Blackout at Featherstone

It’s been an exciting week here at “Lake Wobegon”. Several days last week the temps during the day were up in the high sixties and low seventies. I took Carolyn on a tour around the building parking area with just a light sweater on. You could even start to dream of summer days coming soon to our area.

Then came a cold front yesterday. It was slow moving, but wide, covering the country between Fort Worth and Tulsa. It was mostly rain, heavy in places, with weather warnings of flooding in low lying areas. Last night the cold side of the front sneaked into Durant. The temps went down to 32º and stayed there all day. A drizzling rain continued, covering the trees and fences with ice. 

As the day wore on, trees and branches started to fall from the heavy load of ice. Roads that weren’t blocked by deep water were now blocked by tree branches. 

I was scheduled to drive down to Denton, TX, to move another trailer full of furniture and other items from Darlene’s old digs to her new apartment in Durant. When I first checked the weather I considered cancelling, assuming that the road would be a sheet of ice. I decided to carefully drive to the gas station and fill up the tank, and then decide if I wanted to go farther.

Driving turned out to be a non event. The ground is still warm from the balmy days of last week, so there was no ice on the pavement at all. I continued on to Texas with no more trouble than about 8-10” of standing water in Durant city streets around Mulberry and 7th. 

After returning with Darlene’s stuff and putting it into her apartment, I went to see Carolyn at Featherstone about 1:00 PM. She was still in bed sleeping soundly, so I went to the CNA on duty and asked how her day had been. They told me she ate breakfast well, and then the hospice nurses came and bathed her and changed her clothes. They put her to bed and she went to sleep and stayed that way through lunch. She looked so comfortable they didn’t want to wake her!

I opened the shades, turned on the overhead light, and in a few minutes she began to awaken. I got her up, walked her to the bathroom, changed her underwear and pants, and then walked her back into the room and put her in the wheelchair. Her pelvis seems to be healing fine, and she can walk with no pain. However, she is still pretty wobbly on her feet, probably from too many days of being restricted to the bed or the wheelchair. 

I am getting good at walking backward and holding her hands up for balance and ready to catch her if she stumbles. One of the residents commented that it looked like we were waltzing down the hall. If she keeps improving, we’ll be doing the tango.

At 5:00 PM I walked her to a chair in the dining room for dinner, and she was eating well, when all of a sudden the lights went out. The emergency lighting in the hallways came on dimly. After about twenty seconds the lights briefly flashed and went off again to stay. I knew this might be a long one, since the flicker is a reclosing breaker trying get electricity back online and finding a dead short to ground. That would be a tree branch falling onto the wires.

Tonight will be the night the linemen earn their pay. I worked for the power company for over thirty years, and I never begrudged a lineman his higher pay. I was a machinist, and when the power went out, at least I got to work inside most of the time.

The staff had obviously been trained in what to do when the power goes off. All the door locks fail in unlocked mode, so nobody gets trapped inside. Immediately chairs were placed in front of each door to prevent residents from wandering out into the frigid outdoors. People were assigned to guard the doors, also, and I volunteered to take one of the ones in back.

I was sitting in the chair fiddling with my cellphone, and bemoaning the fact that there is no Wifi in this corner. After a while I realized with no power anywhere, there was no Wifi anywhere else, either.

At 6:30 PM the power came on with a bang. All the doors are held locked with electromagnets, and as the doors had relaxed, they were slammed pretty hard by the return of electricity. A cheer went up from the dining room, where most of the residents had stayed during the outage.

I was impressed with the emergency response to what could have been a much worse case. The manager called the hospice organizations to coordinate an evacuation if the outage had lasted all night, since the heaters were incapacitated. I’m not sure where the evacuation destination was, but I assume the hospices would have a handle on spare rooms in other nursing homes, hospitals, etc.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to see about an upgrade to the physical building systems, either. An emergency generator on site, or even access to one on a trailer which could be brought in and hooked up to the building would be nice.

An easy upgrade would be to refit the dining room with LED lighting with TESLA battery storage on the wall. I’m pretty sure such a system would give all night lighting to at least part of the building. And that would be bright lighting, not the dim bulbs we have on the hall walls now.

I overheard one of the staff talking about getting tee shirts printed out with the message, “I SURVIVED THE FEATHERSTONE BLACKOUT!”

I’ll buy a couple!

Valentine breakthrough

It’s been a weird, crazy, wonderful week. Happy Valentines Day. Overall we had a good day. I brought Carolyn a spray of red roses this morning and she smiled as several of the staff took photos.

I couldn’t find a suitable vase for the tall stemmed roses, so I made a quick trip to the store and bought a big glass pitcher, which looked good under the roses, and looked sturdy, too. When the roses fade and wilt away, we can use the pitcher for drinks in the summer.

During the Valentines Day party that Featherstone put on this afternoon, Carolyn got drowsy and I couldn’t wake her up for pictures. So I wheeled her back to her room, put on the footrests so I could sit her up straight, and gave her just one of the roses from the bouquet to hold. When I got back to the lobby, she was awake, and we got a couple of pictures taken.

The really strange day was yesterday. The day before she slept all day. Yesterday she woke up wide awake and wanted to talk. She was speaking in whole sentences part of the time, and the words were clear and not gibberish. I called up our son Wes and asked him if he’d like to talk to his mother, and they talked for over a half hour. As he asked questions, she was answering them, and making good sense a lot of the time. He was as amazed as I was.

