Oliver: 2024 made possible with a little help from good friends

For a lot of us, the best we can say for 2024 is that we’re still standing. Somehow, we weathered the storms and found ourselves looking at a new year’s fresh canvas.

Maybe that seems a bit pessimistic. However, the reality is that some of us have a lot of challenges. It’s hard to bring the sunshine and roses all the time, no matter how hard we try.

Still, we don’t wallow in the difficulties. We just find a way to keep moving forward.

Here’s hoping 2025 will be kinder and gentler. Or at least a lot less dramatic.

Of course, I say that every year. 2024 obviously didn’t get the memo.

Last January began with me almost taking myself out while chasing a mouse invader at our home. That I only slightly injured myself when I missed a step to the basement could be considered a victory.

Little did I realize then how often I would find myself bruised and in pain.

Sadly, it wasn’t just physical pain. This past year brought the deaths of several longtime friends, people I’ve known for decades.

Tony’s year began with me doing just about everything in terms of his care. That also meant that when he wasn’t particularly happy with how I was doing something, I was the target of his unhappiness.

The situation became unsustainable when I was diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time last February. I knew then that if I had to have surgery, I could no longer put up with Tony’s shower antics.

Enter our friend Andre. His daily help in getting Tony ready, as well as giving me a chance to do other things from time to time, has saved my sanity.

So have a lot of my dear friends, who stayed with me after my surgeries, held my hand at the hospital and brought food and encouragement. I even made some new friends during my latest cancer journey.

Still, the breast cancer saga was one that took months, running from the beginning of February, when the questionable spot was found during an annual mammogram, to the end of July, when I had the last of 22 rounds of radiation treatments.

Although Tony understood what I was going through the first time I went through breast cancer treatment (in 2019), this time was different. His aggression, even shortly after the first of my two surgeries, left me with painful bruises.

Perhaps it was the fact that I was trying to deal with my own health that I wasn’t attuned to what Tony’s behavior was trying to tell me.

Things got progressively worse until they came to a head at the end of October. Whatever was bothering him made him uncooperative to the point of not sleeping. He wouldn’t climb into bed and stood and paced for hours each night. This went on for a week.

Although I asked many, many times if something was causing him pain, I always received the same answer: No. However, it now looks like my dear Tony never understood the question.

Relief finally came with simple pain medication. What’s even more astounding is that it went a long way in solving those aggression problems.

Of course, Tony’s early onset Alzheimer’s disease means that there are always other problems to solve, particularly since the disease has progressed over the past 12 months. But, for now, we’re moving in a better direction.

That improvement has been in large part because of a care navigation service that began here in Illinois this year. Getting Tony into the GUIDE program for his dementia and working with the team at Rippl has been a game changer for us.

So has a program one of my dear friends has put together for me. Once a month, I have a scheduled “girls day,” which allows me to choose a group of friends and an activity. My friend Laura lines up the activity, and her husband, Jack, arranges for a couple of Tony’s buddies to stay with him while I’m gone.

I suppose all of this has hammered home the lesson I’ve learned during 2024: I can’t do it alone. I need help. And I’m entitled to have a little fun now and again.

No doubt knowing this will come in handy during 2025, too.

Here’s hoping the new year is a good (or better) one for all of us.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.