August 12, 2012 · 10:28 pm

Dad as an activist

I’ve come across more newspaper article clippings while going through some of Dad’s belongings. I was aware of a few of his “letters to the editor” submissions, but I had no idea his opinions were published on such a wide variety of topics. I’ll post the ones I found soon.

He also received personal responses from book authors who were writing about the Irish troubles. I wish I had a copy of the original letter Dad sent; the authors were very polite but indicated they would have to “agree to disagree.”

Dad did have a love of his homeland and of history in general, especially the issue of immigration. He may have been a blue-collar kind of guy, but he could have easily earned a college degree if he had had the opportunity.

I picture him penning these letters, some bitter, some reflective, over a beer at the end of a long night of work, or perhaps before work over a cup of coffee with cream and sugar.

Dad clearly wanted his voice to be heard, and I’m glad he was given a public opportunity to do so.

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August 11, 2012 · 6:48 pm

The loss of reason

I feel bad for Mom being surrounded by dementia patients who remind her of Dad. There is the man who eats hurriedly as if someone is holding a gun to his head. Dad ate like that too. Then there’s Theresa, who wanders constantly down the hallways of the nursing home. Dad’s wandering at home worried Mom half to death; he continued to wander when he was in the dementia ward at the nursing home across town, but at least he was in a secure facility and Mom didn’t have to be his security guard 24/7.

Recently, Theresa tried to break out of the facility by trying to push open the security door. Mom had to yell at her to get away from the door before the alarm sounded.

Mom is still trying to keep others safe, just like she did with Dad.

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August 10, 2012 · 8:29 pm

Trying to correct past wrongs

As I’ve written about before, I have guilt about not visiting Dad in the last few weeks of his life on this earth. Dad didn’t recognize me at that point, but I would have benefited from spending time with him that final December of his life.

Today, I quit my decent-paying job so that I can go stay with Mom in New Mexico and help her until she is more independent. I may be there a month or six months, I just don’t know now.

I am not the type to quit a job on a lark. This was a difficult decision, but a necessary one.

And I hope that I have reset my karma after the last month and a half, and the sacrifice I’m making going forward. My mom deserves it, just like Dad did, but now I have one last chance to do things right.

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August 9, 2012 · 7:30 pm

Trouble at the nursing home

From my experience, it does seem that specialized dementia wings are better for residents overall than mingling the mentally incapacitated with the physically challenged. Dad lived in a secure wing of a facility, a wing dedicated to Alzheimer’s patients. Now he still had his troubles there, wandering into people’s rooms, etc. I don’t think those issues can be eliminated without heavy-handed medicating, which the nursing home did engage in from time to time.

But Mom is in a skilled nursing wing of a nursing home, which is also co-ed and houses both patients with physical ailments and dementia. There are a couple of male residents who come into Mom’s room because her roommate smokes and they help themselves to her cigarettes. When I visited yesterday, one of these guys pulled up in his wheelchair right next to Mom at the dining room table, which was already full with other residents. He bumped into her, then mumbled an apology. But he spent the next several minutes rocking back and forth in his wheelchair, almost bumping into her again each time while she was trying to eat. Finally he took off.

We saw him after lunch and he tried to wheel up right behind Mom as she was slowly making her way down the hall in her wheelchair. I literally had to step behind her to give her space, and I could feel the guy’s wheelchair nipping at my ankles. I heard him mutter, “I’ll let her have the back.” I didn’t realize nursing home residents divided up territory like gang members!

One resident was so fed up she had staff put a bright, yellow sash across her door (connected with velcro). It said, “DO NOT ENTER.” Did that stop the man being passive-aggressive with my mom? Nope. I heard this loud rip and there he was tearing the blockade down!

Today Mom told me the man was moved to another facility. I think that was the right move. The man is suffering from a disease where he can’t control his actions, so he can’t really be blamed, but the safety of all of the other residents is of paramount importance.

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August 8, 2012 · 5:13 pm

The grandpa I never knew

I never had the opportunity to meet any of my grandparents. On my mom’s side, they were both deceased before I was born, with my mom’s mother dying exactly two months before I was born.

On Dad’s side of the family, his father and mother died within months of each other, so my first year on earth was definitely a mixture of happiness and grief for my father.

Dad worshipped his mother but was tight-lipped about his father. I think they had a distant relationship at best. Maybe that’s why it became tougher for Dad to know how to be a father as I graduated out of the baby/little girl stage and grew up. I don’t think his own father was around that much when he was growing up, so he was heavily influenced by his mother and sisters.

I came across this prayer card recently, with one of the only photos I’ve ever seen of my grandfather. I wish I knew more about him, and had learned more about his own background and any family stories that he was a part of. But instead, all I have is the image of a smiling man, who apparently did not make Dad smile the few times I remember him talking about his father. Those dark secrets, those troubled times remain locked behind that smile.

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August 7, 2012 · 8:49 pm

Dad dodges the draft

It’s interesting the pieces of a parent’s history you come across after they pass. I found Dad’s draft status card recently. Dad always claimed his flat feet (those fallen arches) kept him out of the military. I’m not sure about that, as the code on his card, 5A, means, “Registrant who is over either the age of liability (26) or (where applicable) the previous deferment age of liability (35).” The card is dated April 11, 1958, a day after Dad would have turned 26.

I don’t see Dad as being a military kind of guy, though he did love his adopted country dearly. His long blue-collar work history sums up the typical American worker nicely. It also reflects kindly on immigration, as my dad contributed to the American workforce and stayed out of trouble while he lived in this country. As I’ve said before, Dad was equally proud of being an Irishman and an American.

