Thursday 29 March 2007
By Mike on Thursday 29 March 2007, 11:05
Last week, when we were discussing dad, Greg recalled the time when he felt
that our relationship with dad had switched, the moment when instead of being
dependants, we became the depended upon. I have already given my version of
this moment. It was about 1985, just after dad's retirement, and in particular
there was an evening at the Imperial Peking restaurant where dad, instead of
appearing urbane and in control, seemed to defer and dither in a way that I had
not seen before.
For Greg, it was about the same time, but a different occasion. Dad had for a
long time raised the idea of the three of us going into the bush together for,
I guess, some belated 'bonding'. For Greg and I it was not important, but as
dad gathered his maps and equipment, and kept the subject alive, we were
content to go along with it. About Christmas time I was back in Australia, and
dad had finally planned out a walk on the six-foot track through the Blue
Mountains. We were to spend three days together, fully self-sufficient. camping
at two places along the way. It was in the final lead up to departure for the
mountains that differences in thinking started to emerge.
Dad seemed locked into some 1950's model of bush-craft. He bought, and intended
to carry, two of everything. His clothing and equipment was all rugged and
heavy: wool sweaters and steel tools. When it came time to assemble, dad's
backpack was twice as tall and twice as heavy as mine or Greg's. We both
prevailed upon him to discard the weight, but he seemed intent on making things
tough, as if this was what it was all about. Eventually, Greg and I stopped
wasting our breath. The morning came to leave.
We left the train station at Katoomba and walked the few kilometres to the
start of the track. I simply could not walk as slowly as dad, so I moved ahead
and set up a photo of the three of us at the head of the track. In it, Greg and
I seem fit, glistening, dad already looks spent. Dad, as was to be expected,
complained of the heat and sweating, but for Greg and I there was nothing
unusual about the day; it was summer, after all.
The six-foot track begins with a long and steep descent into the Megalong
Valley. Each step is a big drop down, hard on the knees and quadriceps,
especially with a pack. It became quite clear quite early that dad could not do
this. Greg and I took a different approach to this problem. I wanted dad to
realise that he had made a mistake and stash half of his gear in the bush, for
retrieval after the walk. Greg, instead, swapped packs with dad. Even so, dad
was still much slower than Greg and I. We would walk ahead and find a good
place to stop, or see something interesting off the side of the track and make
a detour. Each time we waited for dad to catch up we offered to let him take a
rest, but he wouldn't.
Soon he was getting confused.
'We must be getting near the camp site. I can hear children.'
'I didn't hear anything, dad. And the camp site is still 5 kms away.'
Greg took a photograph of me standing in a river, having just tipped a hatful
of water over myself. In the background is a bandy-legged man, bent under his
pack, still hobbling towards us.
That evening, at the campsite, dad was too exhausted to do anything. Greg and I
made the food and set up the tents. Then two things went wrong, and were to
reset the entire context of the trip. Greg stepped on a piece of glass and cut
his foot, and I discovered that I had lost my wallet somewhere along the
way.
I considered the options at this stage. The first was to forget the wallet,
persevere with Greg's cut foot, and continue for two days, including the hard
section with no water that we would encounter the following day, and finish the
walk. The second was to turn back in the morning, look for my wallet as we
retraced our steps, and give Greg only one day of hiking on a cut foot. The
other issue of course, was whether dad could actually survive another two more
days.
I decided that we had to turn back. Dad was not in favour of it, but had no
power to affect the decision. He was desperately disappointed, and I was
regrettably unsympathetic. In the morning, I set off at a fast pace and
retraced all my steps, even criss-crossing areas where Greg and I had paused
and waited for dad. At the head of the climb I waited for what seemed like an
eternity, but could see no sign of either of them, and so headed back to the
train. I cannot remember who got home first.
Over the next several days dad sat silent and dejected in his armchair, unable
to muster any enthusiasm for conversation, meals, or anything. He had been
planning for our hike together for years and, when it finally came to pass, it
had failed. And, more importantly, it was evident to him, or so he thought,
that he had missed the last opportunity to undertake such a walk. He had been
unfit for it, and had passed into old age. He felt the full weight of failure
upon him. And I rubbed it in, pointing out how right I had been about the
amount of gear he had packed - although, as Greg carried dad's pack and was
still faster than dad, it was not a matter of weight at all. Over twenty years
later, I still regret my behaviour during those few days. It may have seemed
that the relationship of dependency had reversed, but clearly I had not
accepted the responsibility of my new role.
