CaringCV

He is again in bed before supper but had been up all morning (bath day) until after lunch, when he was nodding off, the nurse said. The care aide said they would be sure to get him up when i came to give him supper.

Which is great if it works for him. These days it is hard to tell, but after i fuss around and hold his hand and stroke his cheeks, I always ask – are you okay? and almost always he opens an eye, semi-smiles, and says, Yes.

Today i did not want to stay until supper, and he was fine. I duck down until I am in the range of his slit of an opened eye. Sometimes i brush my hair across his face and he reacts the same as always, with a grimace and a smile.

I kiss him goodbye and see he is still lying so quietly, awake, just still, calm. So I kiss him again and tell him I will be back tomorrow. Slowly he answers, To Morrow.

They (you all! ask politely). I have been putting off this post for a long time because the answer is strange, to me and probably you who care about us, and we do thank you.

So after a few weeks of observation, – afraid to say.anything too soon – i think he is settling into his new level of disability. Which is severe..

He cannot walk or feed himself, although he remembers and relishes the motions.

He knows his name and stupidly I realised just Monday that he meant me when he said something like “delish.” For weeks i did not get it.

Duh.

What else? He still can direct the food and decide if it is good or not or if he wants more.

He has looked for several weeks like what i call Don Buddha – totally still, calm, listening to his ipod if it is on or not.

And he still clearly enjoys it (tearful blessings to the care home staff who give this to him )

But for a few weeks now he is more alert, tallking a lot, although i do not always/often understand and he does not remember 15 seconds to the next.

Nonetheless there are stiill remnants of function and memory.

And he is fine seemingly enjoying life as he has it.

And i am focussing on learning the same.

He is clearly still learning and as he does, so do I.

I already told you how he directs his food. He has gotten even more creative with his tongue, extended to be fed. Sometimes flicking it in and out, making me laugh while he says, come!

I remember crying joyfully to the LPN about 2 months ago, “He knows the word Open!” and so he did and does, reliably opening his mouth for food. LPN wasn’t much impressed, probably seeing the bigger picture of inevitable decline and hoping i wasn’t buying into false hope.

But I was impressed, because he had shown no awareness of the ability to understand words in the few months before. No, not thinking there was any miraculous long term “hope” but fascinated by the resiliency of the brain to learn.

Tonight he was totally jittery, babbling, grabbing. We talked and i sang (!) love songs and hugged him and stroked and hugged him and gradually he quieted, and centred on us.

But not totally. When the food came, I handed him a spoon, since he had been how-do-I-say? imaginary scraping the table and putting his fingers in his mouth, approving of the results.

So i thought he would enjoy the spoon, while i delivered real life food to that eager tongue.

I handed him one spoon and so fast i could not process, the spoon was hurled forcefully to the floor ahead of him. A chilling reminder that dementia is dangerous in its unpredictability.

Thinking about it, i remember he has been disturbed by that corner, with a dark chair lift stored there, for months.

Was it a temporory fit, or an attempt to fend off the thing in the corner? I will never know, and long term care is not equipped to problem- solve on this microlevel.

i am untrained and uneducated, but i know him. I could maybe do this level of problem-solving, but there is no time no space. Covid does not help. And dementia does, to be honest, make it all a bit of a crap shoot.

Anyway, today as i gave him juice, and he was very thirsty, he grabbed my wrist and perfectly directed the glass to his eager mounth. He would not let go, but let me take it away so he would swallow.

He is still learning, as he deals with each stage of disability, now horrific, but he keeps on coping as he can.

I see. I witness.

I will do my best to keep company with this beautiful human, as i have on this very long journey – a road trip we never planned.

So tonight i went in to feed him, as he now needs all the time, a change, startling to me because it seemed so sudden. But i remember even 3 years ago being surprised that sometimes he could not feed himself.

I guess i just chose not to see. Now, although he remembers the motion of hand to mouth, and uses fingers often to do so, the delivery is so uncertain we need to pop the food in.

We are in a different world now. He still is aware enough to direct the food and drink when offered: come; more; yes. Sometimes as with minced boiled cabbage tonight, no! (don’t blame him, it was dreadful in my non- demented opinion. Not quite as bad as the pureed chicken and mostly dumplings passing as the protein component a week ago, but well… gross.) Anyway he is still aware enough to say No.

