Sunday, January 18, 2004
I've begun The Move.
As of last night you'll notice lots of broken links while I shift things around and get each section of this newly partitioned Mom & Me site up and running. In the meantime, while I'm waiting for some HTML to print so I can rescue the Sharing Wisdom essays before I move them, I thought I'd honor my commitment to be somewhat more prompt in updating.
It has become even harder, in the last few weeks, for me to ever be sure whether I am taking the proper attitude toward Mom and her healing lower back. Sometimes the evidence (which always shows up quickly) seems to suggest that I am not. Then, as for instance yesterday, the same action seems to have the support of "The Universe", or, at least, Mom's lower back. I can't remember whether I've mentioned this but a couple of weeks ago, right after Christmas and a wonderfully reviving visit from MCF and her daughter, it appeared as though Mom twisted her back in bed or somewhere else not under my vigilence. She went through a period when she seemed to have regressed back to the stage a few weeks after she visited the hospital with the added debilitation that she was much more shaky. I was afraid this was happening because I allowed her to coddle her obviously wrenched back for a couple of days and castigated myself for it.
Since then she has become steadily stronger, healthier (in some cases healthier than she's been for a few years; I'll explain later), has walked a lot, her back has straightened some and she's spent a lot of time up and much more alert. So Thursday night, when she complained of being "tired" and the week "just wearing [her] out" I relented and told her I'd let her sleep in Friday.
As the clock crept toward noon I became nervous but each time I'd peek in on her she'd be relaxed, sometimes softly chuffing (as members of the cat family are wont to do), in the middle of watershed, yes, but warm, sometimes dreaming. After each check I decided to recheck on her in another half hour.
At 12:30 I decided to look on this as an experiment similar to one my mother tried many years ago on our family dachsund, Fritz, who had what seemed like a voracious appetite. Mom wanted to see how much Fritz would eat before he was full. She assumed, of course, that at some point his appetite would be satisfied. After he wolfed a fair portion of a case of canned dog food she decided to discontinue the experiment, as Fritz showed no sign of stopping. Remembering this, I wondered, if I just let her sleep, how long would she stay down?
Finally at 1400 I could stand it no longer and aroused her with a cheery, "Good Morning, Mary Sunshine, time to get up!" To which she responded, "Why?!?"
My nervousness turned into full blown anxiety. I could see us forfeiting the last two weeks of hard work to a weekend of literal leisure. My voice sharpened. "Because. We can't let you regress like you did before. I let you rest. It's time to get up."
We both have strong wills. Suffice it to say that she won half the last two days and I've won the other half. This morning I'm winning. Instead of her arising at 1400 after having gone to bed at 0230 (hours that are hard on me), she'll be arising at 1100. At least we will begin the process at that time. We also walked yesterday after about 36 hours of rest. She did amazingly well. Her back continues to straighten and she's putting more road under her feet without stopping to pant (which she does even with the oxygen kicked up to 3/lpm). After all that rest I tried to be realistic in my expectations, especially since she was initially resistant to walking yesterday. But she did all four laps without too much complaint and her complaining didn't begin until she was well into the 4th lap, too late to turn back. I was proud of her and told her so over and over and over. I even suggested that perhaps sometime this week we can practice in the park.
Other signs of a return to health:
I was just this side of frantic when it seemed as though it was going to be yet another badly timed month before some professional therapy was going to be possible. Then, within the last few weeks, and even as recently as yesterday, her improvement, physical, mental and emotional, has been dramatic. I am heartened.
Earlier this week MCF, her daughter and her daughter's friend came to visit again. Mom loves these visits. They are very low key, keep her on her toes, keep her up, and she eats much better than normal (which is necessary right now; her weight has slipped about 10 pounds since the injury) when company is here.
I've been trying to encourage her days to be more active and exciting. We've been out (to the store, but, for Mom, that's been a big deal) twice in the last week, once to view a new grocery opening. She still doesn't understand why I continue to insist that when we're in public she sit in the wheel chair, but she trusts me when I remind her of how tired she gets from our walks and that she might have a tendency to lean into a cart or a chair if she was pushing it and further damage her back.
I've suggested that we begin going out to eat again soon. This interests her. At one point it didn't, which worried me. She's also appreciative of the abundant sunshine here and is not resisting the temperatures in the high 40's to high 50's (the last few days in the low 60's). She's still not ready to endure the backward shampoo chairs of the hair dresser but I think that will be happening soon. She is also once again expressing an interest in our business, asking about things I didn't think she'd remember like our talk of remodeling, getting rid of the house in Mesa, etc., so I think she is just about ready for some Valley-and-back day trips. Good. We've got business to do.
Once again, in the form of a public prayer, I am going to try to get back to this journal and site at least half as often as I want to.
Later.
