How I spent my summer vacation – the battles begin

 

Well Gentle Reader,

I told you about the trip home and promised to tell you the rest of the story. I am finally starting to make good on that promise. GenXers are all at that age when we face our ghosts through the end of our parents’ lives. I am not the first nor the last of the people I know to go through this and no two situations are the same. This is just mine.

and so we continue and bring Mom home...

I have finally arrived. It is a grey and miserable and the person with the key to the apartment is out shopping. I had a key to the building and left my suitcases with the neighbour as I unload a bit more and wait for them to return.

 

Tired, hungry, and needing to run errands and settle in before I go to meet with the hospital care coordinator tomorrow, I order some delivery food. Delivery is a luxury I can not do at home. I know confusing first I was calling Ontario home but now I am here Nova Scotia is home. Home is where the heart is they say but my heart is split. I am a child raised surrounded by green fields under thunderstorm skies in big cities. I have grown to love my ocean home too, but I do not have the rocks and pines for my roots or the Nor’easter winds under my wings like those born on the coast do. My whole life has been living in between worlds, daughter of immigrants and looking Caucasian but half of me was olive skinned and familiar with Arabic conversations. Now I live with one foot in the military and one in the civilian world but not completely a part of either.  

 

I called Mom and let her know I am finally here 3 days late and her credit card statement much heftier than it has been in years. She had a bad night early on and is miserable in the hospital. They are short staffed, and the room is cramped and dim. They have not given her a proper shower or brushed her false teeth in 9 days, and she wants to come home. She is spitting nails at them talking over her and not to her. It is definitely pneumonia, and it is aggravating her congestive heart failure but like most things wrong with her it is chronic pain and annoying but not killing her any time soon. She keeps saying she never thought she would live this long. She had a fever episode or bad reaction to something no way to know or maybe it was her witchy side sending her a message but one night while I was trying to get myself here, she had a waking dream full of hallucinations and all she kept saying was Amy is coming and she will get me out of here, she will rescue me. That is my job, the family pit-bull, I do the fighting, I solve the problems, I fix things.

The idea that anyone is telling her she can’t live alone anymore is unfathomable to her. I am standing by her bed trying to pay attention, but I misplaced my cell phone on the way out of her door and I am in a bit of mess trying to figure out a solution as I cannot log into work without it, and I really need what is on the SIM card not just a new phone. It is snowing outside, I had to borrow something of hers as my few bits of winter clothes were needing a wash from the trip making me fidgety as well. We got it settled that the meeting to release her would be the next day and she would have to hang in a bit longer. I went off in search of a new monitor so I could be set up to start work and had a nasty fight with the machine that releases you from hospital parking. Everything seemed to be a fight, and this was rapidly turning into a karmic bad joke or test I needed to pass. If it was a test, it was multiple choice, which have always been the bane of my existence, with no clear-cut right answer to any question.

 

Monitor bought, supplies laid in, especially the magic elixir of coffee, plans in place for what is to happen when, I can finally get a bit of rest before I get to armour up for the next battle. The occupational therapist was an awful woman and a bully. She had no business being in healthcare and I find it hard to believe none of her fellow employees had not reported her to HR for any kind of training related to being a decent human being like compassion or basic manners. I bit my tongue for as long as I could but when she directly scoffed at mother while simultaneously stripping the last of Mom’s dignity, I tossed her from the room with a blast of icy words and threat of formal complaint. I packed up the few things to come home the next afternoon armed with knowledge of how and when this would happen hoping I could get mother out of my vehicle at the other end without incident. We managed somehow although it was a bit of a feat and the coffees I picked up at the drive-thru mostly survived.

 

Safely in her recliner with a decent cup of tea and her tv remote in hand I went back to work for the remainder of the day. I had to hide her walker in the other room so I would not be dealing with any misadventures while I worked, and we seem to be getting off to a decent start. Once again, I was setting myself up for disappointment with my high hopes, but you take the good moments when you find them as they might not come around as often as you would like. She finally ate a decent supper for the first time in months, that is the other thing I do, I feed people. I am the family pit-bull and wishful chef. Somehow that dream slipped through my fingertips when life got in the way. I had to make a choice long ago. As always, I chose what was best for everyone but myself. Martyrdom was built into my genetic code. 

The doldroms and deja vu

The days began to follow one like the other with a routine developing. It was very much like caring for a large mouthy toddler. I had spent years learning to like my mother and she in return seeming to like me back and I was determined not to waste this time fighting with her. Previously I spent a summer caring for her after a heart attack, we had a couple of blow outs one of which I think shone a light on for her.

 

It did not change things completely, but the epiphany certainly had been the start of her understanding why I was the way I was and maybe, just maybe, a little less punishment and a little more appreciation came of it.

After that first day I did not have to brush her false teeth again until near the end and every morning I would make her breakfast, assist with her medications and testing her blood sugars, settle her in for a day of watching out the window in front of the tv. I would have lunch for her at noon, and supper as close to five as humanly possible. On the days I did not work there were errands to run and shopping to do. A PSW came every day to assist with things and fill in the records kept in the large white binder for the nurse or doctor when they came. Mondays and Wednesdays were shower days, every other Thursday was the cleaning lady who bustled around at mach 2 and did laundry. All of them were wonderful, some of them were pretty much family and she knew everything about them, their dogs, their gardens, their children, and other family. One of the PSW’s that had been with her since the beginning was very pregnant with twins and another, I ended up doing her taxes so she could get her provincial medication benefit and continue with her very, very, expensive medication.

