Ok, so it’s only been over 4 years since I last posted here, so I figured it would be a good time to provide an update.
In August, I quit my job and started planning for a big life change. We made the decision to move my father, who has been dealing with Parkinson’s disease, into our home so I can care for him. We live in New Hampshire and he was living in Oklahoma. He doesn’t like the cold. Regardless, he’s now adjusting to life in New England (right before winter) and we’re adjusting to life with me being his primary caretaker.
While it is a major change, it was the right time to make it happen. We moved to New Hampshire for my wife’s career and I’ve gone through a few jobs trying to stay active professionally while still supporting her career as primary and keeping the kids happy with their new schools, etc. Overall, the last few years in Hanover have been great.
My father has been in decline for a few years now and he has been living with his sister. She’s been great at adjusting with his health but the past couple years have been more challenging and she has her own life. So we’ve been covering home health care for quite a while as needed, but as the monitoring requirements grew it just didn’t make sense to keep up this system. We looked into alternatives, but the cost is so ridiculous and we weren’t willing to delegate care to organizations. (more on that in a future post)
So after a few months of planning, I drove to Tulsa on Sept 17 (in two days, stopping at my good friends’ home in Dayton halfway) and drove him back up here with all his stuff in a trailer by Sept 23. Lots of driving, but good to get it done.
He’s now been here for almost a month, and I feel the need to post. I have all these random notes and thoughts about this change and I feel like it’s better to get it out. Also, since I’m essentially retired from my online professional life, I feel like I need a creative outlet so I will also be pursuing some side projects here and there. I figure this site will become the home of both my random Parkinson’s care notes as well as some other pursuits. If you decide to read consistently, please let me know why and what part of this is interesting to you!