It has become even harder, in the last few weeks, for me to ever be sure whether I am taking the proper attitude toward Mom and her healing lower back. Sometimes the evidence (which always shows up quickly) seems to suggest that I am not. Then, as for instance yesterday, the same action seems to have the support of "The Universe", or, at least, Mom's lower back. I can't remember whether I've mentioned this but a couple of weeks ago, right after Christmas and a wonderfully reviving visit from MCF and her daughter, it appeared as though Mom twisted her back in bed or somewhere else not under my vigilence. She went through a period when she seemed to have regressed back to the stage a few weeks after she visited the hospital with the added debilitation that she was much more shaky. I was afraid this was happening because I allowed her to coddle her obviously wrenched back for a couple of days and castigated myself for it.
Since then she has become steadily stronger, healthier (in some cases healthier than she's been for a few years; I'll explain later), has walked a lot, her back has straightened some and she's spent a lot of time up and much more alert. So Thursday night, when she complained of being "tired" and the week "just wearing [her] out" I relented and told her I'd let her sleep in Friday.
As the clock crept toward noon I became nervous but each time I'd peek in on her she'd be relaxed, sometimes softly chuffing (as members of the cat family are wont to do), in the middle of watershed, yes, but warm, sometimes dreaming. After each check I decided to recheck on her in another half hour.
At 12:30 I decided to look on this as an experiment similar to one my mother tried many years ago on our family dachsund, Fritz, who had what seemed like a voracious appetite. Mom wanted to see how much Fritz would eat before he was full. She assumed, of course, that at some point his appetite would be satisfied. After he wolfed a fair portion of a case of canned dog food she decided to discontinue the experiment, as Fritz showed no sign of stopping. Remembering this, I wondered, if I just let her sleep, how long would she stay down?
Finally at 1400 I could stand it no longer and aroused her with a cheery, "Good Morning, Mary Sunshine, time to get up!" To which she responded, "Why?!?"
My nervousness turned into full blown anxiety. I could see us forfeiting the last two weeks of hard work to a weekend of literal leisure. My voice sharpened. "Because. We can't let you regress like you did before. I let you rest. It's time to get up."
We both have strong wills. Suffice it to say that she won half the last two days and I've won the other half. This morning I'm winning. Instead of her arising at 1400 after having gone to bed at 0230 (hours that are hard on me), she'll be arising at 1100. At least we will begin the process at that time. We also walked yesterday after about 36 hours of rest. She did amazingly well. Her back continues to straighten and she's putting more road under her feet without stopping to pant (which she does even with the oxygen kicked up to 3/lpm). After all that rest I tried to be realistic in my expectations, especially since she was initially resistant to walking yesterday. But she did all four laps without too much complaint and her complaining didn't begin until she was well into the 4th lap, too late to turn back. I was proud of her and told her so over and over and over. I even suggested that perhaps sometime this week we can practice in the park.
Other signs of a return to health:
- For the first time in 3 or 4 years she's having regular bowel movements almost everyday, completely normal, and is getting the signal that she needs to relieve her bowels before the relief begins. I'm blown away by this one, especially since I've had her on a fair amount of ibuprofen, thus, every couple of days when her feet or hands or face begin to look peaked I slip her a few iron pills. I've also been pushing fiber, though, and have been doing whatever it takes to keep her hydrated. I've been expecting her to return to her about-once-a-week eliminations but I never dared hope that she'd return to almost daily regularity.
- All her extremeties look good and pink most of the time. Incontinence is still a big problem but I hope to address that next.
I was just this side of frantic when it seemed as though it was going to be yet another badly timed month before some professional therapy was going to be possible. Then, within the last few weeks, and even as recently as yesterday, her improvement, physical, mental and emotional, has been dramatic. I am heartened.
Earlier this week MCF, her daughter and her daughter's friend came to visit again. Mom loves these visits. They are very low key, keep her on her toes, keep her up, and she eats much better than normal (which is necessary right now; her weight has slipped about 10 pounds since the injury) when company is here.
I've been trying to encourage her days to be more active and exciting. We've been out (to the store, but, for Mom, that's been a big deal) twice in the last week, once to view a new grocery opening. She still doesn't understand why I continue to insist that when we're in public she sit in the wheel chair, but she trusts me when I remind her of how tired she gets from our walks and that she might have a tendency to lean into a cart or a chair if she was pushing it and further damage her back.
I've suggested that we begin going out to eat again soon. This interests her. At one point it didn't, which worried me. She's also appreciative of the abundant sunshine here and is not resisting the temperatures in the high 40's to high 50's (the last few days in the low 60's). She's still not ready to endure the backward shampoo chairs of the hair dresser but I think that will be happening soon. She is also once again expressing an interest in our business, asking about things I didn't think she'd remember like our talk of remodeling, getting rid of the house in Mesa, etc., so I think she is just about ready for some Valley-and-back day trips. Good. We've got business to do.
Once again, in the form of a public prayer, I am going to try to get back to this journal and site at least half as often as I want to.
Later.
