The Elder Report: Everything Right Now All At Once

Time for a new sub-series of blog posts.  You'll understand why after you read it.  "The Elder Report" started as a joking way to fill Avery in with what was happening with her grandparents when she FaceTimed us from wherever she happened to be at the time.  

I haven't seen Everything Everywhere All At Once yet. I don't have Showtime, which is apparently how it can be streamed. I am not interested enough in it to pay $19.99 for a digital copy of it from numerous platforms. I plan rent it whenever the film gods decide they can make money that way. But I have read numerous reviews of the Oscar-winning film and watched several YouTube videos on it. I know generally what it is about. It doesn't strike me as the kind of film that can be “spoiled.” It is likely something that has to be seen to fully appreciate.

The basic premise of existential excess and “too much” resonates with me particularly right now, though. Let's see. Where do I start? A couple of weeks ago Jennifer and I went over to my parents house to feed them dinner ("supper" to us country people, "dinner" used to be what everybody calls "lunch" today, "lunch" only applied to a meal you had at work). For the past couple of years, the family divided up nights to feed them so they didn't have to subsist on fast food.  You see, my mom has Alzheimer's and doesn't cook anymore (or do much of anything else actually). My dad is not a spring chicken, as they say, and needs more help and attention than he did even a year ago. He thought something from Captain D's (or wherever he happened to have a coupon for) was a decent meal.  They both will be 86 this year.

As Jennifer and I entered the house we were greeted with a distinctive smell of skunk. The odor dissipated as we moved into the living room. We had our meal and socialized awhile, then left. My mom can't smell anything anymore (a common sign of Alzheimer's). My dad is a country man and doesn't let critter stuff bother him too much. My nephew, who mows their yard, said he disposed of a dead skunk he found in the grass earlier that day, so I figured it was a temporary situation.  I was wrong about that.

The next day, I got a call from my bother notifying me that his son, the same nephew of mine, had informed him that he couldn't wake “Papa” up. This was about mid-afternoon. I immediately drove to the house to find my dad seemingly asleep in his chair. Head drooped. Breathing shallowly. Saliva hanging from his loose lips. He did not respond to my attempts to wake him, even when I slapped him across the face a couple of times. Not good.

Called 911. Medics were there within 15 minutes. A firetruck too. Why do they send firetrucks out for stuff like this? Anyway, in no time the living room was filled with first-responders and paramedics delivering care and asking all kinds of questions. I called my sister, who works for a hospice company. She was just leaving a hospital about 30 miles away and was having a fine day. Until my call, of course. She drove to the ER while I stayed with my confused mom.

Long story short, dad had a mid-sized stroke on the left side of his brain. He also was suffering from sleep apnea, among other aliments which we already knew about. He was dehydrated. People of my mom and dad's generation (my wife's mom included) simply do not drink enough water.

As of today he is still in the hospital. Suddenly, we have a big mess on our hands. My sister handled things at the hospital. My brother and I took care of my mom and things around the house, the feeding and grocery shopping. Dad has a 40-acre farm (it used to be 120 acres). Among a lot of other things, his lawnmower isn't working and needs to be repaired to cut the spring grass (he was getting around to fixing it himself). Plenty to tend to. I took the day shift while my brother (or one of his children) spent the night. My mom is not much trouble at night. She sleeps soundly for about 12 hours. Not unusual for someone with Alzheimer's.

I went to see my dad a couple of days later. He was out of the ER, ICU, and now in a hospital room. Fortunately, he could move his hands, arms, feet, legs. He was weak and sleepy but he recognized me. We talked at about his cattle. I told him I was checking on them. I spoon fed him some oatmeal. My sister fed him some yogurt. His speech was thick and he required pureed food.

He was confused. At times he thought that he was my brother and had been in a car accident. So, let's back up a moment and let me tell you why that was so. The Friday before his stroke, my brother was involved in a traffic accident. Without giving away too many details, he was arrested for it. Which required that I bail him out the next day. His car was not driveable but also not totaled. Thankfully, no one was injured and my brother was not drunk. Though the police report states that the arresting officer smelled a “very distinct odor of alcohol coming from his person,” no breath test was administered. He was not charged with DUI. Very strange.

I happened to be with my brother when he was arrested, I had been with him for about an hour. He had driven his car home and parked it in his garage. I had no idea anything had happened to it. He was distressed, however, having a hard time psychologically for a variety of reasons, which is why I went over there to begin with. I was there to listen to him and attempt to counsel him when the police tracked down his address. What a mess. Anyway, so now he is temporarily driving my mom's old Lincoln and wading through a maze of insurance and legal issues. Apparently, there is such a case backlog due to the COVID pandemic that it will be a few months before his misdemeanor charge comes before a judge. There was no odor of alcohol coming from his person while I sat next to him in is living room before the police arrived; just tears of an existential crisis that I was trying to pull out of him so that I could understand what was troubling him so. (He is doing much better today. I think my dad's stroke helped snap him out of it. Maybe.)

