Can You Hear Me Now?

My father-in-law called, excited about the free cell phone and service plan he was going to get. He's on Medicaid, lives in a nursing home,and can barely move most of the time due to advanced Parkinson's. It turned out that Medicaid was offering all its enrollees free cell phone service, regardless of their age and medical condition. I reminded Aaron that he had trouble dialing a normal sized phone. I explained that cell phones are small and difficult to use. 

"It's free!" 

There was no point in arguing. "Free" is to Aaron what a red cape is to a charging bull... irresistible and bound to lead to disaster.

So he immediately cancelled his land line, got the cell phone, and discovered it was...yes... small and difficult to use. David, Sami, and I tried to read the manual, but this was the tiniest, cheapest piece of crap I'd ever seen. Even Mikey had trouble with the itty bitty buttons. Aaron's hands shake like mad, when he can use them at all. 

David tried to show him how to use it, but it was no use. He had to wheel himself down to the office to make phone calls, and it was virtually impossible to call him back. 

David's brother and I talked--if I would get him a regular phone and arrange for it to be hooked up, Steven would pay the bill. I got that done this week, and was even able to get him his old phone number. He'll get a discount, too, and unlimited long distance so that he can call his family out in Arizona.  Aaron called the next morning. 

"My new phone works," he said. 

"That's great," I said. 

"I just got a brochure in the mail today," he said. "It says I can get free phone service with a computer. Can you find out about that?" 

I didn't hang up on him, but I came very close.

The Train from Phoenix

My mother, 92, is the oldest of 5. Leo Cutler, the next in line and the oldest son of Israel and Libby Mishkovsky, died last week at the age of 91. I flew with my mom to Leo's funeral in California. She did very well on the trip, and her sisters and remaining brother and their spouses were surprised at how alert and engaged she was. They last saw her a year ago, at a family reunion, and she was a bit overwhelmed by the crowds and noise, which makes her withdraw.  At the funeral-related functions, there were individuals to talk to, and Mom stayed in the moment and talked to anybody who would start a conversation with her.

On the way home, we changed planes in Phoenix. It was getting late, at least on Eastern time, and Mom was more and more disoriented, but cooperative, as always.  She looked out the bank of airplane windows as the rest of the passengers were boarding, and talked to me about the excitement of riding the train from her home in Indiana to Chicago when she was a girl.

Our plane spent a long time taxiing into position for take-off, and I closed my eyes. I had been "Mom" on this trip, handling the reservations of airplanes, hotel, and car rental for me, mom and my sister, figuring out navigation and meals, and doing all the driving. I was tired.

An anxious voice from the next seat woke me. "What if you sleep through our stop?" asked Mom. "What if we don't get off at the right place?"  I looked out the window. We were still taxiing, and I had to admit, it did look like the view from a train window. "There's only one stop," I said. "And everybody will have to get off, so you don't need to worry about that."

Of course, she did worry about that, and about the metal basket from her walker, which we were carrying. She asked me about 50 times what it was and whether we needed to take it with us when we left. She should have worried about USAirways losing the rest of her walker, which they did. She should have worried about me shaking the baggage agent into unconsciousness, which I wanted to.

"I didn't forget like this when I was younger," said Mom, about two hours into our flight. "I guess I'm getting old." She smiled, and I smiled back. "You're doing really well, actually," I said. I'm not sure she heard me.

"I'm 92," she continued. "I guess I am old."

She was still smiling, and so was I.

Betty is REALLY MAD

I turned 55 in May, and had one of those moments of clarity that make you a little dizzy. It occurred to me that I don't want to spend the second half of my 5th decade taking care of my mother-in-law. She's crabby, ungrateful, and annoying. So am I, but on me, it's charming.

She and Mikey had also been fighting like twelve year olds. He actually IS twelve, but she's 87. Plus he knows more swear words than she does, so he's been winning. Still, it's unpleasant, and it occurred to me that my primary duty was to him, not to her. So I started looking at assisted living centers, found two, realized one had a huge waiting list because it's cheap, and found out that the other one could take Betty in 5 days but it was barely affordable.

You don't have to ask which one I chose, right?