Almost of all the food i offer is accepted eagerly, but sometimes he is so busy eating and talking and not really swallowing that he coughs and coughs and gets very angry and scared.

So tonight, after he calmed down a bit, he had a question and called out on his right to Dearl (his older brother) then looked me, Dearorl… then forgot.

Minutes later as we ate more, he looked at me and said, Elnor?

Oh, I said, knowing this was his dear older sister who raised him as toddler, who he always wanted to see on trips home. Oh, i said, assertively and i hoped bafflegab reassuringly, Elnor is in Napanee.

NO! He pointed at my chest. Here!

We all ask this question, carefully, probing. Many of us have dealt with death during this hugless time. The silent heart-wails of loneliness must by now reach the heavens.

Some people have become bitter, or hang on to.the denialist equivalent of temper trantrums in a child. Some of us adopt the be of good cheer and carry on attitude.

We in our caregiving sisterhood do neither. We are already so used to suffering that COVID makes it worse, but is just one more addition to what we carry and what we have witnessed about love, greed, and relentless tragedy.

The same for me. COVID is just another layering on to a decade and a half of caregiving grief.

I am very happy with my life and work, to be clear. I laugh and smile and love the fresh breeze, the rain, the sun and green shoots. I wish i could live only and forever in that pleasant, priveleged state of mind.

But underneath it all, the life i am continuimg for myself – the friendships, the projects, the achievements – there is the inevitable on-going cheerful caregiving – no longer walks, now spoon-feeding while my love flits in and out of the present.

So I dread mornings, when i have to.emerge from.great healing dreams and enter one more day of the same reality.

I feel, to.be honest, like a mostly happy optimistic person, who has been daily crying – even though I’m not! – for a hundred years.

He talks so constantly and quietly and randomly, that no matter how hard i listen, i can make little sense. Sometimes he shouts out urgently for people, “Sam!” , “Jim”, ” mary” but i know not these people he is calling to, i suspect for help.

We were in his room today, much quieter than the common area. He always relaxes in the quiet areas because all that random noise keeps him on edge.

Over and over when having supper I have seen him answer “What?” to noise from other people in the big common room. How exhausting!

But today we were in his – half – room.with just a couple of care aides chatting and laughing in the hall.

After about half an hour of cozying, we were in our zone and he was doing pretty good with the feet, (note- major conceptual feat for a guy whose brain is just not working. ) He was moving his wheelchair enough that several.times i had to retreat so my leg didn’t get squashed. Been bashed already a few times by that chair.

No matter.

After enough time, and it does take time, he felt good, although of course totally uncentred in time or space or sense, but pretty happy I think. He sang several lovely songs, pausing to do so amid all the words i did not understand.

So i wanted to go.out to talk to the care aides for a moment, and hugged him and said i will be right back.

As I scurried the 30 feet away, i clearly heard him say, “Take me with you.”

And when i returned to his room, he had slowly moved the chair about 5 feet.

He no longer walks and so , slowly loads of clothes, some rags, some very good, come home.

I sort through them, kind of, what is good enough for the thrift store, what is just rags…and i slowly try them on… and wow a lot of those pants and pjs etc, they fit well enough especially for around the house (and what else is there these days? ) Sometimes I even see my hemming on pants – those stitches mine.

And so, they fit.

Could be sick or nostaligic but I think it’s not. It’s just that I’m wearing the big guy pants now for us and all our connections and creations, and care and finances…, Continue reading →

Today (written January 16, 2021) i got the first dose of the Pfizer covid vaccine, because i am listed as an essential visitor for my love.

I was a bit apprehensive especially since it is likely the second booster shot will be delayed. But the company claims (uh huh) 90% effectiveness after 14 days. Too soon to tell, way too early. As far as i am concerned, i am approaching it as a miracle of scientific advance AND a population-wide experiment.

My mother took DES when waiting for me to burst on the scene, and i did develop cervical cancer 30 years later. I don’t think they were related but she did, so i am no stranger to the perils of drugs and drug company cures. The victims of the opiod epidemic can witness that much better than i can.

But anyway i trucked up to.the Campbell River hospital and got the shot. Better to try then not, has always been my motto.

Came home, took a nap, got up feeling absolutely great.

