Balance

alance has been one of Mom's biggest physical issues since her stroke. When she had the first stroke, she couldn't walk for a few days, and it took a lot of physical therapy to get her back on her feet. She's had at least one, and possibly more strokes since then. Her left side is almost completely numb. It is difficult for her to walk, difficult for her to get out of a chair, difficult for her to carry things in her left hand. She says that she can hold stuff in her left hand, but only if she really concentrates on keeping her fingers in a death grip on the item. When she does that, she can't concentrate as well on her walking.

Have I ever mentioned Mom has a fierce independence and a stubborn streak that rivals the entire 20-Mule Borax Team?

So, she insists on walking, insists on getting out of her chair without assistance, insists on carrying two cups of coffee at a time.

I'm learning that it's not entirely a bad thing. The neurologist told us that she needs to exercise the parts of her brain that were injured by the stroke, and that anything she can do for herself, I should let her do. And I've been getting a lot better at standing back and letting her do things. She's back to putting out the (greatly reduced number of) supplements each morning. I've been asking her to help with things when I'm making dinner or supper (that's lunch and dinner, for those of you who don't know Rural Town-speak). For a couple of weeks, I even let her make breakfast by herself.

Then, she fell.

It was Christmas Eve. We had five extra people in the house for the holiday, and with five extra people comes five extra people's stuff. So, the piles in the house grew larger than usual. Mom was walking from the living room into the kitchen when she stubbed her toe on something and toppled to the floor. She caught herself with her left arm.

My son and I picked her up from the floor and got her settled in her recliner. I brought an ice pack and checked to make sure she could move her fingers and wrist. I called my sister, an EMT, to ask her opinion. And then, finally, gave in to Mom's insistence that she didn't need to go to the hospital.

The next morning, I couldn't believe the bruises Mom had! Her wedding rings had come off the night before because of the swelling, and her whole hand was a big bruise from where they had hit something on the way down. A crescent bruise on in inside of her elbow suggested she'd landed on a 2-litre soda bottle cap. And almost her entire forearm was bruised.

She still insisted that she didn't need to go to the doctor. She's still in physical therapy, and the therapist has been helping with the wrist, now, too. She also says Mom's balance is worse than it was when she started seeing her in September, and that is probably what made her fall.

Mom has been resting more, and sitting with Dad watching TV or shows on DVD (we recently bought them a season of Little House on the Prairie and I Love Lucy). Dad has been more talkative lately (which I will get into in another post), and that helps Mom to not minding resting. When she complained that she should be helping, Dad encouraged her, saying, "You've worked hard for 80 years. Now, you get to retire."

I hate to say her getting hurt was a good thing, but it has helped her to rest and not work all the time. I wouldn't have wished the pain on her, but at least it has come with some positive consequences.

I got another Bonus Task out of the deal--Mom used to wash all the dishes. It was good physical therapy for her, and it sure helped me a lot. But rather than taking this Bonus Task on myself, I delegated it. My son is now in charge of dishes.

Doorbells

've mentioned before that Mom is a hoarder.

When I moved back in last spring, the front door (which we rarely use) was completely blocked with boxes of stuff. Papers from two years ago, unmatched socks by the bag, boxes and bags from previously started and unfinished sorting attempts, and an empty video cabinet--while all the DVDs and VHS tapes are scattered around the room.

Once, the screen door locked as Mom and I were going outside to look at something, and we couldn't get back in. Dad was sleeping in the back, and my husband was sleeping in the basement. I went around to the front door and tried to open it. Push. Push. Push. Not enough movement to even get my head through the door.

I had my cell phone, so I tried calling my husband. He didn't answer. So, I called the house phone. Dad didn't answer. I rang the doorbell. Still no knight came to our rescue.

Finally, I pushed hard enough I could get my head through the door, and I hollered, "Dad!!!" He answered, and I told him we needed help. And at the same time, my husband came up the stairs. Finally, we were back in!

So, a few months later, I spent a lot of time emptying that corner, along with the rest of the room. Wow, did that feel nice! Being able to walk through the room and into the hallway rather than walking around through the kitchen. Not having boxes tumble down when their precarious position was perturbed.

