Liberal, explained.

Hey! this is a lot of fun! When I first moved down here to Oklahoma, I knew I would be a rare Liberal in a redder than red state. They haven’t rode me out of town tarred and feathered on a rail yet. And they let me vote in the last election, too.

I get lots of funny looks when I openly admit to being of the Liberal persuasion, since nobody down here seems to understand what that really means. I don’t have a tail or horns, and if you see me with a pitchfork it’s because I’m helping a farmer with his hay.

I find it more than a little amusing, because over fifty years ago, when the old folks still remembered the Great Depression, Conservatives were despised for causing it, and the people elected the same Liberal president four times, even though he raised taxes and increased the size of the Federal government hugely. I think the old folks understood something that younger generations have forgotten, or more likely, never been taught.

My father-in-law Dan Wright was fond of saying, “I may go to Hell, but it won’t be for voting Republican!” They found out the hard way that capitalists were not in business to make working people rich. Quite the opposite - any good conservative capitalist pays the lowest wages he can to the fewest workers possible and charges the highest prices he can in order to maximize the return on investment.

Before the Great Depression, working people were not allowed to organize into a union and bargain for better wages, working conditions and retirement programs. Companies hired gunmen to patrol the streets and prevent any meetings or organization at all. In the teens and twenties there was an actual war between labor and management, using machine guns, snipers, bombs, and lynchings to keep workers from  organizing. 

After Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, he worked hard to get legislation passed legalizing union organizing, and requiring companies to bargain in good faith with their employees. He advocated for a living wage, not just a minimum wage. He raised taxes tremendously on people with a lot of money, and increased the inheritance tax, so one person could not keep enough money to support the next ten generations of idle rich descendants. 

Tax and spend Liberals, they say! Absolutely, I say. 

First off, Liberals know that the government does not actually spend money. They print it and circulate it - a basic function of any sovereign government. If the government doesn’t keep enough money in circulation, it becomes scarcer  and more valuable, (austerity), and you get a recession or depression. People who already have a lot of money like this. They get richer just sitting there and watching their money become more valuable.

To get more money in circulation, the government must either print more money, which can cause inflation (too much money becomes less valuable), or raise taxes. People who already have a wad of money hate inflation. Now they are losing money just sitting there.

The other way to get more money in circulation is to tax the people who have a lot of money, and force them to put it back into the economy. Franklin D. Roosevelt made owning gold illegal (you had to sell it to the government at a set rate) and he raised taxes of rich people up to 90% if you made over a million bucks a year. (It might have been half a million bucks - I forget - but none of them went hungry).

Millions of people had jobs again, because companies expanded, hired more workers and increased pay scales and benefits to avoid those high taxes. Conservatives have it exactly backwards! If you want more prosperity for everybody, raise taxes. If you want more prosperity for just the rich people, lower their taxes. Trickle down has been proven so wrong so many times they should rename it tinkle down.

With the prosperity that came with high taxes, we paid for the last war we actually won (WWII) paid for millions of those GIs to go to college free, built many thousands of miles of freeways connecting the country coast to coast, developed the best education system in the world, and sent men to the moon.

Reagan cut those taxes in the 1980s. Now millions of working people can’t survive without government assistance to buy food, our roads are potholed, our bridges are falling down, and our school teachers have classes of forty students, having to buy their own teaching supplies, using books that were out of date ten years ago, and work in leaky drafty buildings that should have been replaced years ago. But, Hey! Look! Our taxes are low!

But enough about other people. Let’s talk about me. Today I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time.

I walked into the office of the manager of Featherstone Assisted Living Home, and asked to talk. When she asked, “What about?” I told her I wanted to go back to the original arrangement we had when I first rented a room for Carolyn back in June 2016. 

She looked a little confused. I wish I had had a camera when she realized what I was asking for.

Finally, after a few seconds she asked,”Are you asking to raise the rent?”

“Yes, I am.” I responded.

“Why?” she queried me.