So, that was the basis for my dad's periodic stoke-brained identity confusion. Physical therapy came while my sister and I were with him. He was able to get out of his bed and walk around the room using a walker, which was encouraging. But the next day was not as good. He couldn't move at all and it took 45 minutes to get him from the bed into a chair. Good days alternated with bad ones and we were not certain what (who) we were going to end up with.

Initially, we thought the stroke was mild but additional tests revealed that it was not. Trying to get him transferred to a rehab facility was a challenge. There are few male beds available in such facilities and my sister was using all her connections and knowledge to get him into a place where he would receive competent, aggressive physical therapy. The consensus was that he would need at least 10-14 days of therapy before he could come home, if there were no more setbacks. Even after that he would require a sleep study among other possible tests and treatments.

We received good news today, however. He was accepted by the facility we most wanted. So I know he will be receiving the best possible physical therapy for this area. Also, he graduated from pureed food to soft foods today. So, that is all encouraging though, of course, it is likely a long road ahead.

So, since last Thursday I have been with my mother from 9 AM until about 7:30 PM, making sure she is OK and not doing anything foolish in her mind-muddled state. She is functional, thank goodness. She can dress herself (she will not comb her hair though), wash dishes, fix her own breakfast cereal and her lunch (though she cannot tell you what she had for lunch later, she makes stuff up in an attempt to compensate). Dinners are being brought in by Jennifer, my brother's wife and various others. We spread it out so no one is carrying too much of the load. Everyone is so incredibly helpful and supportive. It was quite humbling. (We found out today that a local church will be bringing in a meal every other day starting tomorrow.)

I have to watch out for my mom doing inconsistent things. Today she tried to make her lunch at 10:30 AM and I had to remind her of the time. She is very compliant. We are so fortunate that way. She does not attempt to turn on the stove or oven. She does not wander off down the road. She does not try to do much of anything, really, which cuts down on the necessity of being here every second of the day. Before his stroke, my dad would leave her (no doubt for a badly needed break) for several hours in the afternoon without incident and she remains pretty much that same way. I plan to post on her mental and emotional status in the near future.

Some days she will check the mail. Some days she won't. When she does get the mail I have to track it down to see where she put it. I have to look for bills and pay them. During these past few days I checked on the banking side of things. Fortunately, I had already been placed on their primary checking account and my dad had most of their bills paid by draft.

Yesterday, I set up online banking to review the activity and familiarize myself with it. Dad had been handling all this as a matter of self-esteem. He is a very proud and independent person. He possesses great resilience. Antifragility as it is now called. That is the key to his recovery, of course. I checked their safe deposit box and verified that their wills, durable powers of attorney, living wills, and other relevant documents were there. It was a struggle to get a handle on everything as my sister continued to be with my dad and my brother covered the night shift with mom. It remains a challenge for all of us and our significant others and families.

Meanwhile, Jennifer and I are responsible for her 90+ year-old mom as well. She is also independently minded. But, unfortunately, she has made no effort to keep up her strength and stamina since my wife's father died five years ago. She has a good mind but, month by month, her abilities go downhill. All she can basically do is read books in large print on her kindle app and worry over the news, weather and anything else that comes into her active mind. You can have a meaningful conversation with her, however. She is a former counselor and can talk about psychology, literature, even some philosophy. She is aware of current events. I have enjoyed many interesting conversations with her though the years. I guess I am sort of her form of entertainment. I don't mind looking after her at all. Taking her on visits to various doctors or handling whatever else needs to be done when Jennifer is busy with work.

But her mom requires two helpers for much of the day. She has some money (which she constantly worries about) and can afford the assistance. But Jennifer and I have covered the weekends for many years. Recently, we cover Sundays only, unless one of the helpers is sick or out for some other reason. Now, under the circumstances, I don't have the time for Sunday visits any more. I talk to her on the phone a couple of times a week.

The week of my dad's stroke her main daytime helper was out with a sinus infection. This placed additional stress on the situation, of course. Unlike the movie I mentioned at the start of this post, you can't be everywhere all at once. In addition to that, my daughter is traveling in Europe on a 90-day visa. She is a digital nomad, doing contract work in the US while she travels. But she left us with her dog who promptly started acting out as soon as Avery was not around.

Over the course of several days of pooping and peeing in the house we finally figured out an effective way to blockade her. She won't poop and pee where she sleeps. Unfortunately, that is mostly in Jennifer's bed along with Charlie, Jennifer's dog. So, now Jennifer rarely gets a decent night's sleep with both dogs getting up and down all night and attempting to break free to roam the house as they are accustomed to do. They seem to be getting used to it though, so maybe that situation is improving.

