To See Ourselves As Others See Us

We may get old, but inside our heads we must not always see clearly that we are.

The other morning I went to the nursing home early to help feed my Dad his breakfast. He can't walk anymore and he can't feed himself and after he has been showered and dressed, the nurses wheel him into the dining-room-for-the-distressed, where he must then wait for his meal and the help he needs to eat it.

After I arrived, my father's roommate was wheeled to a spot just across the table from him. Bernie is my father's approximate age and spends most of his time in dialysis. When he was placed at the breakfast table he promptly fell asleep.

My Dad raised his ancient, shaking finger and pointed at poor Bernie, snoring away, and then Dad rolled his eyes. "Look at that old guy," he said.

As opposed to you? The young guy here? I had to smile, because my Dad was also smiling.

On that particular morning, my father told me we were in Al's Barbershop and Al must be giving away breakfast to his customers while they waited.

"I'm sick of this," he told me. "All I wanted was a haircut." Still, the breakfast appeared to be free so my father, always both a thrifty and hungry person, partook heartily.

One morning he asked me if we were eating a "full English breakfast." I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded that we were. "But, have you told them we are one-hundred-percent Yankee?"

He's from Alabama and he only claims to be a Yankee if he finds himself on foreign soil. Like London. Or New York City.

When the nice young lady who serves the meals in the dining-room-for-the-distressed appeared with a warm hand towel for my father at the end of his meal, he winked at me.

"He knows how to buck for a tip," said Dad, getting his genders mixed up as he frequently does these days.

Yesterday I took my mother to the nursing home to see Dad and he was so excited to see her that they sat for a while holding hands near the nurse's station at the end of the hallway.

Mom and Dad together at Dad's skilled nursing center.



One older lady, whom I've described previously as Mrs. Anglo, sat nearby, dozing in her wheelchair.

My mother nodded her head toward Mrs. Anglo.

"Every time I see her, she looks thinner," she said. This from my mother, now so thin you can practically see the light through her body.

The good news is that in both my parents, the will to live on is extremely strong. And the feeling of youthfulness prevails, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

On Saturday my father was complaining about doing his physical therapy and we couldn't seem to talk him out of his bad mood. Then I wrote on a piece of paper for him:

"Are you through with life?"

He read it. And then without looking at me, he hung his head. Was it disgust that I would ask? Was it shame that I thought he felt that way? I don't know.

He looked up and me and smiled. And then he shook his fist at me.

And then he did his PT.

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Third Time is the Charm: Dad Incarcerated

The last two weeks have been the most trying of times for those of us caring for my Dad. However, the good news is that both he and the Mother have turned into the Monsters That Ate Their Young, so keeping one's distance will now be easier. All part of the fledging process, as the mother bird said to her chick.

I've been increasingly stressed, as you know, seeing that Dad could no longer survive safely at home and seeing how hard it has been to convince the Mother of this.

These past ten days, all that changed as Dad grew lethargic, unable to walk, unable to feed himself, and uninterested in getting out of bed. After antibiotics for an infection made him bounce back for a couple of days, he was back into his lethargy again earlier this week.

The hospital wouldn't take him because the doctor said he wasn't sick enough. (Did you know ER physicians call patients Gomers, as in Get Out of My Emergency Room?) and I finally hired a private ambulance to take him to his doctor. His doctor had me spend the day wheeling my 89 father in his wheelchair from test to test, with my exhausted 88 year old mother in tow, and at the end of the day, said physician made this brilliant medical deduction: "He needs to be in a nursing home."
Well, duh.

Oh and he also has a compression fracture of his lumbar vertebrae and his infection has come back.

Fortunately, some smart person invented the cell phone, so in the middle of this all epic journey, I called my sister, who was trying to visit her grandchildren in Florida. "Help!" I said. "I'm being held captive by the health care system! Call that Big Fancy Nursing Home on the Hill and find out if they have a bed please! A bunk bed will do! Just Google the number."

I must be a slow week for sick old people up on the Hill. And my sister is resourceful, found the number, and from long distance in Florida, got Dad admitted. About 5:00 p.m. I was taking Dad by private ambulance to the BFNH (private ambulance: $375 each way). Wow. The BFNH is really nice. And my blood sugar was so low at this point any place would have looked good to me.

It is so much fun doing Good Deeds for one's elderly parents. After a full day of pushing an unresponsive Dad around in his wheelchair from test to test on Tuesday, I was pulling a blanket up around him so he wouldn't be cold, when he suddenly came to and said: "Oh Robin, your hands really look bad." Thank you muchly Dad, but schlepping you around for 12 hours has taking all the skin off my cuticles and broken all my nails.

