Category Archives: Memories

October 17, 2012 · 9:01 pm

A return to normal?

So some good news today, and boy did I need some! Mom and I went to see the oncologist, which I was dreading. I had read it was pretty standard for oncologists to order a round of chemotherapy to prevent a recurrence of cancer. I’ve also read the accounts of the wise, brave souls on The Colon Club forum and have a better understanding of how brutal chemo treatments can be, with side effects ranging from the expected (nausea, fatigue) to the bizarre (cold sensitivity so severe that you can’t open the refrigerator without wearing gloves!)

Of course chemo has saved lives, and if an individual chooses to fight their cancer with chemo or radiation, I offer my support and my admiration. I just didn’t feel like it would be the right course of treatment for my mother.

Mom and I at the nursing home on my birthday.

When the oncologist began to talk to us, she said the normal regimen was six months of chemo. My heart sank like a stone. But then she followed it up by saying that due to my mother’s age and the fact that she was beyond 8 weeks after her surgery (due to blood clot complications) that the chemo would not be a benefit to her, and could actually do her real harm. I was pleasantly surprised that the oncologist was honest about the side effects of chemo, especially on the elderly. She said if it were her own mother, she would also not recommend chemo, instead she would suggest a “wait and watch” approach.

That was music to my ears. It was exactly what I was hoping for. So yes, Mom’s cancer may come back at some point. Six months, six years, no one can predict that. But at least Mom can enjoy a better quality of life in the here and now. She’s actually feeling quite well after recovering from her colectomy, and her appetite is great. I don’t want to take all that she’s worked hard to regain from her.

And yes, on a more selfish note, I hope to return home to Atlanta after setting up some kind of additional companion care for Mom.

Just like when we finally had to embrace the fact that Dad had dementia, our lives will not be the old normal again. But at this point, the new normal sounds pretty darn good.

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October 16, 2012 · 9:05 pm

The journey of a loved one’s ‘hard-earned’ earnings

Today we finally received a check for the funds in one of my dad’s bank accounts. It’s not a huge sum, but certainly it is very useful right now as Mom struggles with her own illness and growing medical bills.

The funds were from Dad’s IRA accounts, opened up when I was just a little girl in California. All of those long, tedious hours Dad worked as a freight checker for a trucking company finally have reached their zenith. Little by little, he faithfully placed funds out of each paycheck into these accounts. And now that financial symbol of all of his hard works rests in my Mom’s hands.

From Dad’s hands to our mailbox, the legacy of a lifetime of work is typed onto a piece of paper, to transform into additional numbers in my mom’s bank account. Of course, Dad being a faithful breadwinner means much more to me than a check. It was how he expressed his love for his family.

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October 15, 2012 · 8:16 pm

Each moment matters

I’ve had back-to-back tragic news to absorb over the past week. A daughter of a former co-worker was killed in a terrible car accident. She was only 28 years old. She was able to cling to life for almost a week before passing, so at least her family and friends had the opportunity to say goodbye, even as their hearts were breaking.

Then I learned that a local writer who taught a memoir writing class that I took last year passed away suddenly. She was only 50, and was such a vibrant, bright, witty person. She had suffered from seizures since being in a bicycle accident while in college. It is believed she had a seizure in her sleep.

Photo taken after the completion of the memoir writing class with author Julie L. Cannon. She is in the center with dark hair; I’m second from the right.

I only spent a few Saturday afternoons with this charming woman, along with a group of equally interesting writers. At the time, I was just beginning to try to write about Dad, and his experiences with Alzheimer’s. This blog was started with some of the building blocks I learned in her writing class. We had to submit a brief piece or two for critique and I remember being secretly proud as the teacher mentioned how moved she was by my work (she didn’t realize I was in the room at the time). She let us peruse her giant file of notes that she kept as she wrote her novels. It was a fascinating look inside the mind of a writer at work.

So two sudden deaths, lovely people with so much to offer to the world who found their lives cut tragically short. Beyond the despair, there’s a hard but valuable lesson to be learned. Life is by the moment. Not all of those moments will be wonderful or memorable, but some of us will have less time on this planet to make our mark than others. So we must use our precious time wisely.

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October 14, 2012 · 2:36 pm

Room service blues

This week, I will be spending a few days at a resort hotel in Ruidoso, where Mom still lives. I’ve stayed there several times, but one stay in particular sticks with me.

It would turn out to be just a few months before Dad became sick and never returned home, of course, we didn’t know that then. All we knew was that Dad’s mental state was continuing to decline. I went to visit Mom and Dad for a few days. During the stay, Dad hit Mom in the chin, claiming he was “shadow boxing” and Mom got in the way. They were supposed to come visit me at the hotel the next day. Mom was able to put on makeup to cover the bruise on her chin, but she wasn’t feeling much up to being out in public with Dad.

We had planned to eat at the hotel restaurant but I thought that would be a bad idea considering the circumstances, so I suggested room service, an indulgence my parents would never dream of normally. Surprisingly, Mom agreed quite readily. It was such a strange, awkward and sad meal. Due to my food allergy issues, the safest thing on the menu for me to eat was the lobster tail. I later wondered if Dad, who was hallucinating quite frequently by that point, was freaked out by the sight of the lobster tail. If he was, he didn’t let on. He gobbled down his burger with relish, completely oblivious to the sadness choking the room.

This time, Mom is the one ill but I hope my stay turns out to be a more positive memory.

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October 13, 2012 · 9:07 pm

Dad’s presence stronger at home now

Mom was telling me today how she feels Dad’s presence more at home now than before. It’s almost been a year since Dad died, and another year before that when he still lived at home.