I have to wonder when I read about the permanent damage that Alzheimer’s causes to your brain, and that may be true at the end, but these “breakthrough” days tell me that the thoughts and memories are still in there, they are just blocked by something. And sometimes a piece of the blockage falls away for a day or two, and she recovers some of her old self again.

Later in the after noon, we were in her room, just the two of us, and she still was talking to me and trying to make me understand what she was feeling. She becomes aware of her condition, and a profound sadness comes over her face, and she cries as she tells me of her fears for the future. Her mother had the same disease, and she knows what is in store for us.

All I am able to do, beside hugging her and crying with her, is constantly reassuring her that I will never leave her alone, that I will always be here for her and trying to make her as happy and comfortable as possible. Sometimes she smiles when I tell her, “It’s just you and me, Babe!”

She was trying to get me to understand something, and I wasn’t picking up her meaning, and I could see she was getting frustrated and mad, so I asked, “I think you are tired of looking at me, Do you want me to go away for awhile?”

She blurted out, “Yeah!”

As I stood to leave the room, she loudly said, “No, that’s not what I wanted to say at all! I don’t know why I said that!” 

So I got to sit back down, hold both of her hands, look her in the eyes and say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s all right. I still love you—that’s all we need to understand right now.”

After six o’clock we stopped and had a little glass of wine, and then I tucked her into bed, propping her legs up so her heels don’t touch the mattress. She has pressure sore on both heels from many days of lying in bed on her back. We are hoping to get them healed without any infection problems. 

She was sleeping soundly when I left her.

Her pelvis is healing

The last few days have been a mixed blessing. 

Carolyn’s broken pelvis is healing, and she can move around now without showing any pain. We are beginning to test the various fall protections we have put in place, and so far they are working well.

I came in one morning a couple of days ago and found her on her hands and knees on the tumbling mat beside her bed. She had obviously tried to get out of bed and stand and instead toppled over forward onto her knees. The low bed and the mat protected her from any damage or pain.

I got down on my hands and knees beside her and asked, “Where are you going?” She had not noticed me enter the room. I think she might have been sleepy and tired from trying without success to get back up. She looked over at me and said, “I don’t know.” 

I asked if she hurt anywhere, and she said no, so I attempted to pick her up. I had never tried to pick her up without her assisting before, and I found out I couldn’t just lift her with my hands under her arms. Too much weight, and I have one weak shoulder from a rotator cuff surgery a few years ago. 

I wrapped her up in a big hug as I squatted in front of her, told her to hang on to me, and then I stood up, putting all the strain on just my legs. That was much easier!

After I got her on her feet, I held her with one arm around her back, and led her in a short circle by the bed to see if she had any pain in the pelvic area, and she was able to shuffle along with no pain whatsoever.

I put her back in bed, and she soon dropped off to sleep as if nothing had happened. 

In a way, it’s been a relief when she couldn’t get up and was forced to remain in bed, because we didn’t have to worry about her getting up and falling again. Now she is adjusting to the drugs and becoming more alert and restless, so we will be on duty now trying to keep her from hurting herself.

The new lower bed and the tumbling mats on the floor seem to be doing the job well, and the new wheelchair is making a difference also. The wheels are set back behind the seat, rather then under the seat. That moves the Center of Gravity back and prevents her from tipping the chair over backwards trying to get out. Her own weight keeps the chair firmly on the ground.

Yesterday the Guardian Hospice nurses found a couple of blisters on her heels. I was worried that they came from her dragging her feet as I pushed her around the building in the wheelchair. I had been careful to put her slippers on her feet, and to put the footrests on, because I could feel the drag if I didn’t do that.

They explained that these were from too many days lying on her back in bed, with the weight of her heels on the mattress cutting off circulation and causing pressure sores. I helped bandage her worst foot and they showed me how to put a pillow under the back of her legs to support her feet off the mattress. 

As she becomes more active and spends less time in bed, she should heal up pretty quickly, I think. She still has an amazing ability to heal any wound in much less time that we would think possible. 

I need to get her some socks that are not so tight, and keep a better check on her feet, I guess.

Last night we had a little humor, as I wheeled Carolyn back into her room after a couple of laps around the halls of the building. I parked her in the room by her bed, but I heard the bathroom door close and noises coming from inside. I went over and knocked on the door, and somebody yelled back at me. Luckily, the door was not locked, so I carefully pushed it open to find another resident lady and her walker inside. Also luckily, she was still fully dressed.

She also has dementia, and spends much of her daylight hours sitting in a chair with her head down between her knees sound asleep. I can’t get close to that position. Flexibility is not one of her problems.

I squeezed into the bathroom with her, carefully moved her and the walker out of the way so I could open the door wide and gently lead her outside, as she loudly protested. 

I explained to her that she was in the wrong room, but as I tried to go back inside, she turned around in the hall and tried to reenter the room. I blocked her path, and pointed to the name on the door—Carolyn Ann—and once again explained that this was not her room. In a very earnest voice she declared that I should move that other lady out and let her move in.

I tried not to laugh too loud as I explained that Carolyn had been living with me for many years, and I wasn’t going to move her out.

I’m going to have to remember to close and lock the door when I take Carolyn out for a wheelchair stroll now, I guess.

Later I found her coat, shirt and sweater on the couch, along with a little stuffed animal, so I think she was already in the process of moving herself in when I found her. The night nurse promised to take them back to her room when I told her what had happened. We all had a good laugh.

You’ve got to take your laughs wherever you can find them!