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Friday 2 February 2007

Enjoyable visit

By Mike on Friday 2 February 2007, 02:25 - Journal

The latest medical alarm is that there is a large hot red swelling on one of dad's legs. The people at the day care centre were concerned enough to call Rachel about it. I took dad to the local medical centre and he has been put on a short course of antibiotics. I need to phone him twice a day to remind him to take them. I've glued the packet of pills to the wall above the telephone (and in view of the webcam) so I can tell him where to find them. Just another day in the lives of the wrinklies.

Today mum seemed drowsy, but definitely calmer and less highly-strung. I applied a little test to her:

'Mum,' I said, inclining my head towards dad briefly, 'has he been behaving himself?'

Normally this elicits rolling of the eyeballs, heavenward glances, and exasperated shaking of the head. In her eyes, dad or whoever this imposter really is, never behaves himself. Except that today she replied differently:

'Oh, yes,' she smiled. So perhaps the Risperidone is working. The Aricept, on the other hand, appears to be running out of puff. Neither mum nor dad are any better now than when we started with it a few months ago. But enough of the medical stuff...

When we were out this afternoon dad and I passed a barber's on the way to the supermarket.

'Ah, I need to get my hair cut,' said dad.

I did a quick mental comparison - which of these two is less time-consuming:
  1. Dad and I walk to the ATM and the supermarket at dad's walking pace.
  2. I put dad in the barber's chair and get his hair and beard trimmed while I walk to the ATM and supermarket at my walking pace.
No contest. Option two, it was. When I returned it looked like there were still a few minutes' work still to do on dad, so I asked one of the hairdressers what she could do for me in 5 minutes. A number 4 shearing was the result. I keep my hair short anyway, at a cost of $95 at a much-lauded salon (with glasses of Chardonnay and nubile head massages thrown in, of course), but today's cut, taking only about five minutes and costing $25, is not that different, just shorter. I look slightly more thuggish, but I come from a family of thugs anyway. I feel like rough velvet, and I rather like it. Dad's haircut was well received, too. The first thing he did when he came in through the door was ask mum what she thought of his newly trimmed beard. She gave it a stroke and said, 'lovely!' Now there's a change!

Dad actually looked quite urbane for a few minutes, until his hair started to get ruffled again. He has funny hair. It is white and tends to whirl up to a point in the middle of his head. When a friend of mine saw a picture of him once she rolled around on the floor laughing because, with his pointed beard and pointed head, he looked so much like a garden gnome. It was as if the hair was just waiting for the pointed cap to settle over it.

I laid out ham and cheese sandwiches and peaches in jelly for mum and dad, and sat with them as they ate. Mum seemed excited when a bus went past outside. Dad said:
'When we first moved here, there was a bus-stop right outside our gate. They've moved it down the road now.'
'I remember,' I said. 'There's been a few changes since then. There used to be a "Christmas tree" down there in the garden. Mum used to put tinsel on it at Christmas.'
'Where is it now?' asked dad. 'Have you got it?'
'No, it was a real tree, dad. I think it just died.'
'A real Christmas tree? Here?'
'Well, it wasn't actually a pine tree. It just had the right shape. It was conical, not conifer.'
Dad laughed at the deliberate word-play. Soon afterwards he was asking me why I wasn't eating.
'I'm going to eat at Greg's place later tonight.'
'It's a long time since we were up there,' he said. 'I don't think we ever had dinner up there.'
'Of course you did, dad.' I said. 'You've had more dinners up there than you've had hot dinners.'
He laughed again at this; partly at the absurdity, partly at the parody - 'than you've had hot dinners' was always one of dad's favourite comparative phrases. This engagement of dad's with not just the subject but also the style of the conversation, a style I rather enjoy, was satisfying for me.

Watching them eating, seeing mum relaxed, and joking with dad made this an enjoyable visit - unlike all the others I've made in the last few weeks.

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Tuesday 16 January 2007

So far, so good

By Mike on Tuesday 16 January 2007, 14:33 - Journal

I checked Grannie-cam this afternoon and noticed a great deal of activity in the kitchen. 'Who is that?' I wondered. She was moving too fast for mum, and didn't seem to fit Rachel's description. For a minute or two I thought of calling the police to report an intruder. Then it dawned on me that today is the first day of our new cleaning arrangements. Alison is at the house while mum and dad are having an outing with Rachel.

So, next I called Rachel on her mobile to see how the outing was going. She was in the car and just about to park at Palm Beach, thinking of letting mum and dad out for an ice-cream. Apparently they had both been asleep on the way up, though dad denied this - as is his custom. He spends a lot of time 'resting his eyes'.

I asked how simple it had been to get both of them out of the house. The new ploy had obviously been successful, but had been touch and go for a while, Rachel said. She promised to give me the details of the story later.