Perhaps because Mom has had her own brush with death this summer she is more open and vulnerable to these feelings. I can’t say that I’ve felt Dad’s presence at my parents’ home, though Dad’s ashes sit on the dresser of my room. I’ve certainly thought about him daily, and little things around the house remind me of him and of better times spent there.

Mom said she feels Dad’s presence the most at night. To this day, she only sleeps on “her” side of their bed, leaving Dad’s side untouched.

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October 12, 2012 · 6:14 pm

“I want to take him home”

As I mentioned recently, it’s almost been a year since Dad’s final round of hospital stays began. Most of the memories from that time period are sad, naturally. But there were a few innocent, sweet memories collected along the way.

When Dad came back to Ruidoso after being in the dementia wing of the nursing home in Roswell for almost a year, he ended up at the local hospital for a respiratory infection. It was the first time I had seen Dad since summer and I was shocked by his emaciated frame and his non-responsiveness. It was pretty clear that this appeared to be the beginning of the end.

One day, two fresh-faced nursing students were making rounds. They stopped into Dad’s room, perky and bright. One of them exclaimed about Dad: “He’s so sweet! I just want to take him home with me!”

She could have been talking about a puppy, but instead she was referring to my Dad, who was slowly wasting away before us. Yet in her youthful eyes, she saw something precious. Perhaps that was naive on her part, but it was refreshing in the moment.

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October 11, 2012 · 6:52 pm

Dad’s love of words

I’ve written many times before about Dad’s love of books. But he also was fond of speeches. As a great lover of history, he followed politics fairly closely, even if he was often disgusted by the actions of certain politicians. Tonight is the vice presidential debate and one of my earlier exposures to politics was watching the Reagan-Mondale debate on TV with Dad. I would have been 10 at the time, just old enough to think I should have opinion. As it turns out, the only opinion I had was one of sheer boredom.

But Dad watched the debate with great interest and sounded off with distaste when he heard something he disagreed with. As I’ve mentioned before, Dad was a Democrat but I think he had a certain begrudging respect for Reagan’s ability to deliver memorable lines and even inject a bit of humor into dry affairs like political debates.

It’s interesting that age is an issue between the two current V.P. candidates and age was an issue also back in 1984. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

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October 10, 2012 · 7:11 pm

The attack of the swollen arms

There are a lot of things you wish you hadn’t seen when a loved one spends time in the hospital. One image that I will never be able to erase is the sight of Dad’s swollen arms.

They were swollen because of excessive fluid. A simple enough medical phenomenon, but still disturbing for the average person to witness. It was even more grotesque because the rest of Dad’s body was so emaciated. His arms looked like they belonged to a linebacker, not a 79-year-old man with Alzheimer’s who weighed 116 pounds.

I remember holding Dad’s fat hands and stroking those swollen arms while Dad was under sedation and on a ventilator. While I had seen Dad’s personality transform into someone I didn’t know due to Alzheimer’s, I was now forced to witness the physical transformation taking place within Dad. It was a sobering moment.

When you walk along someone battling Alzheimer’s, you will witness such high and lows of life. The experience makes one appreciate the dull moments of one’s life even more.

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October 9, 2012 · 7:48 pm

Driving into the ditch

I’ve passed the ditch Dad drove into almost every day since I’ve been staying with Mom in Ruidoso. It’s not very deep, but enough to give one a bit of a scare.

It was the beginning of the end for Dad behind the wheel. Families dealing with dementia often have a big struggle over getting their afflicted loved one to “hand over the keys.” In America especially, the car is such a symbol of independence. For those with Alzheimer’s, having to give up such a huge part of their independence is soul-crushing. While mental and physical faculties are usually quickly fading during the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s, people are usually still self-aware enough at this point to grasp the loss, and what the disease has claimed from them. It’s a heartbreaking moment.

For Dad, that shallow ditch was the beginning of the end of his driving career. Always a slow, careful driver, the big boat of a car he drove gently went off the road and settled into the lower ground. Mom and Dad were physically fine, but mentally and emotionally, they were wrecked.

The car set next to their condo for many months, until someone mentioned how long it had been sitting there. It went to the junkyard. Now the only memories of the car is a set of car keys and some old oil and brake fluid sitting in the storage closet outside.

The ditch represented more than just a minor car accident involving a man struggling in the mid-stages of dementia. My parents’ independence also took a hit, and sank along with the spinning wheels into the ground. They would manage, thanks to the small but very efficient public transit system in their small town, but that unplanned meeting with the ditch transformed their lives forever.

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October 8, 2012 · 5:32 pm

What a year can bring

This time last year, Mom was getting ready to move Dad closer to home. Dad was in the latter stages of dementia, but still ambulatory. He had fought a few mystery infections over the summer, but there was a glimmer of hope, that at least Mom would be able to visit Dad more often.

Of course, those hopes were quickly dashed. Those infections came back with a vengeance, and whatever medication the nursing home used to treat the symptoms caused Dad to have a very severe reaction. It was something that he never fully recovered from.

So as I watch the leaves fall from the trees as the fall season takes hold and transforms the world around me, I’m thinking about Dad entering the last seasons of his life last year. I remember the trepidation I had in my heart, worrying about the nursing home move and the impact it would have on Dad’s well-being. I had no idea for the roller coaster ride in store for me.

This year I’m on a different roller coaster ride of emotions, as my mom is now the one sick. You just truly never know what a year will bring.

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