MOST THINGS CONSIDERED by Minx McCloud: Caring for an elderly parent is tough
Mom is still clinging tenaciously to life. I’m glad that she’s still alive, but I hate seeing her in pain and discomfort.
I was the apple of her eye, and now she barely recognizes me. That’s a grim realization that I live with every day.
Luckily, I can look at my journal and remember the "fun times," and that’s a comfort.
Mom was in a nursing home for several months, but dad took her out of the home in July, and she is now back home. He hired a Ukrainian live-in who is very nice, but does not speak much English.
She speaks Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, and I had a Russian-English dictionary from high school, so she and I were able to communicate a bit a very little bit (If there’s someone out there who speaks any of those languages AND fluent English, I need your help).
However, dad and she seem to get their needs across to each other and she LOVES my mom. I watch her and she hugs my mom and tells her she loves her. She seems very sincere.
She sends buckets of food home with Jim and me (just what we need!). I can’t ask for a more caring person taking care of my folks. I told my dad he’d better watch his step. He makes a lot of Ukrainian and Russian jokes and I told them that as soon as Nadia learns more English and finds out what he’s REALLY saying, she’s going to drop him like a hot potato.
My dad hunted for a handicapped van for my mom. I finally convinced him that mom is so hard to move that he wasn’t going to be using a van much.
"What if she wants to go out for a ride?" he asked me.
"The van you want to buy has no windows, Dad. She can’t see out of it," I countered. "You think she wants to drive around Connecticut in a box?"
So he has abandoned the idea of a van and instead, got some sort of lift that will get Mom up easier from a sitting to a standing position. This was my main concern. I saw how hard it is for them to lift her, and they do that several times a day, so that contraption is a good idea.
You’d think dad would be happy, but no … he’s complaining because it’s bulky and hard to use. Of course, lifting my mom onto the commode took 15 minutes when I was there, so this seems so much easier. But not to dad.
The physical therapist has told him that once he gets used to using it, it will be easy, but my father isn’t the most patient man in the world; and not the sanest either, as we all know. He says he hasn’t even used the equipment yet, even though he’s been shown how.
"It’s not really worth it for a single bowel movement," he says. I tried to explain that it’s not as if she’s going to be getting up several times in a row or continuously. That’s what this is for single use. He’s stubborn.
Incidentally, dad didn’t tell me until two days before her release that he was taking mom out of the nursing home. He said he knew it would be a "shock" to me.
"No, it’s not a shock," I said. "Everyone told me about it even though you didn’t."
You see, I stay informed. The nursing home, his siblings, and my cousins were my snitches. I got 10 seconds of dead silence and then he said, "Well, I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you’d butt in."
I told him I was through "butting in," but that I was sick of him doing things "ass-backwards." He had called me on a Friday and told me he needed me to drive to Waterbury and be there Tuesday at 9 a.m. to pick up the Ukrainian woman.
It was important that he get mom out of the nursing home Monday, because that’s the day the Medicare would stop. God forbid that even ONE DAY should come out of that old cheapskate’s pocket (By the way, I am not belittling my father. He has a lot of money socked away. He is not a "poor" senior citizen, and it drives me crazy that he "skimps" on my mother’s care.).
I was very firm with him. I told him that I would have to leave here at 6 a.m., forcing my husband to walk to the train station. I told him that either we would pay for an extra day in the nursing home, or cab fare for the woman, but I could not drive up there on such short notice.
That made him feel guilty and with a bit of effort, he was able to make other arrangements.
So there they are. My mom, I must admit, is sharper and less depressed now that she is home. She recognizes me now that there isn’t a screaming woman across the hall from her. She’s not withdrawing into depression. She wakes up, sees my father, and she’s a lot happier.
I’m still not sure dad made the right decision, but I’m glad I didn’t interfere. I don’t want to be one of those kids who treat their parents as if they are addled. Unless my dad goes completely berserk, I want to give him the chance to care for mom.
As he told me once in a rage, "I took care of your mother for 53 years. I can take care of her for the rest of her life."
He may be wrong, but I’m willing to admit that I don’t know EVERYTHING. This is important to him and I’ll be supportive for as long as I can.
However, I still think it’s a sad world where we’ve extended the lives of the elderly, but we’re not quite sure what to do to improve their comfort.
Minx McCloud is a freelance writer who writes about life in New Jersey. She can be reached at [email protected]