Betty vacillates between liking the place and hating all of us for sending her there, but me and the kids are over the moon with happiness.  Here's the short list of why:

1. We don't have to hide the honey and sugar.

2. We don't have to hide the snacks.

3. We don't have to maintain separate jars of peanut butter and pray that she only sticks her fingers in the
    one marked "Betty."

4. We don't come downstairs in the morning and find bowls of margarine, plates covered with cornmeal
    (she thought it was sugar and spread it on bread), empty cans of cake frosting, etc.

5. We don't grit our teeth and wonder if she washed her hands before she got into the bread, ice, fruit,
     ice cream, and other foods we all have to share. (She didn't)

6. We don't have to listen to her clicking dentures, watch as she yanks them out of her mouth while we're
    eating, find them when she accidentally throws them in the trash, or see them in the bathroom floating
    in their plastic container.

I could go on and on, but I'm saving it for an essay I'm going to write, or possibly a novel. Suffice it to say that every day is peaceful now. I don't have to badger Betty to eat three times a day and take her pills, I don't have to hide food she shouldn't eat, and I don't dread the sight of her coming out of her room toward the kitchen to complain about something, ask for something, or tell me about her most recent "dissociative state."  (That's a nightmare to you and me.)  My mother is still with us, but she is generally in a pleasant, agreeable fog.

Betty has been at Riverwalk Commons for just under 2 weeks, and yesterday when David went to hook up her phone, she yelled at him, threatened to report him to the VA for abandoning her, etc. Apparently she had some choice names for me, too, for kicking her out of "her home." He said he's not going back to see her. So tomorrow, Betty and I are going to have a chat about how she treats my husband, whose home she was living in, and whose idea it was to move her out. I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

What's "Normal?"

How do you explain to an ER doc that you've brought your 91-year-old mother in because she's acting too normal? And when he asks her what month and year it is and she gets it right, and he looks at you like Maybe YOU need to give us a urine sample, how do you explain that it's not normal that she's acting so normal? It helped that she went on to explain that she saw snow flakes hitting the windshield on the way in (it wasn't snowing) and that she's been seeing curtains moving in front of her face for several days (there weren't any curtains).

This started about two days earlier when my mother did something she doesn't usually do--she got up in the morning, got dressed, and came downstairs for breakfast. That was the first sign that something was amiss, because she's usually asleep until Kathy, her caregiver, or I come upstairs in the mid-afternoon to wake her up. She has always been a night owl and an insomniac. Now that she's in her 90's, and lives in my house, I have come to expect this. Okay, let's be honest... I've come to appreciate this. I don't have to worry about her when she's asleep. I hear her door creak every few hours as she gets up to use the bathroom, and I call up, "HI MOM" and make sure she smiles and acknowledges me, so I know she's fine, but I can also shop, write, watch the news, meet friends, etc., with the happy knowledge that she has no idea I'm neglecting her. I'll wake her up when it's convenient, or Kathy will (which is more convenient), and she'll be shocked that it's so late in the day. She'll say what she says every afternoon: "I never sleep this late!" and I'll know everything is normal.

So having her appear in the kitchen at 9am, wide awake, dressed for the day, and perky, is weird for me. When it happened two days in a row, I had the selfish thought that my life might have to change. I don't entertain my mother when she's up, but I think I should. I should take her with me on my errands, out with my friends, to the grocery store, etc. I should sit at the kitchen table and chat her up like Kathy does. I should take her to stimulating places, like Kathy does. But I don't want to. I like my alone time. I like to race from store to store when I shop, sit for hours at my computer when I write, and listen to Dr. Laura on my iPhone when I cook I don't want to slow down and help little old ladies in and out of cars, walk slowly through automatic-opening doors while holding onto little old ladies' elbows so they don't fall. I LIKE TO MOVE FAST WHEN I MOVE AT ALL. People tell me I'm a saint for caring for my mother (and mother-in-law), but I know that if God can read my mind, I'm still going to hell.