I need to explain something here. This is the story. We had agreed on one price for the rent, and I paid that price for four months until my savings ran low. I had not been able to sell the ranch yet, or find a way to get out from under my timeshares, which we really enjoyed but now were unable to use, and I had big car payments which was OK until the Alzheimer’s hit.

So I came in then and gave her notice that I could not make the next month’s rent, and we would have to move before the first of the month. The next day she called me in and offered to adjust my rent lower if I could stay. With a lot of relief, I agreed to stay. I have never forgotten her act of Christian kindness to us.

In the ensuing months, I negotiated an end to our WorldMark timeshares through a program that company developed to help people as they age out of the vacationing population. I thought they were very gracious and generous with me. 

Next I sold off the ranch in Nevada with the able help of Tamara Nordmeyer of Cowboy Country Realty in Winnemucca, NV. I made about the amount of money I put into the ranch when I bought the buildings and land many years ago. It is a comfortable nest egg, and it’s growing even on the low interest I get at my credit union savings account.

So I am living easily on the income I have from Social Security, a small VA disability, and the retirement I get from the years working a good union (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) job at Sierra Nevada Power. And I have enough stashed away for funerals and burials for Carolyn and I, and a little more for emergencies.

“I have never in 24 years had somebody ask to raise their rent,” she said. “Why?”

So I explained that I am a certified soft headed Liberal, and also that I had not forgotten the help she gave me when I desperately needed it. I also told her I really like the work she is doing to expand this facility to include 16 memory care units in a new wing in the back of the building, and I want to help. 

Shaking her head in wonderment, I think, she said “Okay”. 

I didn’t say so, but I also really appreciate the extra people she has hired this week for better weekend coverage. Last weekend was a big improvement.

So here’s another bit about Liberals that many people don’t know. If I have lived my life just right, on the day I die I want to spend my last penny and die broke. 

You can’t take it with you.

Texas, by God, Texas

Everything was going well until I crossed the Red River into Texas. Actually, it continued going well until I crossed the county line into Collin County. The speed limit dropped, which is always a bad sign, since the whole idea of a freeway is to get you there faster, not slower.

Not very many miles down the highway we came upon a big sign saying FREEWAY CLOSED AHEAD. The next sign a little farther down said ALL TRAFFIC MUST EXIT AT NEXT RAMP. In just a few seconds hundreds of red brake lights came on, and traffic slowed to a crawl. Many Texan red necks cranked their jacked up four wheel drive pickups over to the right and tore across the grassy median to the frontage road. I found a smooth dirt exit ramp and followed. 

Waste of time! The one lane of exiters on the frontage road soon joined back up with the rest of the traffic at the aforementioned mandatory paved exit ramp, and we just merged right back in single file again. Never once did I see a sign DETOUR or ALTERNATE ROUTE. Just eight or ten miles of bumper to bumper traffic on the one lane frontage road crawling through the stop signs at the crossroads.

I looked across to see the northbound lanes were blocked, also. Both north and south bound lanes were completely shut down, with no detour signs or alternate routes suggested. Going to have to find another route home, but I’ll think about that later.

My GPS told me it was adding 15 minutes to my arrival time at the airport, but it took more than an hour extra. Luckily, I had given myself a two hour buffer, so I wasn’t late picking up our granddaughter Chandler from Arizona.  

I will skip the time lost when I turned off on the George Bush Tollway rather than the Lyndon Johnson Freeway I meant to take. That was my mistake and as a registered soft headed Liberal, I am mightily ashamed of myself for that mistake. I got back on course by immediately exiting the tollway and taking the frontage road to Preston Road south, where I joined up with the LBJ freeway. 

I entered the north entrance to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and looked for a sign directing me to the American Airlines terminal. I found the sign. It said American Airlines terminals A-B-C-D-E. Well, that was really helpful! I missed the exit on  the first terminal, was not in the right lane for the next one, so I found myself entering Terminal D parking. I went round and round trying to guess at which way to turn as I came to forks in the road, none of which seemed to indicate where the parking was. I finally found a ramp into a parking garage, found a space. and went into Terminal D.

