Tag Archives: Anxiety

The Dementia Dossier: Trust Me

Leave a reply

Twelve of our three dozen padded folding chairs reside in a neighbor’s closet to facilitate church choir practice at their house.  “There are 12,” Kevin pronounced, all labeled Baker, as we loaded them into the back of Dad’s faithful Suburban.  We needed all our chairs for the Friday mission reunion, and indeed used them all.  After the reunion, I stacked the 12 choir chairs against the wall, leaving out a 13th for me to use with the TV tray during dinner.  On Sunday I carried the 12 chairs four at a time to the car, leaving the 13th behind.  “But there are 13,” she said anxiously.  No, there are 12.  “No! There are 13!” she wailed in near panic.  I reassured her I had brought 12 chairs from the neighbor’s house—“Trust me”—and that 13th was to stay behind for me to use.  The same evening, I piled the bulk pickup refuse at the curb where I usually place the garbage and recycling cans, moving them instead to the mailbox side of the house, but a good distance from the mailbox so the mailman could easily pull up his truck.  Mom instructed me to make sure I didn’t put the cans in front of the mailbox, “because the mailman won’t come.”  She seemed really worried.  “Mom, trust me,” I insisted, “I know how to do this right.”  I promised to leave plenty of room for the mail truck.  She remained dubious on both accounts.

(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.)

Courage at Twilight: Lithium-ion

4 Replies

As I walked through the front door after work, Mom approached me with a written list of five things she needed help with. 1a) Dad’s printer would not work.  She was right.  I unplugged it and re-plugged it in, and it worked, but she had clicked the “Print” icon so many times that the resulting print jobs drained the ink dry.  1b) Replace the ink in Dad’s printer.  2) Dad’s gabapentin was about to run out, with no refills, so would I call the prescribing doctor to renew the prescription.  I texted the hospice nurse, who had the medicine delivered to the house.  3) Dad’s glucometer stopped working, so would I go to Walgreens or somewhere and buy him another one—suddenly, after years of not testing his blood glucose levels, he wants to start testing his blood glucose levels, at age 88.  I plugged the glucometer into my computer to recharge the battery as I wrote, and announced heroically that we would not need to buy a new one.  “It has rechargeable batteries!  Isn’t that amazing?”  4) Review the list of distributees for Sarah’s tribute book, which at 52 pages, including 12 color pages, would cost $12.25 a book to copy and bind.  We cut the list of essential persons “who would still want to have the book in 50 years” (I suggested to him that no one would still want the book, or perhaps even be alive, in 50 years) from 60 copies to 40 copies, with the reassurance we could print more, if needed.  5) Write on the calendar the coming weekend’s activities.    As Mom confronted me with the list, I asked a bit testily if I could pee first, because I had drunk too much passion-fruit-flavored ice water before leaving the office, and peeing was my first priority.  Relieved, I set about the tasks, still in my hat and tie.  Mom invited me to look in Dad’s office at how she had rearranged Dad’s power tool batteries and their chargers.  Dad had kept her awake the night before repeating suddenly anxious expressions about the lithium-ion batteries shelved in his office closet—shelved by me, already responding to his anxieties about the batteries touching each other or their chargers and starting a 1200-degree F fire that would burn the house down, shelved by me alternating the chargers and the batteries, nothing touching anything else, with the tools far away in the garage.  But he had forgotten, and had begun to panic again about lithium-ion infernos, and after midnight had sent Mom downstairs in her nightgown to redistribute the chargers and batteries more safely, so there was no chance they would touch.  My completed or in motion, I examine with some confusion the closet shelf, now bare of batteries, and looked toward Dad’s L-shaped desks to see the chargers and batteries spaced there at distances of three feet each from the other.  “Looks great, Mom.  They’re certainly not touching each other.  Nothing to worry about.”

Courage at Twilight: Pushing Buttons

2 Replies

Mom greeted me as I walked through the door, anxious because the stair lift would not work. She checked the chair and receiver power chords, replaced the remote batteries, and still the chair would not move for her.  As I suspected, my curious grandchildren had pushed the red power button to the off position during our Thanksgiving festivities.  Turning the power button to the on position brought the lift back to life, and embarrassed Mom a bit.  “I’m so dense,” she whispered.  I reassured her she was not at all dense.  We grabbed our coats and keys and left for the rehabilitation center.  She had promised to give Dad a break from rehab food with a “treat,” code for a combo meal of hamburger, large fries, and Diet Coke.  Indeed, he was pleased, though still full from his rehab dinner.  For our big family Thanksgiving turkey and smoked ham dinner, Sarah was allowed to bring Dad home for three hours—the most United Health Care would allow without jeopardizing his coverage (i.e., if UHC thought he were well enough to be home all day, UHC might think he didn’t need in-patient rehab).  He sat hunched in his wheelchair, smiling weakly, introducing his old standard stories with, “That reminds me…,” and sad for the too-short stay.  At three hours’ end, he again had to leave his wife and family and home and comfort and return to his hated rehab room.  Seeing that he was still unable to care for himself, I shuddered with terror at the thought of him returning home in just one week.  I hoped he would be strong enough, but knew that if he were not strong enough, the burden would fall to Mom and me to make up the difference, to fetch this and that, to launder and mop and shampoo, to winch him up with a gate belt, to sit stiffly on my mental seat’s anxious edge.  Where is this big bitterness of anger coming from? I quizzed myself, and quickly perceived that the anger did not mean I did not love him and admire him and want to care for him.  Instead, my anger derived from my fear of the coming all-but-certain burdens, and of wishing they were not mine to carry.  With this realization, I turned to face my realities, and the anger left.  But the anxiety and the fear did not.  They remained, obstinately entrenched.  Time for more diaphragmatic breathing.

Courage at Twilight: On Edge

2 Replies

I live my days on the edge of anxiety, tense, waiting for the next unexplained bump or clang, in fear of the next fall, tense, nodding with sleep at my desk but ready to jump into action at the slightest premonition.  The garage door opens, and I start at the sound, knowing Dad has ventured into the yard to clip or rake or hoe or mow or fertilize, and the temperature is 95 degrees, the sky cloudless, tool handles too hot to touch, the grass rotting and pungent in the can.  My personal spiritual pursuit is to cultivate trust, a trust that life is beautiful and good, a trust that I can improve my character and mind, a trust that truth and goodness will prevail as often as possible, a trust that God is real and loves infinitely and actively, that he redeems and pays personal attention and dispenses mercy abundantly to all who want it.  That is my labor.  I feel tired.  I’m going to go check on Dad.