On Friday morning, not only was my mother up early, but she was worried about her winter coats--where were they, had they been stolen when she moved, etc. She fretted about this at length, and then started asking about kitchen utensils she couldn't find. She remembered many of these in great detail, and expressed her disgust that various people had probably taken them when she wasn't looking. I couldn't tell her that I had let the auction guy sell 90% of her stuff several years ago. Not the nice coats, but most of the kitchen stuff. My siblings took some things, I took some things, but she hadn't thrown anything away since the mid-70's, and how many wooden spoons can a person use, even if they have nice metal handles?

Kathy spent most of Friday with my mother because the kids were out of school. Kathy's other job is substitute teaching, which is how I met her. I spend most of Friday with my kids, particularly Sami, 16, shopping, eating lunch, etc. Kathy called me at the end of the afternoon to tell me that my mother had been way more alert than usual, but fretted about little things that normally wouldn't even claim her attention. She was worried that the Thanksgiving groceries I sent them to buy were for tonight's dinner, and got cranky with Kathy when she wouldn't bring them home faster. She also kept talking about a plant in a bowl of marbles that had recently flowered. Kathy is a very sweet, gentle woman, and usually fabulous at redirecting my mother, but it wasn't working!

That evening, I was watching the news, and my mother was in Betty's room, watching a different news channel. She came out to find me and started talking about Newt Gingrich, and how he was going to change the tax code, and how immigrants and college students were going to be expected to pay off our 15 trillion dollar debt. She was animated and urgent and quite bothered by this. About half of it made sense, but the other half was a bit twisted. Then she said, "You know, before we went to Vietnam to get Mikey (my adopted son), I had a bladder infection that I caught from Betty. I don't think I should be sharing the same bathroom with her."

Alarm bells went off in my head. Ten years ago, when we traveled to Vietnam, she didn't live with Betty, but something had made her bring up this subject. "Do you think you have a bladder infection?" I asked.

"Oh, I have no idea," she answered. "I just think it's wrong to change the tax code and make immigrants pay for all this."

I keep those packaged urine specimen cups in my kitchen cabinet, which will tell you something about my life. I gave her one and asked her to get me a urine sample when she could. A few minutes later, she was heading for the bathroom, sans cup, and I chased her down and handed it to her. "Oh, I already did that," she assured me. "Yes, but I need one more sample," I said, and she took the cup.

I called Kim, Betty's caregiver, and described the contents--cloudy, with little white floaties. "That's a bladder infection," she said. I suppose I was hoping this could wait until morning, but Colette (nurse friend) and the after-hours nurse at the doctor's office said I should bring her in as soon as possible.

Dreading an argument, I told my mom, "Your doctor wants you to go to the Emergency Room to make sure you don't have a bladder infection."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Will I need a coat?"

She was gathering up a book to read and looking for her purse before I could absorb the fact that she was cooperating so nicely. Fast forward to the ER, and the doctor coming in and checking her for signs of confusion, giving me the "Maybe you're the confused one?" look, the test showing she indeed had a bladder infection, and getting IV fluids and a prescription for meds.

Somehow the bladder infection had brought her back to me for a day, but I knew it wouldn't last. Thanks to the antibiotics, she would soon go back to her happy fog, and to being quiet, and not caring enough about what she was on television to get excited about how Newt Gingrich was going to screw up the tax code. It was like that Robin Williams movie, Awakenings, when Robert DeNiro comes out of his vegetative state for a time, only to revert back.

If you're a caregiver for a senior citizen with dementia, watch for unusual signs of normalcy. If you're a research scientist, please find a way to synthesize the protein created during a bladder infection and put it in pill form. It's better than Aricept.

The Funniest Mikey Story So Far

My son, Mikey, 11, has always been able to make me laugh. In another post, I'll tell you the Mikey Story that ends with the question, "Does this make my butt look big?" Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, he was invited to a friend's house. I've met this boy, and he's very sweet, but we'd never been to his house. When we found it, it was a trailer in a rather sketchy neighborhood; not the kind of place Mikey is used to. The mom was very nice, though. Young, not much money, but clearly doing her best. She shared with me the fact that she had her first child at 17.

When I picked Mikey up later, he was very quiet. Finally, he said, "When I first got to ___'s house, I was kinda scared. I didn't think he lived in a place like that."

AHA. A TEACHING MOMENT.

