The emergency overflow ward is strangely quiet. There’s a faint chorus of beeps and murmurs and coughs, but we’re away from the din of acute trauma. Misty grey light is filtering through the window.
Soft restraints, the nurse said, because she keeps trying to pull off her oxygen.
-I wonder about the trees. (says Robert Frost, and I do too.) Poems show up at odd moments.
-I wear a lot of equipment, but I’m never really safe, am I?
-Live in the moment! (say the well meaning guides). Be like the children who experience NOW. They might lie. Children’s now is a bustling extension of the future. Come with me and I’ll show you a ward of those who only exist in the present. There is no calm and every hand grips tightly.
My mom’s care conference was today. I became acquainted with the new cat on her floor.
They mentioned that she sleeps a lot. It’s true. Almost every time I go to visit she’s snoozing. It makes me wonder about nature of dreams in a person with dementia. Is it possible that their dreams are coherent? What if… upon waking, the clarity dissolves into confusion?
Birdsong from a thicket. The chickadees were nestled all fluffly within an impenetrable fortress.
My mom couldn’t recognize me this afternoon, but she wanted to sing Christmas carols. She doesn’t recall the words so she loo-loos her way through them.
I got a call while I was making dinner. Apparently my mom tried to escape this afternoon. She managed to get on an elevator and made it down to the second floor. This would have taken some quick moves and timing, as the elevator is operated with a pass code.
I’m concerned of course, but there’s also a certain sense of pride in knowing one’s mom is a breakout artist.
She’s not adjusting well. Visits are a difficult experience.
A little taste of Alzheimer’s. I found this note earlier when tidying up. It’s from a couple of years ago, shortly after our dog succumbed to complications from a tumor. For weeks afterward my mom wrote these nightmarish little notes to herself in an attempt to explain the disappearance. In her eyes I was a bloodthirsty monster. She got quite creative with some of the scenarios.
Somehow my mom got hold of a round brush and tangled it up in her hair. It took most of an hour to get it free.
I turned my back for three seconds and she managed to do it again – but much worse. I couldn’t untangle it. She’s now sporting a new ‘do. It’s kind of punk.
The hardest thing you’ll ever have to do, he said…
I was talking with my uncle, who is going through a situation much like the one I face. My aunt started showing signs of frontal lobe dementia shortly after my mom’s symptoms started. He too is in the process of finding a long-term care facility.
My uncle worked as a salesman for a building supply company, owned a paint store and spent countless hours coaching hockey. Outwardly he’s a pretty tough character. Inside he is a very fragile man. I could hear the desperation in his voice. He’d been to visit the Alzheimer’s floor, and it just shattered him. Caught in the hazy world that exists when the strain of care has become too much and the horror that waits on the top floor -he’s unraveling. What to do… what to do…
I’ve been on the top floor a couple of times in different facilities. It’s grim, but it doesn’t bring out the same level of emotion in me. Have I been numbed? I see empty shells, mouths gaping, vestiges of a life. Just a transitory stage.
So much to do. So many hoops. Visits to a new doctor, visits for assessments, visits to get pills (I travel a great distance to do this – out of loyalty to the most caring and professional pharmacist in the world). Travel for useless diagnostics ordered by a doctor who likes to bill large. A doctor who has impeccably plucked eyebrows.
“You must have a great support system!" I hear this too often from people who assume that such a thing exists. I’m going to break through the surface one of these days. Right now my lungs are burning.
My hearing is better than some. Finely tuned, you might say. Today it is useful and infuriating as I can hear the exterior door latch turning from my basement workshop. I need that part of myself back, that little piece of my attention that is always devoted to keeping doors unopened and people safe.
Time for new photo I.D.! The nice lady at the licensing place thought it was cute when my mother couldn’t get her signature in the box without touching the border lines for the first four attempts. She kept printing out the form though, and she let out a “yay” when success was achieved. I looked at it and mentioned that it looked nothing like her signature. “That’s fine”, she said. “I think we’ll take it.”
Lachrimaestro 