Mom & Me Two Archive

    I puttered, going through a few more boxes in back, putting things in temporary places until I get everything out and can shuffle stuff to permanent places. 45 minutes later I was overtaken by incredible tiredness and decided to lay down for about half an hour. I figured I would have no problem rousing a half hour later at 1800, since I'd be napping on a bed whose bedding was being washed and I wouldn't be terribly comfortable. Just to make sure I awoke in time to rally Mom to her evening regimen and give her some much needed awake time I set the alarm above my bed. I apparently turned it off in my sleep. At 2230 I awoke to a dark, quiet house. I realized I'd overslept, causing me to allow Mom a seven hour nap and messing up her food, fluid, face time, medication, movement and awake time schedules.
    I didn't realize I was so tired but I've been burning the caretaking candle at both ends over the last week-plus so I'm not, in retrospect, surprised. By the time I awoke Mom had accomplished her second watershed of the day and her bed needed to be completely stripped, rewiped and remade. She was also ravenous so it was a challenge to keep her from eating for the half hour that her Glucotrol requires, although with all the hands-on attendance necessary, including a breathing treatment and her second basin-bath of the day, I only had to keep her away from food for ten minutes.
    The clock just hooted midnight. She's sitting at the dinette table reading and drinking diet rootbeer. She's sufficiently fed, sufficiently clean and, despite her long rest, not at all inclined to move but that's all right I think. I'll be up for awhile but I've told her that if she decides she wants to crawl back into bed, she can. She may decide to stay up for awhile. She's pretty alert.
    I have to be careful sometimes about overextending myself to the point where I feel as though I need a nap, as it is not uncommon that when I begin to feel the need for a nap (which tends to be rare...I don't actually like to nap unless I'm so tired I simply can't think beyond closing my eyes) what I probably really need is a good 5 or 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep and my body tends to see to it that I get what I need, come hell or high water. I do always remember this when a particular day turns toward napping but at the point where a nap seems imminent I also find it easy to convince myself that, this time, I won't turn off the alarm in my sleep; this time, I'll wake up on time. Well, this time I did and I didn't.
    I sometimes wonder if this is how this will end: In an event that takes place on a day when I have worked myself into exhaustion, decide to take a "half-hour" nap, oversleep and awaken to Mom having died because I was so tired I simply didn't hear her call for help when some emergent situation developed while I was napping.

    At 1059 I experience a quarrel of internal twinges: Guilt about letting her sleep, guilt about disturbing her incredibly peaceful sleep. This is routine, though, so the twinges ripple away. I think about how weakened she became after two days of bed rest despite how strong she'd previously been. At 1100 I gently touch her and cheer her awake with, "Good Morning, Mary Sunshine. Time to get up!"
    My mood is good, bright and enlivens my voice and my movements. By 1145 I have run the gamut from greeting to cajoling to harassing to attempting to shame, finally to disinterested drill sergeant, getting her from 10 hours of a prone position to a sitting position at the edge of her bed minus her soaked night shirt. In the meantime, coaxing movement by movement out of her with whatever works, praise or pleading or scolding or shock, I have also prepared the bathroom for her basin bath-and-dress ritual, taken her blood sugar, stripped most of her bed, determined what needs washing (the comforter is good to go this morning) and deposited wet material in the utility closet, intermittently stood and stared at her for obviously annoyed moments while she stared placidly back at me and smiled, repeated part of my last evening's lecture on "nursing home behavior" (I'll explain this later), set up her breathing treatment, hid all cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays, laid out breakfast preparations discluding starting the bacon (I've learned that even on low bacon will burn to a crisp in the time it takes to get my mother in and out of the bathroom and ready to eat), unloaded both the dishwasher and the clothes dryer, distributed the piles of folded clothes...
    By 1215 she is bathed, dressed and is finishing her breathing treatment, over which I have kept an eye and reminded her twice to "put it back in your mouth, it doesn't do you any good in the atmosphere," while I reckon and distribute pills, hers and mine (all of which are supplements). As I dole out pills I tick the following through my mind:

Over the last few days I've put her back on a morning dose of Siberian Ginseng so I'm giving her 5 mg lisinopril in the morning again; Detrol to keep her incontinence at bay and encourage her retention of some water; since her blood sugar was a little high [141] I'll give her 500 mg of Glucophage this morning and some at her midday meal regardless of what she eats. Definitely ibuprofen, three 200 mg tablets this morning; a Tums immediately after her meal and keep an eye out for hiccups.