Mikey has been struggling with grades this year, and I have been riding him pretty hard, trying to make him take school as seriously as he takes his ability to do back-flips and chin-ups. So I said, "You know, Mikey, there are two kinds of people who end up having to live in houses like that. One kind is people who do lousy in school, can't go to college, and end up making french fries for a living."

That got his attention, so I went on. "The other kind of people who have babies when they're too young and not ready to support them. They end up living in crummy houses because that's all they can afford."

"Do you realize," I said, in my most serious tone, "that you are in puberty, and you have working sperm now? (gasp of embarrassed horror from Mikey) Your voice has changed, you've grown 4 inches in a year, and physically, you're becoming an adult. At 11, you could father a child, and your baby would either end up aborted or living in poverty, and you'll be right there with him, because if I don't kill you, I'll make sure you're supporting him. No college, no fun, just working at whatever crappy job you can get for the rest of your life." I was on a roll. "And here's the deal," I continued. "You're a cute boy, and in the next few years, some stupid little girl is going to offer to have sex with you because she'll figure that's the way to make you like her. Girls are like that now, and it can ruin both your lives."

Long silence. Finally, Mikey spoke...

"You don't have to worry about that, Mom. I'm not going to get a girl pregnant."

I congratulated myself on my brilliant parenting.

"At least until I get my grades up."

Before I Begin, Let's Talk About Fish

I just realized that the cute little fishy strip I placed on this website does several interesting things. If you put your mouse arrow in the strip, but fishies will gather around it. And if you click your left mouse button, you leave behind fish food for them. PLEASE FEED THE FISH.

Now I have to tell you what's going on downstairs in my kitchen. My mother, 91, and my mother-in-law, Betty, 87, are discussing how glad they are not to be senile. My mother just said that for a while there, she thought her memory was getting bad, but it turned out that the problem was just temporary. And Betty says the only pleasure she gets from going to the Senior Center is that the people there are senile, and she's glad she's not like them! This is the third time in the last five minutes that they've circled around the topic of aging, and had the exact same exchange. No irony there, no siree.

OLD POSTS I CAN'T BEAR TO LOSE, pt. 3

Life at the VA Hospital (6/25/09)
Well, it felt like a life sentence, anyway. I took MIL for her 6-month checkup, and just as we were ready to leave, she got sick, vomited, and ended up with full-body tremors that came every 3 to 4 seconds. Damn spooky, and we ended up spending the rest of the day in the Veterans Administration Hospital ER.

I had brought my iphone for entertainment, but the battery died, and I couldn't leave Betty sitting there while I went to my car to charge it so I could keep playing Scrabble. Well, I could have, but it would have looked bad.

So we ate lunch out of the nasty vending machines (her blood sugar was low, a possible contributing factor to the tremors). I spent the day making horrible faces at Betty when nobody was looking (including her) and suffering through her endlessly repeated, "I feel so guilty ruining your day," almost as often as she suffered the tremors.

At 5pm, they finally checked her in for overnight observation, and I went home. If my kids weren't so weirded out by adults drinking alcohol, I would have self-medicated. As it was, I met my family at Tae Kwon Do class and we went out for dinner. From now on, I'm not going near the VA Hospital without my iphone charger. Yes, it's all about ME.

Oh, I suppose I should mention that MIL is fine. They think it was low blood sugar, stress, and the need for her next dose of restless leg medicine that messed her up that day. David picked her up in the morning and she's been fine since.

We're Trying Aricept (6/27/09)
The VA doctors finally agreed to prescribe this, and I gave Betty the first pill last night. It's supposed to be taken at bedtime because of potential side effects. While the TV ads say "well-tolerated by most people," when you read the printed disclaimers in the box, it causes everything short of INSTANT DEATH.

Betty is worried this morning, for example, because she had a very vivid dream, and she's afraid it's a sign that she's losing her mind. She doesn't remember getting the diagnosis of Alzheimer's (despite having been told it 50 times), but she remembers seeing the diagnosis written on a paper in a doctor's office. Actually, she saw it on our kitchen table. She's sad and worried about it, and can't stop talking about how real the dream was. I got good advice from the cute curly-headed VA doctor: I told her that the fact that she DID figure out that it was a dream is a sign that she's NOT crazy. I on the other hand...