I took note that I was parked on Level 4, Row M. 

I went into the terminal to find the big screen listing the arrivals and departures so I could find out which Terminal and Gate I should go to to meet her when she got off the plane. I must have walked a couple of miles trying to find such a screen. I finally found it (I think there was only one in the whole building) and it was almost all departures. I didn’t take a lot of thinking to see that most of the departures were leaving Terminal D and most of the arrivals were arriving at Terminal C.

Do they really unload on one side and load back up on the other side? Never in my life have I ever seen another airport do that. Most load the plane in the same spot they unloaded it. I don’t understand how it would be beneficial to have to taxi empty planes from one side of the airport to the other side to load the passengers, but I keep forgetting I’m in Texas, by God, Texas.

There is a certain simple logic in having Departures leaving Terminal D, and planes Coming in to terminal C, I guess.

I tried to walk across the airport to Terminal C, but found that this is impossible unless you go through security and go through the skywalk high in the air. The terminals are divided by islands of parking facilities and I did not want to try to get through security with a pocket knife with Carolyn’s name on it in my pocket, and besides, I didn’t have a ticket.

I decided the simplest thing to do would be to go back and get in the car and drive across to Terminal C parking. So I drove around the circle drives until I was thoroughly disoriented, found a sign to Terminal C parking and dove into the entrance road. Which, like all the others, circles around to the other side to enter. There was a bunch of construction there which forced me to merge with some busses, but when I got past the orange cones and barrels I saw a sign with a P on it and tore up the ramp to find some parking. I entered the parking lot and it was almost empty. 

It looked like I might have been in the employees lot or something, but I didn’t see any signs telling me I couldn’t park there, so I pulled right in. I got out and tried to find a sign telling which Level and Row I was on, but there wasn’t any. Who cares? I can see Terminal C one level below, so I went down the stairs and into the terminal.

The Arrivals board in Terminal D said an airplane was coming in from PHX at 3:30 at Gate C-15. I went over to look at a short list of arrivals there at the baggage area, and nothing was coming in from Phoenix.

But there was a nice lady sitting behind a desk that said baggage assistant, or something close. I told her I was there to pick up my granddaughter flying in from PHX and didn’t know which Gate she was coming in on. She checked her screen and told me that C-15 was the correct place, and she should be arriving in a few minutes. I would have been about ten minutes late, but Chandler had called me to say the plane was running an hour late.

I sat down and waited for about 15 minutes, and my cell phone rang in my pocket. I answered and it was Chandler telling me she was waiting by the baggage claim. I asked her which one, and she told me C-4. I told her to hang on, I would walk down to see her at C-4. Evidently the employees at DFW are just as confused as the rest of us.

To make a long story short would be to miss half of the story. We found each other, got her luggage, and walked over to the parking garage. but the car wasn’t there. We circled the front spaces where I know I parked it, clicking on the horn button on my key fob, with no sound happening at all.

After trying another level or so at that garage, we walked over to the Terminal sidewalk and went in an adjacent garage, hoping I had forgotten which parking facility I had parked in. After walking several miles (it felt like) with no luck. a cab driver pulled up and asked if we had trouble. I told him I had lost my car. He told us to get in and he would help. I was ready for help! 

He drove us past every row and level in this garage, with no luck at all. So he drove over to the next garage and we did the same thing with no luck. How can this be? He drove outside that garage, and I told him I had driven in after going past a construction area. He circled around until he got on the same road, dodged the busses just like I did, nearly missed the hard turn right into the garage, but he drove us right to the car. 

I had parked in some private parking for the Hyatt Regency Hotel. He had me sign a form acknowledging his help. He explained that the airport paid him to do this. I already had a twenty rolled up in my hand, so I gave it to him anyway. I felt I got off pretty cheap. I did say I was a registered soft headed Liberal, didn’t I?