    As soon as the breathing treatment is out of her mouth I hand her a cup of decaf coffee and busy myself with breakfast preparations. Depending on how she feels she can go anywhere from less than a minute to hours before she starts looking for cigarettes. This morning she began to look immediately; a sign to me of both high alertness and nagging pain.
    At 1230 she has swallowed most of her pills and breakfast has begun. I remind her several times to drink her orange juice, once to finish taking her pills and we talk about the day, the view from the window and The Girls, who are sprawled in the livingroom in full sun.
    I have asked her several times how her back feels. Her responses have ranged from a mildly surprised, "Fine, so far," to an ironic, "It's still there," the last of which she expressed just as she swallowed the ibuprofen. I figure, this morning, from the length of time it took to get her to the edge of her bed, that it was going to take a strong shot of anti-inflammatories to get her walking and walking is imperative today.
    Sometime between 1230 and 1315 we both finish breakfast (well, what is actually my lunch) and I beat her in a quick game of Sorry. I don't always win. In fact over the past week I've been losing regularly even when I become frustrated and refuse to help her remember what to do as the game progresses. As we play I notic that she is moving somewhat more gracefully than yesterday from the waist, which is a good sign, but get the impression from the molasses quality of her mental reflexes that she is going to beg her way into a nap within 4 or 5 hours after getting up so, I figure, I'll steer us into the walk now.
    It takes about 15 minutes to get Mom and all the equipment set up for the walk, which consists of three laps of our driveway as she pushes the wheelchair and I talk her through maintaining correct posture and "push with your legs and arms, not your back; imagine that you are a marionette being held and moved by a puppet master; contract your abdomen, contract your buttocks, there, see, that straightens you up, you're doing excellent, you're walking so smoothly; remember, the chair should move from the momentum of your legs, not the tensing of your back..."
    She does well, today. Slow and well. We do three and a half laps. I notice as we end the trek that her right leg is turning ragged. This is a good time to stop. We're back in the house and she is catching her breath on oxygen, away from cigarettes, by 1415. Although she's a little winded she's recovering quickly. Her color is good. I heave a sigh of relief. Yet another day without iron supplements. Good. This is why she's been so colonically regular (for her) lately: She hasn't been quite so anemic. I recall the three ibuprofen administered this morning though, and tick off a mental reminder to keep a close eye out over the next several hours for signs that she might need an iron pill.
    I have to go on a short, maybe 20 minute, errand to the grocery but she is relaxing and seems pain free so I don't suggest that she accompany me. I gently order her to remain upright while I'm gone, repeating several times that I will be home in 20 minutes or less. She decides she wants to watch the Animal Planet channel. Good. Instead of waiting for her to look for her cigarettes this time, in case this happens after I leave and she falls trying to locate them, I put them out for her. She may have gone a while without smoking if I hadn't but if I'm not in the house she is still too unsteady for me to risk another fall.
    Upon my return she is completely engrossed in a documentary about training military K-9s. I notice that she has gotten herself a glass of water although she hasn't drunk much. The fact that she recognized and was motivated by her thirst is a plus. She isn't nodding off, she isn't hungry, she's not interested in playing a game so I decide to do some housework while she continues to watch dog training shows. I continue checking on her.
    At about 1515 while I'm folding a load of clothes to her left she decides she'll take a nap.
    I tell her, "Fine." Ask her how her back is doing. She winces and I tell her that, unfortunately, she still has three hours to go before I can give her any more ibuprofen. She knows what that is now and hardly ever refuses it although sometimes allows only one.
    I guide her into the bathroom. We take off her slacks (she removed her own shoes earlier while I was gone, a good sign) and check her paper underwear. "I think we can get away with just putting a second one over this one. Do you want to sleep in your slacks?"
    "No," she says, which tells me she's planning on a long, hard sleep.
    This is fine considering the circumstances. "I'll wake you up no later than 1800 if you aren't up before that (I know she won't be; she does, too, I see a wry glint flash across her face). Remember, Sex and the City is on tonight. The first episode of the last season."
    "Oh, yes. I don't want to miss that. Yes. Wake me up at six."
    So here I am now, finishing up this post, part of what will, again, for me, be a typical day. It's about 1630, I've folded, washed and started the dryer on another load of wash in the meantime and done a few other minor chores that would have taken me out of the immediate vicinity of Mom when she was awake. Certain rooms are, at the moment, very uncomfortable for her because they are crammed with stuff and cold, to boot. The master bedroom, for instance. So I only do chores in that room when Mom is sleeping. I only do heavy chores, anymore, when Mom is sleeping. I sometimes worry that the convenience of her interest in sleep might be too much of an advantage for me. I don't know. It's hard to tell. If I wasn't worrying about her sleeping I'd be worrying her to stay awake.
    Oh. The "nursing home behavior" thing. I should explain that. I've got some things to do that would fit perfectly between now and 1800 though, so I'm going to close here, check this over, post and publish.
    What was my purpose in doing a running tally of today as "A Typical Day" for you? Good question. I'm not sure. Let me think about that and get back to you.
    Later.