When things go so well, there is little to report.

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Thursday 16 November 2006

And yet more...

By Mike on Thursday 16 November 2006, 14:17 - Journal

Today's post is very much a response to Redcedar's perceptive comment on yesterday's post. In particular the closing sentence:

Why do we not think of this dementia/oblivion as a state devoutly to be wished?

I can only speak for myself, but in doing so I recognise that there are two quite contradictory sides to my view. First, as I said yesterday, it seems a blessing that mum and dad don't even contemplate death because this means that the don't worry about it. What are the dimensions of this? It means they don't worry about their own, or each other's; it means they don't add a preoccupation with death (there is a poetic term for this that I wish I could remember) to all their other preoccupations. It means that, as Redcedar points out, they concern themselves with little problems that can usually be fixed. It means that while they need help with so many things, this is one thing that they don't need help with. I'm grateful for that, all right! So the benefits of their death-blindness are communal, so to speak.

On the other hand, I've inherited an attitude from Asian friends that takes this preoccupation with death (what is that term?) and turns it into a tool for the appreciation of every living moment. In Japan this is said to be epitomised by the regard for cherry blossom - so delicate and transient, beautiful and yet doomed. The blossom is a symbol for everything that passes - everything there is, in fact. People look at the vulnerable and short-lived and sigh. The sadness is treasured for the depth it adds to experience, rather than treated as something to be scuttled out of sight.It motivates one to get started now, make use of the day before you, carpe diem. It makes you value life.

This is where mum and dad seem (to me) to be doing something, not wrong exactly, but inopportune perhaps. Instead of sitting across a gloomy room from each other in a stupor, which is what they do when they are on their own, I'd like to see them pottering around in the garden, watching the birds and insects, observing the budding of the plants, just rejoicing in the tiny moments of life now that, unlike the rest of us, they have the luxury of time to do this. I'd like to see them in touch with the richness of being.

But of course, they can do what they want to do, even if it is just sitting around, waiting. Who am I to impose a rule that they should use their remaining time in any particular way? It all boils down to which value system one subscribes to, and mum and dad are increasingly disengaging from this kind of encumbrance. I suppose in deep dementia it all becomes meaningless anyway.

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Wednesday 15 November 2006

A bit more death

By Mike on Wednesday 15 November 2006, 01:40 - Journal

There was a documentary entitled 'Death' on TV last night.

I don't know which puzzles me more: the number of TV documentaries about death, dying, and terminal disease, or my propensity to watch them. You would think that with continual news reports about fatalities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Darfur (oh, and Congo, Lebanon, Burma, etc) that the TV companies might lighten the mood occasionally with more nice stories about fox cubs tumbling around in the woods and computer graphics-enhanced explanations of the water cycle. You would also think that when I stop worrying, dutifully, about global warming, terrorism, obesity, world population and the new clamour for a renaissance of nuclear power - and forget about my parents' eating and cleaning habits - I'd be ready to reread 'Wind in the Willows' or reorganise my beer label collection. But that's not the way it is, apparently. It seems like we've all developed a taste for the morbid these days.

It could be that the aging baby boom is finally beginning to acknowledge its mortality. This is a dreary thought. It means that for the next twenty or so years we are going to be deluged with morosity and hypochondria.

On the other hand, it could be entirely subjective. Perhaps it is all just me viewing the world through black-rimmed spectacles.

The interesting thing is how absolutely free of morbid thoughts are mum and dad. Well, mum seems pretty thought-free all the time, so it is hardly surprising that I can cite something she doesn't think about. And dad has had a peculiar attitude all his life. He was positive - he never let himself get too bothered about bad things - but not particularly ambitious. He would often express exasperation at the doings of the world. Watching a news report about a serial killer, for example, he would say 'I can't understand these blokes' - but he never seemed to see the world as something that he could improve. Thinking about it now I realise that he was not motivated by the need to transform things. While he wanted to do good deeds, he was fatalistic deep down - so there was simultaneously little effort to right the big wrongs and little ambition to climb high. He has consequently little fear of death - it is simply one of those untransformable things, an immutable fate. I must remember to ask him about it next time I am there. Mum too, for that matter.

The one benefit that lies hidden beneath the costs of Alzheimer's is that its victims are often unaware of their problem. The agnosia is commensurate with the decline: the worse they get the less they know about it. So, given that both mum and dad can get up in the morning and walk, fiddle around in the kitchen until something edible presents itself, and live in a climate that is (for now) stupendously benign all adds up to a picture that death barely figures in. Simple - the basics for survival are all still there. There really is no need for them to think about anything other than their daily preoccupations (running out of cash in dad's case, and how to get rid of the bearded intruder in mum's).

So, yes, it seems maybe it is just me, and come to think of it, this weekend I did see a documentary that featured fox cubs.

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