He told me he would lead me out to the exit, since the one from that level was blocked by construction. He slowly led me through the valet parking lanes at the hotel entrance and out the other side onto the highway, pulled to the side and waved me by. 

I accelerated into the highway to the toll plaza, paid with my credit card, then headed north looking for I-635. I saw the sign on the left of the overhead signs, and as I merged to the left, I swear the ramp to I-635 went off to the right. I tell you, the skies are bluer in Texas now! I told Chandler if she heard any language she didn’t know, it would be best not to repeat any of it. She said she thought she knew them all. I was afraid I might shock her, but she was laughing at me.

I was soon on Tollway 121, so I peeled off to the frontage road and continued beside the tollway until I saw the sign for I-35E to Denton. I made up my mind to take it, since I know the way from Denton to Durant by heart now. 

The rest of the trip home was uneventful.

I believe if Texas wants to secede from the US again, we oughta let ‘em. It would be a big improvement to the country. 

On second thought, I’ve got another granddaughter living near Austin. Isn’t that in Texas?

After all that hassle, the day ended beautifully. When Chandler walked into Carolyn’s room her face lit up with a big smile and she held out her arms for a hug. It’s amazing how fast a smile will fix everything wrong with the world! 

Paralysis

Hope is about all that is left. And there’s not a lot of that left, either. We know that on some day, the roller coaster ride we are on is not going to go back up the next hill, but just crash at the bottom.

When I got to the room today she was in bed, with the oxygen concentrator set on four. She was not moving at all, and her breathing was fast and shallow. She could not talk, or make a sound, so I went out to talk to the aide on duty.

They told me that she could not eat at breakfast, couldn’t even swallow water, so they changed her and put her to bed. Because her oxygen saturation was a little low, they put her on the concentrator, but it wasn’t doing much good because her mouth was hanging open, slack jawed. So they put the cannula in her mouth, not her nose, and the oxygen level came up immediately.

She did not awaken until after eleven thirty in the morning, and then all she could move was her eyes. I put her in the wheelchair, took her to the bathroom and changed her, and then brought her into her room again and tried to feed her. She was unable to swallow water.

The Guardian Hospice aides came to give her a bath, but once again had to forego that, as she was unable to move. Two weeks ago, I thought she might be walking by now, but she can’t even begin to stand today. The head nurse from Guardian Hospice came and ordered some new antibiotic for her sore throat, and some other medication with Lidocaine in it to sooth her throat.

Maybe it will work, or maybe not. I have slim hope that will fix much except keep the pain level down, which is good. With arms, legs, mouth and throat all looking paralyzed, I tend to think it’s neurological. Part of the ghastly reality of Alzheimer’s symptoms. It’s not just memory.

Just before dark, after Darlene came to stay with her through the night so I could get some rest, she tried to talk a little bit. Hoping that might signal an ability to swallow, I spoon fed her some strawberry Ensure from a cup, and she was able to swallow two or three ounces before she started choking again.

I know that back before they invented machines to keep you alive with tubes for eating, breathing, etc. not eating before you died was a common way to go. We are not using any machines - we all know what the end of this awful disease is, and we see no reason to prolong the ordeal. We don’t know when this will end, but we know it will.

We hope she can make it to October. We have the wonderful news that our granddaughter Melissa is going to have a baby boy about then. They’ve already named him Cameron. We have always thought it was great to be grandparents, but now we will be actual great grandparents.

The circle of life. A leaf grows from a bud, matures to a big green leaf living a useful life making food for the tree and oxygen for us animals. Then it gets old and shrivels up and eventually falls to the ground, to make soil to grow another tree. In many ways this is comparable to human life.

But it still hurts. Especially those near and dear to her who love her and are loath to let her go. We work to prepare ourselves, but no preparation is possible. The pain is continuous and inescapable now. 

I don’t think I’ll ever be without pain until I join her in the ground. 

Love hurts. 

Alzheimer's education

This week has been another session of continuing education. It seems the more you learn, the more you realize how much more you need to learn.