Shortly after that, Mom wanted to move furniture around. I'm not sure why, but she decided she wanted the table moved from the dining area side of the kitchen into the back half of the living room. It's no further from the stove to the table, and I figured it would, if nothing else, keep Dad's oxygen hose from tripping us while we're cooking. So, I strapped on my weight belt and got cracking.

As we were trying to figure out where to place all the furniture, I mentioned that since we never use the front door, maybe we could put a piece of furniture in front of it.

"Heavens no! We use that door sometimes," Mom replied, indignantly.

I didn't mention the years the door was blocked before I cleared it out a few weeks prior.

"Oh really? When?" I asked, innocently.

"Well, sometimes people come up to that door and ring the doorbell."

"Huh. I don't know why they would, when the sidewalk comes up to the back door."

"Well, one time the {former, long-retired} newspaper editor's daughter and her boyfriend ran off the road, and they came up to our house to get help. She rang that doorbell."

"She did," Dad interjected. "And I pulled their car out with the old Chevy truck, and she always was real nice to me after that."

I did some mental processing of that information. The year the Chevy truck was traded for the Ford truck flashed through my mind. Then I processed the name of the woman who rang the bell.

She graduated when I was six.

And that was the last time the front doorbell was rung. Well, until I tried to get in when I was locked out the back door.

Clandestine Chicken Chucking

om doesn't like to waste anything. If there's a little coffee in the pot in the morning, she pours it into cups to heat in the microwave and makes another pot to finish out three cups for breakfast. If you'd seen me in our last place, you would be surprised it bothers me--I used to make a pot of coffee, and being the only one in the house that drank it, would heat it in the microwave for up to 3 days! But I think it bothers me now because she just can't stand the idea of throwing anything away (not to mention that she yells at me when I throw stuff away).

Once in awhile, I mess up with menus and end up buying more food than I have time to make, and then forget to put it in the freezer, and it gets wasted. Well, once, there was some nasty, rotting chicken in the fridge that I was going to throw away. But when I wasn't looking, Mom started cooking it. I'm not kidding. I asked her what she was doing, gagging from the stench as I spoke.

She was cooking it to give to the cats. *sigh*

She did that one other time, too, and that time, there were people in the basement working on the remodeling! When I realized what was going on, I took it outside and put it in the cats' bowl. I hoped they were smart enough not to burn themselves on it.

Today, my husband commented that there was, once again, some bad chicken in the fridge. He said he would take it out to the dumpster, but I told him Mom would probably want to cook it for the cats if she saw it. So, he decided he'll do it tonight, after she's gone to bed.

Nothing like clandestine chicken chucking. *grin*

Not in Her Nature

Mom doesn't like to sit while she works. All my life, I've watched her stand while cooking, stand while folding clothes, stand while going through the mail. She probably wished she'd been born a man so she could stand in the bathroom!

Since she had her stroke (and went through physical therapy to relearn how to walk and do other everyday tasks), Mom has been instructed that for every hour she stands, she is supposed to sit for an hour with her feet up. That doesn't always go so well. Several times, I have tried to get her to stop working and sit down. We've had shouting matches over it--she seems to think that if I'm working, she should be working.

When I moved home, the first thing I did was clean out the basement so my husband and son and I would have our own "space". That was an ordeal in itself because Mom has hoarding tendencies, on top of the fact that she and Dad haven't been able to take care of the place properly for at least 10 or 15 years. Every room in the house, both upstairs and down in the basement, was full to the gills.

The first morning at breakfast, I asked Mom if she could come downstairs and sit while I sorted through the stuff. Dad said, "No, she can't." He's usually very quiet in the mornings because his head hurts so much, so I was surprised by his comment. I looked at him and saw a glimmer in his eyes like I used to see when he was telling a joke. He continued by saying, "She can't. It's not in her nature to sit down while she works."