Wednesday, when I took the Mother up to the BFNH, I sat for a minute in the garden with her and Dad and sighed, "I haven't even had time to go to the hairdresser, or eat or take a shower." And she looked at me and said, "Yes. Yes. And I liked your hair better when you first came. It was shorter and ... " I held up my hand to stop her. Thinking, perhaps, I might slug her she ceased her critique. I'm getting dangerous.

Oh and it gets better.

After four trips up there yesterday, I was exhausted. By nightfall, my father had become abusive. This is called sundowning but is no less fun for having a name. I've hired extra caregivers to help him make the transition, but even they couldn't calm him and when I walked in, the garbage really hit the generator blades. He called me names. He was sarcastic. He called for my mother. Repeatedly. He yelled. He refused to eat. He refused to take his medication. I considered smashing his dish of ice cream on his head. I decided that wouldn't be mature. I hid behind a curtain, which was much more mature, and let the on-duty nurse handle it.

Finally, like a little child having a tantrum, he wore out after about 90 minutes. Also, a male CNA seemed to bond with him and Dad began to be tired and hungry enough to take orders. He fell asleep. His once-favorite caregiver, Carmen, and I sneaked out the door. I vowed never to speak to him again.

Until the next day of course.

I called my sister and told her how much fun I was having. Besides needing a manicure and a new hairdo. We laughed and laughed.

I told her about this crane they have that lifts Dad up and rolls him into the toilet and then sets him down where it can do the most good. (I'm going to have to get a picture of this thing. It really is an interesting piece of equipment!)

I told my sister I wanted to suspend Dad from the crane for the night.

She and I were laughing so hard we were crying. Or we were laughing to keep from crying, I don't know which.

She'll be here next week to join in the party. I can hardly wait. Meanwhile, gotta go. Dad is at it again, and I'm going to have to go up there and learn how to use that crane-to-toilet machine. Just in case.

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Missed it by That Much: Another Reprieve for Pop

I don't know if my angel friend the Patron Saint of Parking stepped in or what, but my father has made a miraculous recovery from his infection and yesterday was back on his feet. It appeared he had been to Lourdes, the difference was that great.

I didn't have the heart to okay his transfer to the nursing home when they called and said they had a space in a three-bed room. I asked them to put us on the wait list for a semi-private or a private room, and that's where we are today. He's still very rickety on his feet and is always one step away from disaster at every moment. But ...

... he missed Old People Jail by that much.

When I saw him yesterday, after two straight days of being unable to get out of a chair, he was standing in his underwear, getting ready for a shower! When he saw me peeking into his room, he took his hands off his walker and did a little dance. Later he was very funny and said; "You're my granddaughter and you should not see me nekked like that."

Well you weren't naked, I told him. Then later he told me, "Hey you're not my granddaughter. You're my daughter." Seems he's coming around in mind and body.

Also, today is his 65th wedding anniversary.

In the course of this latest crisis, I was feeling mighty low about putting him in the home (even though I still haven't done it), and, rooting through some old pictures of him, I found a baby picture taken in about 1920 in Birmingham, Alabama of my Dad as a toddler.



That big smile is so familiar, and now it is back again, for however long we have. Something else: my father is known for his big feet (which he managed to pass on to me) and I want you to take a look at that photo. Look at the size of that baby's shoe!

He's again walking around on those big feet, though it is more of a shuffle now than a walk. You have to give him a lot of credit for that. It is mostly his will to live that is keeping him upright. That and a very good-sized foundation.

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All the Leaves are Brown, And the Sky is Grey ...

Wow, the last ten days have been so challenging I haven't been able to blog. We've had the final hot days of the California summer season, and I, watching things at my parents' home, realized I was approaching meltdown myself.



I took a few days off during this final heat wave and headed up to the Sierras where it was really beautiful: but even then I couldn't write about it. I visited all the little Gold Rush towns: Twain Hart and Angel's Camp, Copperopolis and Murphys, Sonora and Railroad Flat, winding my way through Calaveras County and crossing the Stanislaus Rivers. It was good to get away, but I knew there were big decisions looming about what to do regarding my father.

I could see he was losing his ability to walk, which happens with some kinds of dementia of the Alzheimer's type. He's losing his motor skills. He's having trouble feeding himself.

Even with 24-hour care at home, we can't manage him if he can't walk. We would need two people 24-hours a day, and that's not even practical.

So I came back from the mountains relaxed and feeling better about things, but still aware that I would have to do something: that is, aware that somehow I would have to get my father into nursing care.