Because of friends on Facebook, I have learned a lot about adult continence underwear. I got a link to a different brand, which is wider, has “wings” to unfold for better absorption on the sides, and has tapes on the sides so they can be removed and replaced.

Also, I found out that there is a technique for “prepping” the underwear to address the problems I have been having. I was directed to a video on YouTube on the steps to be taken before putting the diaper on the person.

When they come in the package, they are folded in a way that puts a deep crease across the bottom between the legs, right where you don’t want a crease. So the first thing when you remove them from the package is to stretch them front to back to remove that crosswise crease. Then, with the diaper held from front to back, fold it lengthwise and crease it that way to make a trough down the middle. Then when you put it on, it is less likely to leak out of one leg or the other.

Earlier in the week Carolyn had a bruise on her left cheek that had us baffled for a while. She also had a small abrasion on her left elbow and the old wound, which had almost healed on her left knee, was scuffed open again. I was sure her eye was going to look black soon, but it didn’t happen. 

After considering several possible scenarios, we settled on falling out of bed at night, and brushing against the steel angle iron frame of the bed. No major damage occurred because the bed was very low to the floor, and the floor was padded with tumbling mats.

When I put her to bed that night, I slid her over, almost against the wall to make it harder to roll out of bed. She no longer sleeps only on her back. We regularly find her laying on her side now, so we don’t have to elevate her feet to avoid pressure sores. I also pulled the mattress over the side slightly to make sure she could not hit metal if she did roll out onto the mats.

Also, the next day Guardian Hospice presented us with a special mattress cover with foam blocks on both sides to inhibit rolling over the edge. They are not a restraint, I guess, because they do not restrain her, they just push back a little if she rolls over to them. So far so good, and her wounds are healing up nicely.

She is still adjusting to the new drug schedule, with some days still sleepy, and some days awake and wired. She spent all day Thursday awake and talking, restless and relentless. I almost wished we hadn’t changed her drugs. Almost, but not really! I like having her back, even if it does entail a lot more work for me. I must have “patrolled the perimeter” with her in the wheelchair at least a dozen times. She was not happy for long just “guarding the front gate.”

Today, Friday, she was asleep when I got to her room about 9:00 AM and the CNA told me they couldn’t get her awake for breakfast, even though they transferred her to her wheelchair and put her at the table. She was too asleep to feed herself, and too asleep to chew and swallow when they tried to feed her. So they put her back in bed.

I tried opening the shades to let the sunshine in, pulling the covers back to cool her off a bit, and I turned up the music on the radio. I forgot to say that when I got there, the Guardian hospice nurses were sitting on the couch discussing what to do. They were scheduled to give her a shower and change her clothes, but they could not get her awake, either.

They had already called their boss nurse, and she said she would come out and check for herself. I told them I would be staying with her and watching to see if she woke up. I promised that if she woke up and they were still on the premises, I’d give them a call. 

She was still sleeping when the boss arrived. She watched and listened to the breathing, took some vitals readings, and decided because of the mild apnea she was hearing that we would put a little oxygen to her through a cannula from a concentrator. Her saturation level was in the high nineties immediately.

Our daughter Darlene called to let me know she was coming to see her mother, so I told her she was still sleeping, but might wake up. 

At about 4:00 PM I noticed it was quiet over where Carolyn was, so I went  to see. She was looking at me through open eyes. I exclaimed, “You’re awake!” and she smiled at me. What a great feeling!

I got her up and into the wheelchair and took her to the bathroom to clean her up and change her. As I held her with one arm in front of the toilet, and lowered her trousers with the other hand, the diaper slid down too. Must have weighed about ten pounds - wettest one I’ve ever changed. But no leaks! That diaper prep actually works.

Darlene came in as I was finishing dressing Carolyn, and we took her out to the front lobby for just a few minutes, until time for dinner. Having missed both breakfast and lunch, she was hungry. She ate a large serving of egg salad, spooned up about half of the broccoli/cheese soup, and ate all of the fruit cup for dessert.