    To honor my intention of once again keeping up regularly with this journal, although I haven't yet awakened my mother and intend to soon, I wanted to post in Section 2 of Mom & Me Too.
    I'm a bit vague about whether I should be letting Mom sleep in so long. I checked her at 0800. That would have been a perfect time to awaken her from the vantage point of water shed. It hadn't begun...thus, I would not need to basin bathe her from head to toe, a chore neither of us likes or appreciates. But she was breathing so deeply and sleeping so peacefully. She didn't appear to be dreaming but good sleep isn't necessarily dream sleep.
    I'm curious to see how active she'll feel and be today; how much of her surprisingly recent muscular weakness will be evident. It's a beautiful, sunny day. It might make it into the mid-50's. I started talking up today's walk last night.
    Even on a bad day she does well using the wheel chair as a walker. It forces her to walk smoothy, makes it hard to do anything but walk smoothly, in fact. It painlessly keeps her back straight and gives her some exercise, both aerobic and kinesthetic. She walks much more easily pushing the wheelchair than she ever would with a walker. Certainly much better than she does without help or with me. Someone should consider redesigning the walker to be more like a wheelchair and rebuild it to double as a mini shopping cart whether the owner is in or out of the seat.
    I can hear the heavy breathing and light coughing that indicate she is rousing. I keep her eastern facing window open during the winter, in part to help heat her room and in part to trigger the dawn phenomenon so she'll rouse naturally. Although I don't have hard and fast proof, it seems as though her "better" days usually begin either at her initiation or when she is awakened because of a pending appointment.
    Laying in bed last night, I decided this might be a good time to attempt to redesign the logo, update the look and, if I like it, if it doesn't come out looking too cheesy, post it up there in the upper left hand corner. My mother's looks haven't changed from the neck up, and not much from the neck down, but mine have from the neck up.
    Ohhh, I've missed this. I can barely tear myself away. I wish I was twins or triplets and could multi-task on this site, get a lot of the clean-up and moving around done, post regularly, and tend to my mother.
    Ahh...the forecast is 44 but calm. The sun is intense up here, especially in our driveway. Should be a good day for a walk, with plenty of covering. Supposedly, it's 27 at the moment. Funny, it didn't seem that cold walking this morning.

    I'm here, permanently, for posting purposes, now.
    This page will undergo the installation of some basic frills...an id area at the bottom, for instance, with email address, etc. The entire Mom & Me, hmm...body of work, will be split into four separate server areas and connected through linkage. All four sites will continue to provide access to all pages of the site including future pages to be created.
    Hmmm...I'm just sitting back and leaning into this. What a pleasure it is to be back.