 

Spring never did appear, we went from winter snow to tornado and heat warnings, humidity, and green leaves in the blink of the eye. Of course, the one aspect of spring was not skipped, and the budding of the trees put my allergies in over-drive while the chlorine in the water helped my eczema bloom as well. Living in Ontario was always a double-edged sword, my feet swell, my skin revolts, and my eyes run streams of muck. It did not stop me from spending some time in my happy place, the parks. Where she lives there are 3 wonderful parks along the river and I spent as much time as I could there to sooth my soul but it was not as much as my soul needed.

 

We would talk about the news, watch tv together in the evenings and I would help her get to bed each night. The antibiotics for the pneumonia had a nasty affect on her already tenuous gastrointestinal system. I found myself battling the sores she came home from hospital with, one refusing to heal and had flash backs to when my son was an infant. The pneumonia cleared as did the worst of diarrhea, but her strength was not returning. She was determined to get back to where she was, living on her own without constant care and send me back to my life. This idea was obvious to everyone else just a pipe dream and we could not dislodge it from her minds grasp. It was not long before she could not stand without assistance. Up until now I was just a helping hand to keep her stable as she forced her body to bring her to her feet. Now active lifting was required. She refused to use the lift built into her chair, thousands of dollars to have it to help her and yet she stubbornly refused the assistance not until she had no other choice.

 

She was the same with pain medication. After living most of her adult life with chronic pain she had learned to control it but that was not as easy to do now and really at this point fear of opioid addiction was ridiculous Tylenol was the limit of what she would take. It took a great deal of gentle pressure and pleading to get her to take any pain meds and understand this was her life now, there was no going back.

 

Nothing I said sunk in but when one of the other care givers, nurses, or doctor told her then it would - she hated hearing time and again I was right. I learned to hide the growing pain in my left shoulder and was careful not to blow out my right again. I never mentioned the tingling in my left-hand pinky and ring finger. I figured I would get to it later as it was not life threatening and what would we do if I ended up needing more then a few Tylenols myself?

It was bad enough to live with constant caution to not bring home covid to her thus limiting my ventures into the world more and more. Especially now I could not leave her for more then a couple of hours at a time as the water pills meant trips to the bathroom were frequent and her muscle control was all but gone. I could get an extra 45 minutes if the arrival of a PSW coincided with a bathroom trip just right but there were no guarantees they would be there exactly when expected. They were also my biggest option for some connection with the world too, so I looked forward to seeing them as much as she did now.

Time does not always fly 

Time flies when you are having fun and does not when you are not. I was living in a retirement Brigadoon that came out of the mist very early and faded back into the mist later then it should every evening. If I wanted any time to myself I had to be up even early (not likely as I am a creature of the night) or stay up even later. Easy at home but now I have the issue of a small apartment, all the inside doors always open, and even the tiniest light anywhere bothering her. If I went out on the balcony her open window was right there and I would hold my breath as I opened the door and screen then closed them again.

I had not lived this far up in a very long time, the view was beautiful especially at night. The practically perfect straight line of the horizon was not something we have in Nova Scotia. It was something I missed especially when there were fireworks. Living close to a water treatment plant I did not miss though. When the breeze blew from just the right angle, or the air was incredibly (neither happened often but enough) they aromas lofted up the hill to the balcony. Sewage and stagnant water from the evaporation pools hung in the forty degrees air dispersing through the extra 10 degrees of humidex and clung inside your nose. Luckily this was always followed by a shower (even mother nature felt filthy) or rain and a change in the breeze.

The green is greener in Ontario. Fields of milky emerald that rolled like waves in the breeze. Cool dark greens secreted in the trees and pale lime reflecting bright light from the acres of corn. All the colours seem more vivid and bright, sky and Lake Erie shores, sunsets, and velvet nights punctuated by stars. It inspired me to paint again. I needed something to be absorbed by the was mine as I was trapped in the place more and more now. I took art classes from the time I was little now I think about it. Weekends and summers I spent a great deal of time at the library art wing and later the Art Gallery on the river taking classes. I always threw myself into art class at school too every year. I was part of a great experiment in education back then, so I was lucky to get more and keep extras like art and music in grade school while all the other schools bereft of boomer children were downsizing or shutting down. High school I was incredible proud of my port folio and both my teachers the classically trained and the modern professional encouraged me to keep going. But like all good things that came to an end when life got in the way so, I revived it.

 

Some inexpensive water colours (more gouache than water colour) a cheap set of brushes and a pallete and I was back at it. I did not do a lot of water colour before, but I did do acrylic, so this worked out well. I eventually dug into my mother’s magic closet and dug out more items including her travel box / easel.
We call it the magic closet for a few reasons and one day I will tell you all about it. I found myself painting memories of Nova Scotia, flowers from the graveyard, and watching YouTube videos to remind myself all I had forgotten and learn more. Troubleshooting my frustrations and correcting my mistakes and mostly finding exercises to bring back my muscle memory in my hands, eye, creative brain.

And so Dear Reader,

I think it is time to stop here. I have some painting I would like to do and a few chores that really should not be avoided any longer. I will fill in more blanks later as I am able to get them down and coherent. Suffice it to say you should never complain about long boring periods of time. Find a way to fill it and appreciate the quiet because the tornado is coming, it always does.

First one in 35 years