Nursing care is something no one in the family wants for Dad, least of all Mom who, upon hearing that we're going to do it, will go ballistic (which is why I haven't told her yet). Dad himself will be confused and upset by the change, and thus it will at first seem worse for him. And I will actually have more responsibilities, because I'll have to spend more time driving to see him, so I know he'll be okay, and driving my mother to see him, and helping to manage his care at the nursing center because you have to stay on top of things to ensure the one you love gets the best of care.

Then, yesterday morning, Dad couldn't walk at all and wanted to go back to bed after breakfast. I knew something was wrong and we took him to the hospital. He had a low grade infection and they didn't admit him, but that simple thing has wiped him out.

Thus I've visited a new skilled nursing center to see if they have room for Dad and to see if it is something he might like. Or might not hate as much as I imagine.

My sister and I have done this drill already once this fall, as you may recall, and the day we planned to move him, the Big Fancy Nursing Home on the Hill didn't have a bed for him, and my sister and I didn't really like the BFNH's attitude. So we backed down and let it go another month and now, here I am. Looking for another place.

I never thought I would say this, but I would rather go out and cover a 7-11 shooting, live, for the six o'clock news.

The place I've found, if they will take him, is smaller than the BFNH and closer to my house and my mother's house and is adjacent to the local hospital. It is sunny and bright. How they might treat him there, I can only discover once he is there.

But I must do this this week, because if I leave Dad at home, unable to walk, he or my Mom or one of the caregivers, or even myself, will get hurt trying to transfer him from bed to chair to bath, and then we will have another candidate for nursing care on our hands.

Come to think of it, perhaps I should just check into the place with my Dad so I can get a complete rest.

These are awful decisions we have to make, but there we are. Life, as my parents have known it at their home in Los Altos for more than half a century, will change and it will change forever. My parents had the option to make decisions about these things much earlier in their lives, when they were living in healthy retirement, and they chose not to do that.

So now they must rely on their children to make these choices for them. Just as we once had to rely on them.

We are in the midst of our first touch of autumn in Northern California now and the state is as achingly beautiful as ever. But, we are having a break from what P.G. Wodehouse once called our "relentless sunshine." It is somehow appropriate to the tasks I have at hand.

Autumn in California, as the leaves change on the maple tree just down the street ...

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Housing Our Elderly in a Dormitory of the Dead

"This is a terrible way for a man to die," Dad said last week in one of his moments of clarity." But what are the options?

In my house in Winter Park, I had a really charming apartment over the garage with a peaked ceiling and a fireplace. It was so cute that it was easy to keep it rented, though it was not always easy to find just the right kind of person to be such a close neighbor--that is, to have living right on my property with me.

One year, I rented it to a really nice lady from San Francisco, who had come to Orlando to help organize her father's affairs. He had Alzheimer's, she said, and she had given up her life in San Francisco, rented her home to friends, and come out to Florida to help get him settled for this final stage in his life.

How sad, I thought to myself, but naturally this will never happen to me. Life must have looked down on me and had a good laugh at that one.

Georgia was a wonderful person, a terrific tenant and a kind friend. She told me about a support group she was attending for Alzheimer's families (it is one I later attended myself). She pondered with me about how we keep everyone alive now with various treatments and medicines, so that they can all live to be a zillion years old and then die in nursing homes. Still, my parents continued to be self-sufficient long into their eighties and I just assumed they would continue to be like that forever. Georgia's problems didn't touch my own life back then. Silly girl.

It was a year and a half ago that my father was diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. Now my sister and I are doing just what Georgia did: we are spending a lot of our time organizing his finances, handling the crisis management, making sure he is safe, hiring caregivers for his home, and planning for whatever time he has left in the best way we can.

Today we toured another nursing home and it turned me into a basket case. People, in various stages of decrepitude, spending over a hundred thousand dollars a year each--money they worked for and saved all their lives--to live in what is essentially a dormitory for the dying. It was a lovely place, as these places go, but yuck and double yuck. I'd rather be hit by a truck.

Who would want to go there? No one in my family that is for sure. But we are having to spend about twice what a nursing home would cost, to keep our Dad at home and we worry that there won't be enough left for Mom's care. The other option: to hire a caregiver for less than the going wage and pay them under the tabled seems unfair to us. Break the bank or break the law. What a choice.

It makes me think that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse isn't such a bad idea after all.

It is too late for me to die young. But perhaps I was a little overzealous, a decade ago, when I quit smoking and started to take better care of myself. What fools we mortals be.

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