Feeling Blue

I’m feeling kind of low tonight. I feel as if I missed something important and let my wife down.

I got to Featherstone in time to help feed Carolyn lunch. She ate all the spinach, a little of the beef, one bite of potato, and all the little mandarin orange slices. Also, she drank a lot of tea, a tall glass full, and then another half.

I had spent the morning trying to fix the plumbing on the washing machine at the house. There is a block somewhere way under the house, and whoever put the pipes in forgot to put any cleanouts or vents in the system. The first trap was clean as a whistle, so I put in a couple of sweep ells to move the drain over behind the washer. It has been directly above the 220 volt dryer plug, so when it leaks water, the dryer trips. The dryer receptacle is upside down, too, so that the cord acts like a funnel to guide the water into the outlet.

Pretty obvious that there was no inspection when these hookups were added to the house.

Anyway, when I arrived, another resident was feeding Carolyn, as she is not able to feed herself most days now. I thanked her and took over. Once again there was only one staff person in the lunchroom on this weekend day. There are two other ladies that usually sit at the same table as Carolyn, and one of them was complaining that I wouldn’t feed her like I was feeding Carolyn.

I explained that I could only feed one person at a time, and Carolyn is my wife. The other lady was constantly trying to get up out of her wheelchair, so I helped her sit back down a few times. One man came in with a pair of scissors asking the staff person to trim his toenails. She convinced him to wait until after lunch was over. Another man wanted her to get him his medications, and she got right on that. 

She also found time to see that Carolyn got another glass of tea, after she exhausted the first one. I’m not sure where the rest of the staff was, maybe they were helping individual residents eat in their rooms, but they didn’t show up until the lunch was over. Then they arrived to clean up the tables.

But I’m not here to criticize others - it’s me that I’m disappointed in today.

Carolyn was restless to the point of agitated all afternoon. I laid her down for a nap because she looked tired, but she did not sleep at all. She lie there with eyes wide open, talking in undecipherable sounds, and trying to get back up.

At about two o’clock I decided to change her, because I saw the pad in her wheelchair showed a wet spot. I changed her to a new pull up, dry pants, and laid her down again. I cleaned her up with a couple of wet wipes, but I didn’t really check too closely. I should have.

At dinner time I took her in and fed her again. She didn’t eat much of the food on the plate, so I took her back to the room and let her have some Ensure with a straw. 

She stopped breathing for a moment, then exploded into a coughing spell I thought was never going to quit. Sometimes her throat just won’t function right and she aspirates what she intended to swallow. A lot of the Ensure came back up, flowing out of her mouth - not vomiting, but just flowing as she coughed. I cleaned it up with napkins, and when the coughing would not stop, I picked her up out of her chair and laid her on the floor on her side.

I scooted the footrest over next to her, and draped her over it, face down, hoping to let gravity assist in clearing her lungs. It worked in just a few seconds, and she stopped coughing and got her breath back. 

When I put her back in her wheelchair, I thought she would be relieved, but she started crying and tugging at her pants. Finally, the light dawned in my head. That signal was a hard one to miss.

I took her back to the bathroom, put her on the toilet, and let her urinate. When she finished, I rinsed her with the bidet, and then I spread her legs and looked at all the bright red skin where it should have been pink. I got tears in my eyes, too.

I spread one of the large overnight diapers on the wheelchair seat, with the back tilted back level, and readied the footrests so I could raise her feet. I lifted her up, turned her around and sat her on the wheelchair. I raised her feet and lowered her back until she was laying down flat.

Luckily for me, the chief Guardian hospice nurse had left a tube of water barrier lotion in the bathroom just for this purpose, so after wiping her down with wet wipes and washcloths, I put on some rubber gloves and coated her bottom with a lot of the lotion.  

I had prepped the diaper before I put it in the chair, so all I had to do was fold it together between her legs and spread it in front, pull up the sides and stick the tapes down. These big diapers are just the ticket!

I put her pajama pants on and took her to her bed, where I laid her down and made her comfortable. When I left her she had closed her eyes and was not making any noise for the first time all day. I hope she sleeps well all night long.

One item that should have made me more suspicious, was her adamant refusal to let the Guardian nurses bathe her Friday. She was unusually eloquent and forceful that she didn’t want anybody messing with her that day. So we all just shrugged our shoulders, talked a while, and then they went on to their next patient. 

From now on, that will be my signal to pay close attention and keep her clean and dry all day. 

In other news, Friday morning I rode from Durant to Caddo, then east to Robinson Road, turned south to the little town of Blue, then came back to Durant on Hwy 70, for a total distance of 32 miles.

I stopped about a mile east of Caddo to pick up a turtle who was slowly and dangerously trying to cross the highway. I moved him across to the side he was headed for and put him in the grass.

South of Robinson Baptist Church I found a small creek with a long, long hill to climb up out of. Good training, I’m sure. But that wasn’t the worst part of the ride.

As I turned west to ride back to Durant, I could see a band of black storm clouds moving toward Durant. I put on some extra speed to try to get there first, but no such luck. I could see the wedge on the front of the black cloud, and I knew for sure I was going to get wet. As I approached town, I got a little sprinkle, but my fears were more toward the lightning and thunder rumbling away in front of me. I was riding under tall power poles on both sides of the road, so I convinced myself that the lightning would probably take the short route to ground by hitting a power pole and not me. Of course, I could die of a heart attack if one got that close.

The rain drove me off the road at Miller’s Short Stop, where I got inside and ordered a Jalapeño Corn Dog with a big Mt. Dew and watched the rain wash the world away for a half hour or so.

The weatherman had forecast “mostly sunny” but he was mightily mistaken that morning. Even though I got inside while the rain was at its worst, I still managed to get soaked riding that last mile back to the house.

My mountain bike has no fenders, and I had to ford two or three inches of “mostly sunny” streaming across every crossroad into town. That hot shower made it all worthwhile.