Then there is the fact that we treat Avery's dog for mini-seizures. Recently, that has evolved into periodic shaking of the little dog's entire body. A trip to our vet did not reveal the cause but did provide us with some more medicine to give her for pain and to support her nervous system. Maybe that will work. (I think she just needs Avery here.)  It has to be applied from a dropper to her food. She hates the taste. It will be two weeks before it takes effect. So we'll see.

Meanwhile, my dog Kudo sleeps with me. She has become rather codependent. She is used to a routine we established during my former, more contemplative life. She mopes and misses me even though I go home every day at lunch to interact with her. She loves Avery, however, and will be much better when my daughter returns from her sojourn, which she has cut short and will return early next week (I hate that but we really need her now and she really wants to help out with this mess, we did not encourage her to return, it was her choice). A ray of good news is that she might get a contract with a major corporation that would necessitate her driving into Atlanta a couple days a week anyway. So, maybe that part of the story will work out.

Then there is the skunk smell. Remember the skunk? Well, Jennifer contacted the critter control company that she and I have used for ten years or more. They promptly inspected my mom and dad's house. Sure enough, there is a skunk living under my parents house, possibly with babies. Possibly with another critter under there that caused the skunk to spray to begin with. We won't know until the trapping begins, which is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. The house was built in 1957 and has all sorts of places that need to be sealed - “exclusion” is what they call it.

So, for now, things are way beyond hectic. The lives of everybody in my nuclear family have been disrupted. Which is as it should be, actually. I mean it wasn't like I didn't see this coming. Each of my grandparents died of complications from a stroke. It's strokes all the way down in my gene pool. Which is why I try to live as healthy a life as possible and have done so for the past three decades, constantly tweaking things as I learn more.

But, there are no guarantees, right? This blog has largely been devoted to my contemplative life and my appreciation of art, history, sports, literature, travel, music, philosophy, home life and all the rest of the stuff I have written here since 2008. But now is the time that the rubber meets the road. You can espouse all kinds of heady bullshit and believe there's a man in the moon but it is how you live your life when things get difficult that really counts. In fact, that is ALL that counts because, sooner or later, life will suck.

When I get home at the end of the day I am pretty much brain dead. My mom asks about my dad dozens of times every...single...day. Where is he? What happened to him? Why can't I go be with him? Over and over, reliving the same experience in every possible way from a near complete breakdown to simple resignation that “he is where he needs to be.” A couple of times recently she asked me to remind her of when he died.  Oh boy.  It is an emotional rollercoaster every day, usually worse as the day wears on. Plus she asks about Avery repeatedly. She does not remember where she is or what she is doing, though I told her all that five minutes ago. Hence, my brain dead condition when I get home.

But, as I said, she goes to bed around 7 PM and sleeps soundly. That is huge. This could be so much worse. Her father, my grandfather, had to be tied to his bed because he was highly agitated and violent after his last stroke. Then he died a few months later. I don't know what is in store for my mom and dad but violence and agitation does not seem to be part of the equation. So far anyway. And that makes things so much easier on all of us, though it is still tough.

I would love to continue my contemplative life and plan to do so as much as possible – which will likely be at a much slower, sporadic pace for the near future. I am going to continue to do the best I can, to live as healthy and as actively and as open and curious about life as possible. Even as my mom and dad consume much of my energies right now. It isn't about me, though. It is about them. I am at peace with the fact that it is what it is for as long as it has to be this way.

Hopefully, my dad will not suffer a setback. Hopefully he will respond well to the 3 hours of PT he is going to receiving in the coming days. Hopefully, my mom will be able to bear her burden of not remembering what has happened and hearing it told to her over and over again. Hopefully, the skunk will be trapped and the house will not have that stench permeating it again. Hopefully, my brother will not lose his license when his hearing comes. Hopefully, my daughter will get home safely and manage to continue to thrive in the midst of this chaos. Hopefully, my dog won't commit suicide at the disruption of her routine with me. 

There is a lot to hope for. But, really, for me it isn't about hope, although I am sincere about what I just expressed. It is about applying what I have learned and continue to learn. Applying it in a way that is helpful to others and expresses gratitude toward everyone who is suddenly drawn into this abruptly strange seething vortex of existence. Moment by moment, for better or worse, until death do us part.

My dad has many sayings. He is known for his simple down-to-earth wisdom. As I posted before, he is actually a wise Taoist but he doesn't know it. He has never even heard of Taoism. Anyway, he looked after his mother and father when they had their strokes. He was with them every step of the way, til in death they did part. And through it all he approached each day with a simple strength. Now it is my turn, and my siblings. I'm lucky to have them.

Through his years of care-giving for his parents he would frequently be heard to say (and still often says today)...

“I'm thankful things are as good as they are.”

“We'll just have to wait and see.”

That guides me now and into the coming days. We love you Papa.