Sunday 18 February 2007
By Mike on Sunday 18 February 2007, 00:26
It occurred to me the other day that I have grown up exposed to a rare and
transient form of English: Wartime RAF slang. Although the war finished in
1945, my dad stayed in the aviation business, both military and civil, along
with many other ex-RAF bods (which was their word for people, literally
'bodies'), and so he continued to feel the mutual reinforcement of such slang
for many years into peacetime.
If something had been destroyed or broken beyond repair it had 'gone for a
burton'. Or it might be 'US', unserviceable. If so, there was no point 'getting
in a flap' - getting anxious or hysterical - or 'browned off' (fed up) about
it. It was better to just 'press on regardless', an RAF motto adopted for life
thereafter by dad. Alternatively, one could have a 'shufti' (a look) at the
'gubbins' (the insides, of an engine, for example). Better to see for yourself
rather than rely on 'duff gen' (bad information). All these terms pervaded my
childhood, and there was not a situation of any description, be it political,
social, technical, legal - you name it - that was not an exact homologue of
some aspect of dealing with aircraft engines, according to dad.
He had some other idiosyncratic phrases: 'little tiny' was always used in place
of little. There was also the word Bonzo - a term of endearment to his sons -
which puzzles me still. He was fond of talking about dynafocal mounted elbows
(either an imaginary device or a bizarre medical condition) to confuse people.
He also had an involuntary reflex that I found rather annoying: mention a
temperature in Celsius, for example, and he would quickly tell you what it was
in Fahrenheit. The same for pounds and kilos, miles and kilometres, pints and
litres. The pointlessness of it, and its predictability, used to exasperate me
terribly. I wonder why now.
However, it was in the expression of surprise that dad really had a full
vocabulary. On being told that there was, let's say, a lion in the front
garden, he would exclaim any or all of the following:
Stap me!
Blimey!
Crikey!
Stone the crows!
Strewth!
Love a duck!
I've found that one of these terms (blimey) has embedded itself deep in my
idiolect, despite my attempts to speak a generic English easily understood by
multi-national audiences. I wonder how this now out-of-favour word is perceived
by the generation X, Y, Next or whatever we are up to now. I wonder if it has
the same anachronistic sound as 'Zounds' or 'Toodle-pip' had for me when I was
a callow youth?
Dad's language, of course, is dying with his generation, just as it will for
all of us. Just thought it might be worth preserving a few samples against that
day.
Friday 9 February 2007
By Mike on Friday 9 February 2007, 16:46
No, dad was never an ardent phone user, not at all. It was always mum who used
to call me when I was overseas, never dad. I never even questioned it; why
would I want to talk to him? And when the calls went in the other direction it
was often dad who answered - 'Don Pritchard speaking!' - but he would
immediately pass the phone over to mum.
His phone manner has become noticeably less abrupt with the years. He once had
a habit of shouting, often repeated key phrases or numbers at a mind-numbingly
slow rate to make sure you heard them correctly (this was presumably a legacy
of the war, when clear radio communication was a matter of life and death). Now
he usually starts his calls with a clearing of the throat, a couple of false
starts, then a fragmentary excursion around the subject in question, which
itself is often hidden between the dots of the conversation. The only vestige
of the brusqueness of old is his signings-off, now so unexpected that he
sometimes even surprises himself, and has to call back within seconds to say
what he really wanted to say.
Many factors are driving these changes and nearly all of them are
Alzheimer's-related. Just recently he has been letting the recognition of the
growing clouds around him get a hold on him. The other day in his bedroom,
which seems to be where he and I have our deepest conversations, he said 'I
think I'm turning into a waste of space. I don't seem to be any use to anyone
these days.' He had just come back from mum's bedroom, and another failed
attempt to get her out of bed. Even the standard promise of a cup of tea had
not worked. I wonder if he senses that their days together are numbered, and
cannot bear the thought that she is going to spend them semi-comatose while he
is sitting alone on the sofa with no-one to talk to and nothing to do? He wants
company, and none of us can or will give him all that he needs. Hence the phone
calls, hence the indirect and oblique nature of their subject matter, rarely
starting off as a request for company, but rarely ending up as anything else.
Long long gone are the days when he could shout up to the top of the garden,
where Greg and I were playing in the mud, 'I want you two inside right now!' In
fact, in those days it was not dad who ever really cared where we were, it was
always mum who attempted to manage the opposed goals of getting us out of the
house to play and keeping us clean at the same time.