How true, Dad. How true.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

A Little Success

One of the things that is irritating here is Dad's oxygen. It seems like there should be a better way than having the machine sitting in the middle of the house and having hose stretched throughout the rooms. Not to mention that the hose is constantly getting caught on the corner of the fridge or on Stuff in this full-to-the-gills house. "Watch out for Dad's hose!"

The way the house is set up, you can walk in a circle through the kitchen into the living room and back into the kitchen. In the middle are the stairs to the basement. At each junction of the two rooms is a hallway; one leads to the mud room, the other to the bedrooms and bathroom. The oxygen machine sits in that junction.

Well, the past few days, I have been working hard on cleaning out the living room, and I finally got to the Stuff blocking the opening from the hallway to the living room! Yay!

This morning after breakfast, he was getting up to go sit in his recliner, and I posed a question:

"So, Dad. I cleaned out the living room. How would you feel about going into the living from the other end so your hose doesn't lay across the kitchen floor?"

I was prepared for him to say no. Seriously. He doesn't do any more walking than he has to. His recliner is a straight shot from the dining room table. Going the other way would require him to walk at least 18-20 feet farther.

He surprised me by saying yes!

It's little moments of reason like this that really make my day.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.1

Too Many Supplements

So, I mentioned Mom's... umm... penchant for taking supplements.

When I first moved home, I watched her struggle with them every morning. (She had a stroke in January, and ordinary tasks have become increasingly difficult for her.) She'd pick up a bottle, look at it, look at the cups she was putting them in to determine which one it was supposed to go in, and then she'd open the bottle, forget which one she had, look at the label, look back at the cups, and on and on, until finally she got one out and dropped it in a cup. This process would go on, often for 60-90 minutes or longer. When I finally couldn't take it anymore, I suggested that I do them for her, and use pill boxes to put out a week's supply at a time.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

We sat down with my computer, and she pulled box after box of pills out of the cupboard. It was like a Volkswagen filled with clowns! An hour and a half later, I had a spreadsheet with a list of over 50 different pills, with six columns to differentiate when and by whom they should be taken! And really, her system was actually even more complicated than that, but I insisted that we "simplify" it. One of the biggest problems was finding pill boxes that would hold everything--the ones I found were called Triple XL! Even then, it sometimes felt like the cartoon character sitting on the overfull suitcase to get it shut.

I realized that this couldn't possibly be good for them. I mean, there were days she couldn't finish eating her breakfast, because her stomach was too full of pills and the water she had to drink to get them down! Between that many supplements and all the prescription medications they take, the number of possible bad interactions was monumental. I tried to research it online, but it just wasn't something I could accomplish on my own.

It was time to involve professionals.

I started with our chiropractor. He agreed that they were taking too many supplements, and recommended finding out if the same ingredient was in more than one of the supplements and could be eliminated. So, back to my spreadsheet. I added rows and typed each ingredient/dose in a new column, copying and pasting the supplement name in each new row so that I could identify which supplement each ingredient was from. That took awhile! (I finally realized I could find most of the ingredient lists online and copy and paste. Wish I'd thought of that sooner.) Then, I was able to alphabetize the ingredients and find out which supplements overlapped.

Of course, when I brought that [9-page] report to the chiropractor, he joined me in my state of overwhelmedness. He suggested that I check with her regular doctor, and if that didn't work, he knows a doctor who specializes in homeopathy, and would have referred us to him.

When we talked to Mom's regular doctor, she too was overwhelmed, and she too referred us on. This time, it was to a PharmD--a doctor of pharmacy.

The PharmD was wonderful! She was knowledgeable, thorough, compassionate, firm, and got that list of 50-some supplements down to a more manageable 26! She looked at all the overlap of ingredients and cut out a bunch. She cut out items that had a sufficient amount in their multi-vitamin. She took out a bunch of "hoax" pills, things that have no studies proving that they do what their sellers claim. And she took out a bunch of pills Mom was taking for energy and weight loss. Those pills were bad for her heart, and could be what caused at least her second stroke (which happened in July), if not the first one.

So now, I still do all their pills, but I no longer have to sit on the suitcase to get it shut.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.1