Realised a weight was lifting, slowly, but inevitably. Whether this particular vaccine works for the long term or not, there is life at the end of this terrible tunnel.of fear we olders have been living in.

My generation remembers polio well with many survivors marked by it; my friend Jim walked with a limp forever because of polio, and he was one of the lucky ones.

My mom’s wartime generation rememered smallpox and yellow fever and so much more, besides living through years of deprivation and endless fear and grief.

I went to measles parties as a girl, because if a woman got german measles (so we called it) when pregnant, the baby could be borne blind. So at puberty we girls went to.the sick.child’s house and were encouraged to.hug and kiss and share cake, and especially chewing gum, in the hopes that we would get the measles now, rather than a few years later.

I remember the yellow quarantine sign on my friend Beverley’s house because she had what we called rheumatic fever. She lived, pale and wan, and her heart was damaged forever at age 8 or 9.

I remember the kid a block.or so away…. and the endless whooping cough on a summer night.

So after the nap, when i got up, i began to weep from relief and appreciation. Science will sooner or later save us, especially we elders, from this scourge too. Then we can get down to the real.survival issues, like clearcut logging the old growth, like the embrace of globalization so that our country could not make its own masks, or vaccines, or cars, or plastic doodads, like over-consumption on the spaceship.

Like the survival.of the spaceship as a viable place for human life, and what kind of life that will be.

My darling gets his vaccine Monday.

Breathe.

I don’t understand – can only feel what is happening. On Friday my love’s youngest son came to see his dad for the first time in 15 months. This was just a visit, finally allowed.

It went very well, in a quiet room. As Don relaxed and we all chatted, I could see him homing in on his son’s voice. His son was calm and unperturbed which helped. We just sat and chatted. Don seemed satisfied and content. It was actually a great visit, for someone so very disabled, i thought.

Gave me a happy glow all weekend, just because it worked.

Had no expectations of anything as good today, when i bopped in to give him supper. I had a new baby doll for him too.

We were given a distant room, away from the noise of dinner, with a lovely view, which felt great to me.

It took about 15 minutes to get him to open his eyes and relax, and then 15 minutes of an outpouring of his words, none of which i got. Asking him.to repeat is pointless because he has zero short term memory, except if he is triggered by a feeling like a threat (for example, pulling his wheelchair backwards, or loud laughter.)

As an aside, i do not know how much his care people realise how extremely sensitive and fearful he is.

So anyway, supper came and was greeted with his usual eagerness. It was quiet like the last visit again in this new room and we were relaxing. I was for once not in a hurry, had no secret To-Do list for the evening.

I slowly interspersed small spoonfuls of food with love talk and praise (got a tad carried away talking about what a good man he was for me and had to stop and wipe my eyes! hurts when i think that way).

Anyway as the meal wound on, small spoonful by small spoonful, his words more frequently fell into place.

I was gobsmacked when he asked “when he is coming?”

He clearly commented, “Good supper” and for pureed food it was indeed very tasty. i stuck a spare spoon into each item before i gave it to him, and then used my sanitized little finger to sneak that taste under my mask. Probably not quite allowable behaviour but i did not want to taste stuff his spoon had been in. Infection runs both ways.

It was a sweet time as he sang as he ate, and then later, we hummed and sang. I know we were communicating in our own way and truely just contentedly being with each other.

It was one of those deep connections words cannot capture and i do not want to destroy with words.

Then, because the care aides said his dresser drawers were stuffed with useless clothes since he now needs clothes slit down the back for easier dressing, we wheeled to his room and i loaded up a bag of clothes to take home.

I asked him to hold it for me, (helping still usually gets a positive response) and then we went back down to the common area, him with the bag of clothes and Baby doll, whose name might be Shirley.

I swear i heard him say, as we wheeled, “I’m going home.” The significance of what seemed a random remark, has only struck me — packing and carrying clothes piled on him as we did in airports –oh my!

He insisted as we parted, commenting “Heavy” as i took the bag of clothes, that i took Shirley’s little blanket but he kept the baby doll. We will see how that goes.

Dementia comes and goes in waves – and the situation, noise, over stimulation, and time to focus all play a huge role. Apparently, a love connection helps if one gives it time.

There is so much more cognition buried under those layers of seemingly insensible dementia than i have realised.

For me, i can hardly wait to dip again into that blissful passing peace. I will be joyful in the while.