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August 6, 2012 · 10:21 pm

Dad and his pal on the town

I found this dashing photo of Dad and one of his buddies back in the day. What a couple of ladykillers these two had to be!

Dad and his pal enjoy a night on the town.

Unfortunately, I know nothing else of the photo, other than it appears to be taken in a photo booth, which was common back then. I don’t know if this was from my Dad’s Big Apple period, or when he spent a bit of time in the Big Easy or when he finally ended up in L.A.

At any rate, it’s a great snapshot in time, and it allows me to imagine the day/night this photo was taken. Maybe they were on their way to meet their dates? Or maybe they were single boys on the prowl, ha. I have no idea who the other man in the photo is, but I wonder if he’s still alive and how his life turned out.

I love old photographs, especially ones of my father looking so handsome!

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August 5, 2012 · 6:49 pm

Finding comfort in the nursing home

If there is one way I know Mom is at least on the road to recovery, it’s her obsession with makeup. Today her personal tragedy was that her eyebrow pencil was almost all used up! Mom carries her little pink makeup bag with her everywhere. She places it on her lap as she wheels herself in her wheelchair to and from the dining room. I think there’s a comforting ritual there, the “touching up” of her face after eating a meal, and “putting on her face” in the morning. She may be sporting a colostomy bag in this new phase of her life, but she’s going to make sure her lipstick is on!

With Dad, food was the comforting thing he held onto for as long as possible, until he lost the ability to swallow. He would eat everything in sight at the nursing home, and would enjoy the treats Mom would bring him on her weekly visits more than the visit itself. (Because at a certain point he didn’t remember Mom as his wife, just as this woman that would bring him diet Sprite and cookies or candy.)

I think it’s instinct to try to find some comfort, physically or mentally, even when you are really ill. Some people turn to medication for a chemical form of comfort. Games and hobbies are a great diversion in this setting. I saw one woman at the nursing home today clutching her word search book as she was ushered to the dining room. One of the therapists said the residents sometimes refuse to go to therapy because it interferes with their Bingo game!

It’s interesting to stop and think what truly bring you comfort in life, the people, pets or objects that make you feel calm and whole. Sadly, when one ends up in a nursing home, one is often cruelly separated from those most cherished comforts, so one finds peace wherever they can. If a tube of lipstick brightens my mom’s spirit as much as her face, so be it.

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August 4, 2012 · 8:01 pm

Letting our elderly generation down

Today I went to visit Mom in the nursing home. She had her hospital gown bunched up above her stomach. I asked if she was hot. Instead, she said that her colostomy bag had leaked. There was dried feces caked to her gown. She had rolled it up so the feces would not be against her skin. I could see a smear of feces on the sheet next to her head. I also could see feces smears on the waistband of her diaper.

It’s hard to put on a happy face when you see your own mother suffering in her own excrement. Mom is aware enough to be embarrassed as well. There was little I could do, as there were no gloves around. I rang her nurses bell repeatedly.

Almost an hour passed before a harried nurse popped her head in. She changed my mom’s colostomy bag, but left the clean-up for an assistant to take care of.

While I stepped out of the room, I met two dementia patients who are on my mom’s wing. The nurse had just gotten through venting to us about how the one dementia patient was driving her crazy. “I was short to her, and I’m normally not like that. Then I go home and lie awake at night feeling bad about being rude to the patients,” the nurse sighed.

I certainly don’t blame the staff. They are extremely understaffed and work themselves to the bone. It’s easy to imagine having compassion burnout when a dementia patient comes up to the nurses’ station every five minutes asking the same question over and over.

Theresa is one of the dementia patients. She rolls around in a white walker all day, up and down the hallway. She wanders into other patient’s rooms, because she cannot remember which room is hers. I’ve seen her try desperately to open locked doors. Today she saw me and said, “Do you have a room here?”

I smiled and said I was just visiting.

She said, “It’s so hard to find a room around here, they are all empty!” With that, she took off down the hallway. I’ve been to the nursing home enough now to know which room she’s in, and I help guide her there if she asks. After my mom had finally been cleaned up (she had been like that all morning and now it was almost lunchtime), Theresa popped into my mom’s room.

“Have you been into that room over there?” Theresa pointed across the hallway. We shook our heads “no” and she continued: “Well, I went in there and set down on a stool and I got all wet.”

She turned around to show us and it was clear she had wet herself. I directed her back down the hallway towards a nurse who could change her.

But as I sit here and think about the day’s events, I can’t help but feel we are letting the elderly down. They deserve better than this.

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August 3, 2012 · 7:46 pm

Elderly drug-pushers

I’ve posted before about how my dad became a zombie on the cocktail of medications the nursing home gave him. It’s common practice to sedate patients so they don’t become problematic for staff members. The drugs that the nursing home gave to Dad didn’t stop him from wandering about, they just left him without any ability to show emotions.

The nursing home my mom is in right now doesn’t seem to be overmedicating. In fact, Mom has had trouble getting the medications she is supposed to be taking on time. Last night, she never got her pain meds (just Tylenol PM) at all, despite the fact that she was recovering from a procedure on the veins in her leg.

Her roommate has a host of issues, both mental (bipolar) and physical (bulging disk in back.) She told my mom, in her permanently slurred speech, “You should ask for narcotics, like Percocet or Morphine. You won’t get hooked.”

Mom is managing her pain fine with Tylenol PM, and from the looks of her roommate, I’d say she’s indeed hooked. She sleeps most of the day, and even when she’s awake, she’s barely able to maintain a conversation. She has this permanent “doped up” expression on her face. It’s clear she’s trying to escape from her pain, and not just the physical kind.

And really, who can blame the elderly for wanting to escape into a drug-induced haze when they find themselves living in a nursing home?

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