By: Kory Jones

Word on the Street Issue 48, October 2024

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I’ll start from the beginning. I was 16 and I decided to go live with my grandparents because it was better than being homeless with my mom. So I went to my grandparents and went back to school. Everything was fine until covid hit. I had to go to school online. Due to people’s learning disabilities, my school made it to where a select few that needed extra help could come in to the school to get real time help. The school year went by and everything was going good. I got a dog about a month after that. My grandfather started waking up in the middle of the night at like 2am or 3am and was thinking it’s 5am or 6am, thinking it’s time to get up and start the day. So I would get up and put him back in bed. A few months later, he started asking where grandma was in the middle of the night when she was in bed next to him. So again, I would get up with him and put him back in bed. A month later, my older sister moved in and it was still on me get up with him and put him back in bed. He started to get more confused as time went on and we would try to find things for him to do. We took him to the doctor and he was diagnosed with Parkinsons and dementia. After a couple of months, I couldn’t go to school because my sister and grandma couldn’t handle taking care of my grandfather, so it fell on me. I did it because I had the gist of what to do. I did a lot of research. Although I did that, I still wasn’t perfect. He fell a few times. Every time I picked him up off the floor myself and called 911.the lady time he went to the hospital, he didn’t go willingly. They determined that he had a stroke of more than one. They kept hook that time and I got a friend to let me stay with her but that meant I had to go back to school, so I did. Every day I would go feed him breakfast, lunch and dinner because that was the only way to get him to eat. He would only eat for me. They determined he wasn’t allowed to go home and he had to go to a nursing home. The last update I got after I moved back with my mom, he doesn’t remember anyone anymore and he can’t walk.