Now the phone is the first resort in the face of any problem, any doubt. We
ought to be thankful for this, as the alternative would be a real mess. If dad
thought that he was alone and had to fix everything for himself it would soon
get very ugly over there. Very ugly indeed.
Monday 30 October 2006
By Mike on Monday 30 October 2006, 14:00
On 14 July this year, Rachel took mum to Target to do some underwear
shopping. They had been standing, looking at clothes on racks, when Rachel
noticed that mum was looking ill and hanging on to one of the racks. Mum then
collapsed and was unconscious for several minutes.
Rachel's first reaction was to go perfectly calm and rational: "Mum's fainted.
I need to get help with this. I shall get the staff to help, and get an
ambulance here." She set about doing all the right things.
Rachel recalls:
The first aid worker in Target declared mum's pulse to be very weak and her
breathing was very shallow (so much so I wasn't certain she was still alive).
This was prior to the ambulance men arriving. They had told us by phone to lay
her on her side on the floor and keep her there until they got to her, so that
is what we did. Of course, by the time I drove home mum had forgotten all about
the event and later ate a good roast dinner. She had just finished this when
her own GP arrived.
The ambulance men checked for low blood pressure, low blood sugar, and pulse
rate. Mum scored 'normal' on all three counts. Once she was home she seemed
none the worse for wear, and later in the evening when her GP, Dr Patella, came
round to the house she could find nothing wrong with mum.
I recalled this incident this week when I noticed that mum's first scans, the
MRIs done in 2000, had been a reaction to her 'episodic falls'. Mum has fallen
several times, usually with only the most minor bruises. In fact, when she
falls, it is the ground I am worried about. She seems to be made of leather and
steel. They could probably use her as a secret weapon, dropping her from 30,000
ft to destroy terrorist training compounds in the desert.
Before drawing too many conclusions, I acknowledge that there could easily
be multiple explanations for mum's falls, such as:
- poor reaction time and weak muscles which lead to slow footwork when
unbalanced
- ear trouble which leads to an erroneous sense of what's up and what's
down
- brain problems which can cause... well, just about any problem
- poor blood flow - as with dad
In dad's case we discovered that his falls, which were more like fainting
spells, were caused by malfunctioning blood pressure sensors (the baroceptors)
in his neck. The pacemaker has largely fixed that problem. With mum, it seems
to be something different - a general unsteadiness, poor balance, perhaps
combined with occasional poor blood flow to the brain.
The professionals refer to this as TIA, or Transient Ischemic Attack - a
grandiose piece of jargon that describes a temporary stroke. It is considered a
warning sign of the increased likelihood of more serious strokes ahead. Mum
does not really fit the profile for TIA's or strokes, except that she is old,
which means she is beginning to fit the profile for just about anything.
Consequently, it seems the standard 'good living model' (healthy foods,
sufficient liquids, and exercise) is the best we can do for mum.
The importance of adequate hydration should not be underestimated. I remember
fainting once. It was back in the days when I considered sunbathing a
worthwhile pasttime. I'd been on the beach all day, had had practically nothing
to drink, and was probably as dehydrated as a piece of beef jerky. I recall
feeling faint and nauseous as I climbed up the rocks from the sand to my car. I
had to stop and rest on the way; quite unusual, I remember thinking. I drove
home and happily pottered around the apartment for half an hour, unaware of any
further problem, then went to the local corner shop. I was fine while I was
walking around the aisles, selecting what I wanted to buy, but while I waited
in the queue at the checkout I began to lose consciousness. It was like a
palpable grey curtain slowly descending over my eyes. I collapsed on the spot,
my face hitting the shop counter on the way down. I came around to sense people
gathered around me, all talking and offering advice. The consensus seemed to be
to get me on my feet again. I knew this was the last thing I wanted to do, but
couldn't resist. I was dragged up, dusted down, sold my groceries and sent off
home. I drank a lot of liquid, slept for a couple of hours despite a cracking
headache, and awoke feeling fine.
The odd thing about this whole episode was how much worse standing and waiting
had been than walking around. When I heard Rachel's account of mum's faint in
Target, I immediately thought of this. I nowadays find myself visually scanning
shops and public spaces, looking for the location of the nearest seat in case I
need to steer mum or dad towards it. These days I don't like to keep them
waiting on their feet for any length of time.