After dinner we returned to the front lobby, where people gather after dinner to talk and socialize. She began to make repetitious sounds over and over, making no sense at all, with one arm shaking with tremors. After a few minutes the tremors stopped and she started talking using real words in broken phrases that made no sense, either. It was obvious that she was talking to people that we could not see. All I could do was hold her hands and tell her we were with her and it was going to be all right.

Loss of memory is only a small part of the neurological devastation of Alzheimer’s. 

At one point she broke into fearful sobs, and all I could do was hug her close and tell her it’s OK. The tears running down my cheeks belie my words, but I no longer worry too much about absolute truth. I am more concerned with consoling her and trying to make this awful disease as easy as possible.

I kept thinking about the graffiti found on the wall of a gas chamber at a Nazi death camp - “If I see God, he will have to ask my forgiveness.”

She's Back Again

Two days ago, after long discussion, we reduced the medications that were keeping Carolyn sleeping most of every day. She could not get awake enough to feed herself, so either an aide or I had to spoon feed her, and she wasn’t eating much.

Yesterday, the morning of the drug reduction, she was awake in the morning for the first time in weeks. She was trying to talk a little, and it was obvious she had a lot to talk about. I couldn’t understand much of it, but I stayed attentive, and smiled and nodded my head a lot.

Her legs strengthened a little, and she could stand with my help without her knees buckling. That makes it so much easier to transfer her from chair to couch to toilet, etc. 

I told her, “Welcome back! I missed you!” She smiled and held my hand.

This morning she was wide awake, and talking up a storm when I got to Featherstone. I tried walking her across the floor, but she can only shuffle tiny steps yet. She will be moving pretty good, I think, with a couple more days like these.

She ate lunch in the dining room today, and she can feed herself now. That’s nice. When she was ready to come back to the room, I detected a pretty strong smell, so I told her we were going to the bathroom with her.

Worst accident I’ve seen yet! Evidently her bowels are waking up, also, and diarrhea happened in a major way. I stripped her clothes off and sat her in the shower, where I wore myself out holding her with one hand and using the shower on a hose to clean her up. After a half an hour or so, I had her clean and dressed in clean underwear and clothes, sitting in the front room. 

Then I went back to the bathroom, where I cleaned the toilet seat, the shower seat, the floor, and hardest of all, her pants. I had to carefully turn the legs inside out so I could spray clean with the shower head. 

My engineering mind kept picturing a long rod with a hook on the end to invert the pant legs. As it was, I had to turn up the cuffs and carefully push them up to the top. Either that, or rubber gloves that go up to the armpit!

My engineering mind also found fault with the incontinent underwear (adult diapers?). The absorptive material is shaped like a mound or hill inside, which pushed excess “stuff” out the leg holes. The proper shape to function better would look more like a trough for better containment.

Anyway, I had just sat down to relax for a minute, and Guardian Hospice came to the room to give her a bath. I told her that would be a good idea, since I’m not sure I got everything. I had already realized I had missed cleaning the wheelchair seat, so I had Carolyn sitting on a “puppy pad” in her rocker.

They commented on the sweat I was still mopping off my face, so I explained the job I had just finished. As I finished wiping the wheelchair seat, I helped Carolyn to stand to transfer her to the wheelchair again so they could move her to the bathroom.

The pad in the rocking chair was seriously soiled. She was still having trouble with diarrhea. So we put another pad in the wheelchair, and the three aides took her in to wash her again. I don’t have words to express my relief and gratitude for Guardian Hospice people.

After they finished, I wheeled her out to the front, where they were serving root beer floats, and we sat back and enjoyed them. She was awake enough to handle the cup with ice cream and root beer, with a straw and a plastic spoon with out spilling any at all. I really have missed her!

As we finished our root beer floats, she was earnestly talking to me, and the words were becoming clearer. They still weren’t making a lot of sense, but I noticed with some trepidation a look in her eyes I haven’t seen in a long time. There was a hunger there, and I know her well enough to know she misses me, too! 

