A lot of
things happen in life that you don’t expect.
Most of child rearing is that way, right? I mean, my husband and I are always turning
to each other and saying, “I don’t recall that from the baby class”, or “well,
that is exactly what I was expecting when I decided to be a parent,” as we
stand knee deep in vomit, or try to figure out what to say to a distraught kid
who just “broke up” with someone he never actually spoke to…
Turns out
elder care is a lot the same way. We
have been blessed with 3 intact sets of grandparents, which mean lots of
adoring eyes on babies, and extra birthday presents, more potential soccer
victims, and all of that. It seems that
as they age, it also means more trips to the doctor, more surgeries to keep
track of, and more ailments to learn about.
These past two years have been spent with one particular set of elders,
who have managed to both acquire dementia as well as the usual physical deterioration. I don’t mean to make fun
of them. I know it isn’t any easier for
them than it is for us.
But when you
go to safety proof a house, it’s a lot like having big toddlers, only instead
of putting locks on everything; you’re trying to make things easier to open,
easier to grab onto, easier to pull up on…
We have handrails everywhere in their house, lining the stairs, beside
the toilets, in the tub/shower units.
There are shower chairs, and anywhere we could put one. But you can’t put a rail in the middle of the
room. Well, just as when we had little
ones, you find yourself talking to total strangers in areas where your charges
congregate. At the senior yoga class at
the Y, or in this case, at the dentist, where apparently, half the clients have
been going for the 30 years that Grandpa and Grandma have been clients… And a woman was exclaiming in the waiting room
over a pole that had made her mother’s last years so much easier. She called it a physical therapy pole, and
talked about setting up in her mother’s bedroom, but moving it to the living
room as things progressed. It was a
terrific help for standing to dress, for getting from the bed to the bath, etc,
etc. It sounded like just the thing for
Grandpa’s nighttime excursions to the loo!
Only it turns out, that there aren’t any physical therapy poles
advertised on the web. There are lots of
poles. Some of them are lighted, some
are pink, some spin. Some are “portable”,
and some screw into the ceiling. Many
have recommended weight limits, and come with starter DVDs… Yeah. I did my research, and bought one of the
better, but less expensive ones. And I took
it over to the house. The caretaker was
taken aback, but we got to joking about it.
My brother in law, when I gave him the receipt, said, Does this say what
I think it says? Yeah. Carmen Electra Stripper Pole. Grandpa has a new hobby he wants to show Grandma….
These two
were both exceptionally smart professional people, with a public face, and a
huge value on appearance and intelligence.
It’s heartbreaking to watch the world fade behind their eyes, and see
the frustration when even the mnemonics they’ve hidden behind for so long fail
them.
I’ve sat and had the same conversation over
and over with Grandma, wondering if it will stick, or if I might just as well
be on tape. I challenge myself to use
synonyms, and change it up, not because it makes things more comprehensible,
but because it keeps me from getting bored and angry. She
has an Alzheimer’s type dementia, so it gets worse with her all the time. We have spent an afternoon talking about the
sky and the traffic in LA where she lived as a young adult, and others trying
to understand a letter that just came in the mail. You just never know. She angers easily right now, because she
knows she isn’t getting it. The hardest
thing is when she goes with me to Grandpa’s doctor appointments and tries to
give the answers to the questions. If
she’s wrong about how much he sleeps at night, or exercises, for instance, and
I have to gainsay her, she gets very offended.
“Who’s been married to him for 30 years?” she demands, even though she’s
giving an answer that would have been accurate 3 years ago. She has a schedule book for all her events,
but she can no longer find today in it, and doesn’t understand what the
appointments are that she has written down.
Yesterday, she asked me to explain Grandpa’s blood pressure issues to
her, so we went over systolic, and diastolic, then pulse, and what normal was,
and what Grandpa’s was. She didn’t even
blink, she just said, “isn’t that terrific?,” as if I’d just told her one of
the boys had won a trophy.
Grandpa is
aphasic, so he doesn’t converse much at all, but he’s happier than I’ve ever
seen him. There’s always a big smile,
and a laugh at even the slightest joke.
He has vascular dementia, which means he has mini strokes. It didn’t take his comprehension, but it got
nearly everything else. He’s frail and
tipsy when he walks. He’s had too many
falls, but he seems to heal marvelously from all the cuts and bruises he
gets. We have 24/7 caregivers with them
finally, but nothing is a guarantee. It’s
amazing how much space there is between a walker and a chair when you are
sleight and unstable. And now that his
heart is really slowing down, it seems to cost a huge effort just to breathe
and do the little things in life. He
still works on jigsaw puzzles, but where we used to try to find the 1500 piece
3D monochromatic masterpieces to challenge him, now we look for 300 large piece
puzzles with happy pictures. He goes through the paper every morning, like
always, but I haven’t seen him wear his glasses in ages, and he has cataracts,
so I’m not sure how much he’s really reading.
Today, I registered him for a DNAR medic alert account. The bracelet will be here in a week.
It started
with a visit to the ER last weekend. He slumped
in the shower, and his caregiver called 911.
He was more responsive by the time the medics arrived, but they took him
to the hospital anyway, just to check. I
met him there. His heart has decided not
to beat in a normal sinus rhythm any longer, but to beat in A-Fib, which means
that the upper half of his heart isn’t really working properly any more. They tried to switch him back, with Cardioversion,
but he wasn’t having it, so there we are.
All of the
sudden, the papers he had signed, the discussions we had had, those things
seemed a lot more important. What do you
do, at the end of the road? How do you
make things happen the way you planned?
We asked him again, because we know he is in there, if he wanted CPR if
his heart stopped. The “no” was clear as
a bell. So we filed the form with the local
Medic Station, spread the word to the extended family, and the care
providers. We practically papered the house
with copies. But the real nightmare
starts when his heart actually stops beating.
Because then someone has to not call 911, or stop a helpful bystander
from doing chest compressions in a restaurant.
Someone has to have the guts to hold his hand and kiss him goodbye. All the rest is just words on paper.
This aging
thing is a lot harder than it looks.
Sipping something properly aged, like Scotch, is probably in order.
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