had only seen dead bodies in photographs.
20. Random First Line: “As the dream faded, she chased it, forlorn…”
21. Write about the thing you wish you’d never seen.
22. Write a story that takes place in a parking lot.
23. Write a scene that involves tomato sauce.
24. Write a scene that involves bumps.
25. Write a scene that involves a milkshake.
26. Write a scene that begins with something falling from the sky.
27. Write a scene that starts with the line, “Darling, stop.”
28. Fantasy: You have just stolen a dragon’s egg.
29. Fantasy: You have discovered the fountain of youth.
30. Travel: Write several letters between you and your imaginary pen pal.
31. Travel: You are a passenger on the Titanic.
32. Crime: Develop your plan for world domination.
33. Fantasy: Create a terrifying, mythical beast.
34. Science & Technology: You have been granted immortality and lived to the year 5,000
35. How do you destroy a monster without becoming one?
36. Animals: You have been changed into a cat, how do you convince your family who you are and how do you change back?
37. Personal: You are blind, navigate through your typical day.
38. Historical: How will this decade be remembered 100 years from now?
39. Fantasy: You just found the warlock/witch’s spell book.
40. Events: An apple falls from a tree.
41. Fantasy: You have angered the Kraken.
42. Crime: A man pulls a gun on you.
43. Write a scene that captures a group meeting of Dead Anonymous (DA), a support group for people who’ve died and are having trouble accepting it.
44. The Earth has been ravaged by war, famine, disease, and devastating storms. In less than a decade, the population has dwindled from 7 billion to less than 42,000. There is no law or order. The grid is gone. Everyone is struggling to survive.
45. A man who sees ghosts checks himself into a mental institute, not realizing that the facility has been closed for almost 30 years.
46. Choose a period of history and a place that interests you, and write a multi-generational saga about a family that lived during that era.
47. A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass, and plant a tree.
48. A woman has three sons, all of whom are soldiers in a military that is at war. Within the last of three days, she learns that two of her sons were killed in combat. Six weeks later, there’s a knock at the door. When she opens it, she finds her third son standing there.
49. A pair of baby shoes.
50. A guitar pick.
51. You have a chance to take an all-expense paid trip to anywhere in the world, but you’ll have to spend three months there.
52. Where do you go and why?
53. You’re flying somewhere–anywhere–but when your plane lands, you and the other passengers quickly realize you didn’t reach your intended destination. In fact, you’ve arrived in a strange, wondrous world that you never knew existed.
54. There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper.
55. And you thought dragons didn’t exist…