I know I’m on the hook, and I’ll have to do something about it soon. The thought scares me a little, because she sometimes forgets who I am when she gets excited, and that is not fun at all.

Some people may object to my frank descriptions of what caring for a wife with dementia is like, with all the gory details, but I write this to educate others in the same predicament, even though I can’t find anyone who quite fits my profile.

Good, clear, honest stories and discussion seem to be in short supply. 

If nobody else is writing about such things, I will fill the void.

An old song from the Twenties keeps going around in my head. “Ma, She’s Making Eyes at Me!”

Sleepy Time Gal

On one hand, Carolyn is getting better. Her knees have almost healed, and she is not crawling around on the floor at night. 

On the other hand, every day she sleeps later and deeper. So deep that now and then I have to walk over and stare at her to make sure she is still breathing. I got to her room at about 9:30 AM and she never moved until 5:30 PM. I opened the shades before noon and turned on the overhead light. I wet a washcloth in cold water and rubbed her face, arms and legs. She didn’t even flinch. At 2:00 PM an aide came to give her some pain medication, but was unable to wake her.

About 4:00 PM our daughter Darlene walked over with her little dog Poppy, and still Carolyn slept. She didn’t awake until the puppy jumped up on her and started licking her face. Then she woke up enough to wave her arms and push the dog away.

We were glad to see her come around, and we were hoping that she might want to eat, so we had the kitchen hold out a tray of food and bring it to her room. After sipping a half can of Dr. Pepper, she slowly ate a whole grilled cheese sandwich, and then the small bowl of mandarin orange slices. She was still moving very slowly, almost catatonic, and having trouble focussing. 

She took the spoon with which I was feeding her the orange slices and put it in her mouth, but then she couldn’t move the spoon over to pick up another slice. So we ended up with me picking up a slice with the fork and putting it in her spoon, and then she would move the spoon to her mouth. 

I have contacted our favorite nurse from Guardian Hospice and we have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning to review her meds. I am thinking that this may be a case of overdosing medication as she gets older and thinner. What was a good dose a month ago seems too much now.

On a lighter note, our piano player couldn’t make it this afternoon. Being the Chaplain for Guardian Hospice, sometimes more important things impinge on his time. Rachel came over and asked if I would play instead, and I begged off, because I don’t know some of the songs, and my skills are not ready for prime time yet.

But after listening to the group try to sing a capella, I relented and sat down at the piano. I attempted to play whatever hymn they requested, and they were very appreciative. I hit some clinkers, and a couple of times my left hand got lost, but I just continued with the melody until I could get back on track, and they loved it. Several came over and just thanked me over and over again. It’s hard to say no to fans like these!

As I was paging back and forth searching for the song requests, I stumbled on a tune I hadn’t seen since I was learning piano back as a teenager. They play out of the Baptist Hymnal, and there on page 105 was the song “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” from the Passion Chorale by Hans L. Hassler, harmonized by J. S. Bach. 

After everyone had finished singing, and were getting up to leave, I told them I was going to play one more, but they couldn’t sing it. I just wanted to know if I could still play it. It was on page 130 in the old Adventist Hymnal.

My brain and fingers still knew this music after almost sixty years, and it sounded really good. Typical of anything harmonized by Bach, it is full of chord progressions, and especially bass lines that walk right through beautiful dischords that just clash wonderfully.

Someday I hope to have a chance to sit at a real cathedral pipe organ and try this song. With real bass pedals pumping out the low notes, this would sound very impressive and moving. I could die happy then!

In the meantime, I guess I’m the backup church pianist. It’s an old familiar feeling returned from my youth.

Wheelchair or crawl

Lots of things going on this past week. 

A week ago we had an Easter party a couple of days early. Peter Rabbit showed up with easter candy for the kids, and us older kids got cake and punch. We also got to enjoy watching a couple of the kids play with two large plastic balls. The boys were about two years old, and the size of the balls was right at the limits of what they could pick up, but they never stopped running and throwing those balls!

