Tuesday, June 28, 2016

 Three days ago, mom awoke at 4:00 am unable to breathe. She called continually for the nurse! Nurse! Nurse! Take me to the hospital. We didn’t take mom, of course. There would have been no point. She seemed well enough and her color was good, but there was no telling what she was feeling. It’s almost like having a child or a dog. You have to do a good bit of guessing. I did call hospice and was advised to give her liquid morphine. I was very reluctant to go this route, as I assumed morphine would further suppress her breathing. What it did, instead, was to relax her and put her to sleep. She was still sleeping when I returned from work at 4:30 in the afternoon. I woke her immediately and plied her with liquids. She was a little hungry. So I figured cereal might be easy enough for her to digest; however, she was unable to keep anything down, a reaction not unlike my own when it comes to any kind of anesthesia. I made a note never to allow mom to have morphine again, unless she were in serious discomfort.

I was most concerned about bringing her to a nursing home for a 5-day period of respite care in 3 days. When I did leave her off, mom was still beat. She sat on the bed, barely said good-bye, and fell asleep. I hoped she would last until she got home again. I didn’t want her final days to be spent away from home. I was also concerned because my brother was off to Italy again for a protracted stay. How would I deal with a problem without interrupting his vacation. Oh well, I decided I would have to call him.

Well, I just received a phone call from the home where mom is staying. The woman informed me (as she had to by law) that mom had gotten into an elevator with a stranger and was roaming the halls having a good time, talking to everyone, passing out the compliments and taking them, too. Have walker will travel! She was in good spirits, strong, and happy, and looking for me.

So much for my worries. All in vain! Sometimes I think mom would enjoy being in a home. There are far more people to interact with and so much more to do. But home it shall be. As for me, I have 3 days left of peace and quiet and I aim to enjoy them.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

 

Maggie Smith is a brilliant actress and my favorite. Recently saw her in “The Lady in the Van.” She plays a homeless woman who winds up living in playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway for 15 years. We are given the privilege of learning something about her past—much of which I will not reveal here. Go see it for yourself. I will say that she had been a concert pianist, causing me to sob through some of the film. Musicians are loathe to see other musicians suffer. For similar reasons, I cried and laughed through “Quartet.”

Her reluctant “caregiver” makes some poignant observations, including that caregiving is all about feces (only he chose the more direct word). And it is, indeed! Mary, as she was known to Bennett, was still cogent in most respects. She claims at one point to have seen a boa constrictor and is summarily dismissed. But in fact, some animals had been let loose from a local zoo, a boa being one of them.

And then I am brought back to mom. Had she seen a boa, I would have been surprised. She is more concerned about the stray fly on the porch or the “others” in her room. She and Mary share something, however: their droppings, so to speak. The daily occupation—washing clothing, toilets, bathroom floors, showers, butts—becomes a preoccupation. I am almost always called to these noisome tasks when I am cooking. I use a prodigious amount of surgical gloves, paper toweling, baby wipes, antibacterial wipes, and plastic bags (to dispose of feces-ridden wipes and diapers)—not to mention soy candles and lemon verbena-scented aromatherapy bathroom cleaner. Mr. Bennett has the great displeasure of stepping in some of Mary’s leave-behind in his drive. Sanitation in the home is out when caregiving. No amount of cleaning will ensure that you have not stepped in some small dried up specimen somewhere and traipsed it through the house on your socks.

Then there is the issue of having only one bathroom. When mom is showered, I must remove all objects from the tub/shower, lest they become contaminated. It’s no picnic. But as careful as I am, a visiting CNA will neglect to pull things from the shower, and the cleaning quadruples for me. And once you unknowingly touch a toilet flusher handle encrusted with the stuff, you wind up spending the rest of the day washing your hands over and over again.

Do I hear a “Yes, yes! Oh my god, yes!” Funny, how when someone else is going through “it,” you can see the humor. I suppose it’s a function of being once removed. I myself found Mr. Bennett’s predicament hilarious, mostly because I knew it to be true. “It really is that way!”

I wonder if someday I will look back at this time and laugh or cry. Probably both.