Mom's Last Days: Chapter 1
BODY LANGUAGE AT ITS MOST PRIMAL
Feb 21, 2015
Mom and I shared an intimate moment at the toilet today. While she held onto the bars on either side and maintained her version of standing, which is essentially a low, backward-leaning crouch, I held her up while craning my head around her backside to spread barrier cream on her pending bedsore. While I was back there Mom farted. She giggled and her butt skin, which hangs like a baby elephant’s soft wrinkled skin, jiggled. I made a wry comment about how sweet it was to share such an intimate moment, which made Mom giggle again which, of course, produced another fart. We held onto each other and just laughed.
A crude way to describe my caregiver relationship with Mom is that I am her handler, like a horse handler. I touch her body every day to dress her, get her from here to there, clean her after bathroom visits, bath her, change her drawers, spread goop on her bottom, cut her toe nails, rub lotion all over her dry skin, stick Lidocaine patches on her lower back, prop her up when she tilts too far to the right, hold her spittoon while she brushes her teeth, help her walk with her walker, undress her, get her into bed, and hug her as often as possible.
In mid February my handler hands discerned changes in Mom - in her balance, her reflexes, muscle tone, ability to urinate, and state of confusion. I kind of went nuts about it and obsessed that Mom had a urinary tract infection (UTI). I spoke with several Hospice nurses and professionals about my concerns. In elderly people UTIs often manifest in greater confusion and less coordination rather than the classic symptoms of painful and urgent urination and Mom certainly exhibited those symptoms. Verifying that Mom had a UTI would have required collecting a urine sample through a temporary catheter, so rather than subjecting Mom to that Hospice and I decided to assume she had a UTI and to treat her with antibiotics.
Feb 21, 2015
Mom and I shared an intimate moment at the toilet today. While she held onto the bars on either side and maintained her version of standing, which is essentially a low, backward-leaning crouch, I held her up while craning my head around her backside to spread barrier cream on her pending bedsore. While I was back there Mom farted. She giggled and her butt skin, which hangs like a baby elephant’s soft wrinkled skin, jiggled. I made a wry comment about how sweet it was to share such an intimate moment, which made Mom giggle again which, of course, produced another fart. We held onto each other and just laughed.
A crude way to describe my caregiver relationship with Mom is that I am her handler, like a horse handler. I touch her body every day to dress her, get her from here to there, clean her after bathroom visits, bath her, change her drawers, spread goop on her bottom, cut her toe nails, rub lotion all over her dry skin, stick Lidocaine patches on her lower back, prop her up when she tilts too far to the right, hold her spittoon while she brushes her teeth, help her walk with her walker, undress her, get her into bed, and hug her as often as possible.
In mid February my handler hands discerned changes in Mom - in her balance, her reflexes, muscle tone, ability to urinate, and state of confusion. I kind of went nuts about it and obsessed that Mom had a urinary tract infection (UTI). I spoke with several Hospice nurses and professionals about my concerns. In elderly people UTIs often manifest in greater confusion and less coordination rather than the classic symptoms of painful and urgent urination and Mom certainly exhibited those symptoms. Verifying that Mom had a UTI would have required collecting a urine sample through a temporary catheter, so rather than subjecting Mom to that Hospice and I decided to assume she had a UTI and to treat her with antibiotics.
On Tuesday morning, February 24th, I went into Mom’s bedroom to get her up and she could barely move her legs and arms. Her hands couldn’t grab onto the bedrail and she leaned way back and to the right as I spun her around and onto the edge of the bed. When I looked into Mom’s eyes it looked like no one was home. It was then I suspected she had had a stroke.
Mom’s legs dragged sideways as I transferred her into her wheelchair but somehow I managed and then I rolled her into the living room. When I slid Mom’s breakfast table in front of her she grabbed a magic marker off the table and held it in her fist while trying to jam the marker into an empty mug. She stabbed the marker in the air, never reaching the desired target, but she wouldn’t quit trying. Like an infant in its first efforts at hand-eye coordination Mom grew frustrated and remained so insistent that I scrambled around the house trying to find something she could successfully do with her hands. Her urgency seemed to beg for an activity to keep from losing her large muscle skills.
I grabbed a handful of the colorful loops used to make potholders in grade school summer camp, a craft item I had bought to help keep Mom occupied when she was at Riverside, and then I looked for a container that was the same diameter so Mom could slip the loops over it. I found a Kern Nectar can that was the right size and sat next to Mom. She was nonverbal so I gently talked her through the movements and together we slowly slid one loop after another over and down the can. Her left hand kept bumping into the can, only her right could pick up the loops. I knew at the time it would probably be Mom’s last creative act.
As I helped Mom I thought about how Mom had always been the fix-it person in our childhood household because of the way her mind worked. She could figure out how to repair broken gadgets, jammed screen doors, rewire lamps, you name it, Mom would persist until she figured out how to make it work. And now here she sat, fumbling with those stupid cloth loops, her persistent nature was still there but her mind was shot. I was mortified that her life had come to this.
When the Hospice nurse came to examine Mom she explained that for many people who have normal blood pressure, signs of a stroke can come on slowly, even days before a stroke actually hits. The changes in Mom I had felt through my hands the week before had probably been the beginning signs of Mom’s stroke.
Mom's downward slide had just gotten a whole lot steeper. My heart broke into tiny pieces as I watched Mom continue trying to engage in her world. Continue trying to exist.