I keep wishing there was a way to share all that energy with some of the rest of us!

Over the weekend we had a church group come and play hymns for the residents, followed by a Bible study. The residents all love to sing, and they do a pretty good job. Most of them are on key, and I hear some singing harmony, too. 

On Monday afternoon a couple of men with full beards came and played a guitar and bass and led the residents in hymns again, and nobody seemed to get tired of singing. The two guys were from the Silo Baptist Church, and commented on the singing, wishing they could have us all come to their church and sing. 

On Tuesday afternoon Featherstone had the groundbreaking ceremony for the new addition on the back, which will be a dedicated memory care unit for sixteen people. It looks impressive, and it can’t come soon enough. 

I am having doubts that Carolyn will be around to see it. She has taken a turn for the worse in the last two weeks. She was getting stronger, and was able to walk with some support, as her broken pelvis seems completely healed. 

But a week ago she started having trouble standing. When I lifted her by her hands, instead of moving upright to a balanced position, she leaned backward and could not stand erect, even with support. In order to transfer her to a wheelchair or couch, I had to put one arm under her arm and hold her up. Looked very much like we were dancing, and when I used dance cues to get her to move left or right to line up with the chair, she could follow just fine. She just couldn’t walk.

Then I noticed that both knees had abrasions like rug burns, and I wondered if she had fallen again. Both knees were red and hot to the touch, so I applied T-tree salve to the sore places. I didn’t have a big enough bandage to cover the knees, so I put her in bed at night with her pants on, hoping for some friction protection.

In the morning, after the nurses would come and bathe her, I would find her in bed with bare legs - no pants. 

I mentioned her knees to my favorite nurse from Guardian Hospice, and we tried to figure out how her knees got skinned like that. She brought me some big square band_aids that were perfect for covering the wound, and she brought some Beta-dine so we could apply disinfectant without a greasy covering under the band-aids.

I happened to mention her knee problems to one of the aides, and she said she had found her four times crawling around on the floor on her hands and knees, and helped her back to bed. Then a second aide also said she found her down on the floor crawling around the same way.

So the lowered bed and the tumbling mats on the floor are doing a good job of preventing major injury or broken bones, but she is still a lady on the move. After I told the nurse from Guardian Hospice, she said she will tell the nurses that give her the morning baths to put her pants on when they put her in bed. 

Since we started putting the band-aids on, the redness is disappearing, and her knees no longer feel hot to the touch.

But this week she can no longer stand at all. One arm under hers won’t work anymore - it takes two arms to pick her up and lift her from chair to sofa to toilet now. I have become quite proficient at holding her close with one arm and pulling up her underwear and trousers with the other arm. 

Sometimes her pants hang up in back, and I kid her by telling her, “Your butt’s too big. It’s in the way!”

She gives me a dirty look. So I quickly tell her, “It’s OK, though. I love your big butt!” 

She always laughs then. 

Once her pants are pulled up, it is easy to hold her up by the waistband and carry her over to the wheelchair. I got pretty good at buttoning the pants with one hand while holding her up with the other hand, until I wised up and decided to put her in the wheelchair first and then fasten the button and zip up the pants.

Her sense of humor is undiminished. Today I fell for one of her pranks again.

I had taken her to the toilet to change her underwear and put her on the pot before I put her in bed. I had the underwear pulled up to her knees, waiting for her to stop peeing. When she stopped, I pushed the button on the bidet for a warm water wash, and listened for the splashing in the toilet. 

After a few seconds, I pushed the off button, and the water noise stopped.

As soon as I stood up to lift her into the wheelchair, the water started again. I muttered something to myself and pushed the off button again. Again the water stopped and I stood up again. Again I heard the noise of water in the commode. As I reached for the remote one more time, I noticed that Carolyn had a grin on her face.

I dawned on me what she was doing. I looked her in the eyes and said, ”You are playing games with me, aren’t you?” She giggled, and then busted out in a big laugh. 

How could I not love a woman like her?