    So, to fill you in, my mother, at this time, is somewhat more frail than she was over the Christmas holidays but is regaining lost ground rapidly. I'm not sure what happened. The whole episode snuck up on me. For about three weeks previous to Christmas Proper I began reminding her about Christmas and "training" her for it so she could endure the 2.5 hour car ride each way to and from MPS's house for Dinner Day. The training included: Strict attention to staying awake and diet; adding movement, although not necessarily a lot, at least every other day; getting out; getting used to riding in the car.
    We progressed nicely. At two weeks prior to Christmas she was interested in going out to eat so we did, successfully, and without oxygen I might add. We took in two shopping trips although she remained in the wheel chair. At least every other and sometimes every day I had her out walking, using the wheelchair as The Best Walker In The Universe. She was doing well, slowly building up laps, walking the chair over both concrete and pebbled ground. With oxygen. 3/lpm. She attended my book club meeting on December 18th, still feeling more secure in the wheel chair but careful to deride it to her understanding and appreciative audience of my book club mates. She remained alert, ate heartily, participated, was an all 'round Jolly Old Soul and even insisted that we stay up for tea that evening after returning home in order to rehash the evening.
    Considering all these results you won't be surprised to learn that Christmas was a spectacular success. Not only did Mom not mind the car ride, on the way back she commented that since her back was taking it so well we should start planning the necessary business and visiting trips back to the Valley. I agreed. As well, the day featured her getting up and down and walking a lot independently. It was surprising; a joy to see. Although she's had anemia on and off during the last few months because of her sometimes necessarily excessive intake of ibuprofen to take the edge off the pain and inflammation, her color was really good. As well, we'd been getting good results with all her alternative treatments.
    The day after Christmas featured the arrival of two dear friends to spend the night and for whom we'd decided to fix a non-Christmas food holiday dinner. My mother was up for everything and didn't start to flag until early Saturday afternoon. She needed a nap about two hours before our guests left. We knew when she headed in that she wouldn't arise before they departed. She was clearly tired. Satisfied, and tired.
    Sunday she was up some but barely mobile, although relatively sure of herself when on her feet. I chalked her sluggishness up to the need for rest. I was not surprised Monday when she insisted on spending most of the day in bed. I insisted she eat some and badgered her with water...got her up for changes of bedding and clothing, etc., and a thorough head to toe washing. She was, though, adamantly prone and foggy. I let her be.
    Tuesday, a day before her next acupuncture appointment, she was not only surprisingly weak but wobbly, not stroke-ish but as though she'd been in bed for weeks rather than two days. I became alarmed and began to badger her into staying up, some movement, some concentration with multiple games of Sorry, stricter monitoring of her diet and medication and lots of lectures to try to jump start what I was interpreting to be a flagging will to live. Oh, it's been lively here the last few days. I'll write more about it later. I owe it to the caregiver's, and, for that matter, the caretaker's plight.
    For a variety of reasons we've been battling severe incontinence more often than not (a blissful day for me has been, lately, a day when I only have to change out and launder one bottom sheet and one set of clothes) with its attendant dehydration. I have to keep a close eye on her for signs of incipient dehydration, as her thirst is not always functional anymore (although it still, I discovered tonight, after spending the day feeding her sodium laden foods, has its moments).
    My hours have not been as strange as they are tonight. They've been pretty normal. Nursing my mother through convalescence from injury took on a routine aspect early and I'm pleased and proud to report that I can be counted on to be sufficiently flexible in my caregiving to adjust to various stages of recovery. I was not, however, prepared for the swift setback that followed Christmas.
    It's beginning to look as though it is a temporary set back. I'm still wondering if allowing her a few days of laxity (one of which was extreme laxity) contributed to the severity and swiftness of the setback. But it looks as though we are back on the road to recovery.
    As a reminder to myself: We have an appointment with Mom's non-alternative physician on Monday. I'm looking forward to it and have no small amount of business to conduct and concerns to address. I'm wondering what shape Mom will be in on Monday. The appointment won't be until 1430. Tomorrow is going to be a general beauty day: Do her hair, do her nails, maybe get in a walk, maybe catch up on Sex and the City. Easy and alert. To encourage beta waves.
    I think it's time for me to consider going to bed. It's nice to be back. I have lots of plans and lots to report. Stay tuned.

...forgive the metaphorical pun. It took me awhile just to find the time to figure out what I was doing wrong, here, before I could restart my Mom & Me journal. I like this software and I don't have to go through Earthlink's proprietary software, which is troublesome. As well, there's much more flexibility with the template, enough to please me but not so much to tempt me into going design nuts.
    I'll probably post many times, short and sweet, daily, now that it's easy, and I am finding more time to satisfy the need to write, here. I've been posting journal commentary in my head close to constantly since this particularly intense period of mother caretaking began, but haven't made it to the computer. As well, some of the time I am now able to use on the computer will be focused on moving pages around and replacing them with hand-made pages.
    But, it's nice to be back. There is much to tell. About Mom. And me. If you're still with me, I'll be back soon.