http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhZPqHeEAQ
Multiply this by about ten and you will know what it is like here during mating season!
Ah, this is more like it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qY8-HooF9I&NR=1&feature=endscreen
Love story 110 – Inseparable
Less than two years ago it was unthinkable that the day would come where Anthony would have to go into a nursing lodge. I vividly remember making a secret appointment with our doctor to discuss his deterioration and, after arranging Silver Chain respite help that day, Ming and I went into town. During the conversation with the doctor, he mentioned the inevitability of nursing home care and Ming, nearly crying, said, “No, we will never put Dad into care.” The doctor gently said to him, “You don’t know what is coming.”
And we didn’t. All three of us could never have predicted how bad it would get – hallucinations, immobility, stroke-like episodes, falls, loss of hand/eye coordination, confusion, nightmare horrors, sleepless nights, sleep-filled days, loss of appetite, subsequent dramatic weight loss, confusion, cognitive problems, ablutionary problems … and the list goes on. Ming transformed from a devoted son to an intolerant son and I transformed from a devoted wife to a physical and mental wreck. But I only see that now – in hindsight.
The things I wish:
- that I had stopped asking Ming to do occasional ‘night shifts’ with Ants while Ming was still at school;
- that I had discussed nursing home/lodge possibilities with Ants earlier (he was assessed as a candidate for ‘high care’ over four years ago); and
- that I had broached the subject of death with both of them earlier.
Bubble and Baby Turkey are inseparable but I think this is because, initially, there were four Bubbles and four Baby Turkeys and (except for these two) the foxes got all of them when they were littler despite my vigilance.
Ants, Ming and I were inseparable too until Parkinson’s disease began to steal pieces of our jigsaw. Ming took a few leftover pieces, went into his room and shut the door; I tried to find some of the pieces of a blue sky, but they all looked the same; and Ants never liked jigsaws in the first place.
This photo was taken a few years ago when we were inseparable.
Head shots
We are being visited by more and more pink and gray galahs. Here is a head shot of two of them. I would like to say this is deliberate but of course it isn’t; it is my poor photography skills. This afternoon I will try to get the rest of the birds into the photo – you never know!
Taxi adventures
The day had become unexpectedly hot by the time the wheelchair taxi arrived with Anthony at noon. I rushed out and said hi to him through the taxi window and then stood waiting for him to be manoeuvered out of the back of the taxi but it was taking such a long time that I ran out to the yards and let all the poultry out. When I got back to the taxi, I realized why it was taking the driver so long to get Ants out; he wasn’t in a wheelchair!
Grrrrr! As the taxi driver and I tried to get a very immobile Anthony to use his walker to take the few steps onto the electronic ramp thing at the back of the taxi, I exclaimed a little to Ants and the driver about the lack of a wheelchair and the driver couldn’t understand why the nurses hadn’t put him in one either. (I found out later that Ants had refused).
Anyway, despite this, Ming and I managed to get Ants to an outside table where we all ate lunch. Ming was sullen, Ants was silent and slumpy and I was hot and bothered. Oh well, the corned beef and salad was a success. Eventually it got too hot outside so Ants came inside (he had recovered his mobility) and we had a cup of tea in the kitchen where a couple of attempts at conversation were hampered by Anthony’s rather mumbly incoherence. But. yes, it was evident that he was happy to be home. Then Ming decided to put on an episode of Wooster and Jeeves (he had recovered his humour) and I left the two boys to it because, when all three of us are together, there is now a new tension. I happily withdrew to do the dishes and hang out the washing.
I could hear Ming’s laughter but not Anthony’s as he has forgotten how to laugh of course. because of the rotten PDD. He used to absolutely crack up at this show – and that was only a year ago. At one point I heard Ming, yell out (not unkindly) “C’mon, Dad, have a laugh!”
Then I had to ring the taxi people to change the booking from a wheelchair taxi to a sedan to take Anthony back to the nursing lodge. Ming soon went off to milk the cows and I watched some of the show with Ants, then reminded him that the taxi would be coming soon. He immediately became despondent and demanding that he should be able to try staying overnight and, for the millionth time, I explained that I could not manage him in the nights because he was too heavy and we almost had an argument. Then the taxi arrived and I helped Anthony out and he walked using his home walking stick and shrugged my hand away in this new nasty way he has developed.
The taxi driver was someone we hadn’t met before and, when I explained about the wheelchair taxi mixup he did what many people do and said, “This bloke doesn’t need a wheelchair – look at him. He’s fine!” And Anthony said, bitterly, “Some people don’t think so.” Of course the taxi driver could see that Anthony wasn’t fine at all but he was being kind to Ants and I appreciate that. However, this kind of remark is really unhelpful when you have just tried to explain to someone that they are in a nursing lodge because they are not fine. Argh!
Then a very funny thing happened. I was trying to fold up Anthony’s walker and in order to do so I had to remove the basket. The taxi driver, being a gentleman, offered to help and leaned forward to take the walker and somehow the basket, that I was holding in my other hand, got caught in his fly (you know the front zipper of jeans). The trouble is, I didn’t know this because I was looking at Anthony, so I was tugging at the basket, not realizing it had hooked itself into this man’s fly. It was only when he yelped that I saw what was going on and I quickly let go of the basket so that he could untangle himself and then I nearly collapsed in hysterical, apologetic laughter. And then I just could not stop laughing – as I was saying goodbye to Ants, as I was paying the fare – it just kept bubbling up and out of me and the taxi driver was laughing his head off too.
As I said one last goodbye to Ants, the laughter hit me again and I buried my guffaws into his chest as I hugged him, then pulled away to see if he might be smiling. He just looked at me with his shark eyes before they zoomed off.
He has forgotten how to laugh.
Well, I haven’t!
The wheelchair taxi woman
When Anthony has been wheelchair-taxied home and back he has had a variety of drivers. One of those drivers is a lovely woman who dropped in unexpectedly yesterday morning on her day off to ask about buying peachicks. We exchanged phone numbers so that I could ring her if we are lucky to get any hatchlings but admitted that I wasn’t sure what the chances were due to our fox problem. Also the peafowl are very independent so I don’t know if and where the peahens are laying (I obviously need to do some research!)
Anyway, during our short conversation, she asked when ‘hubby’ was coming home again and I said I had begun to think this was a bad idea because it upset him so much to go back to the nursing lodge after being here with us. She disagreed and said that even though he is upset each time she takes him back, it is well worth it for his sake, to be home even if it’s only briefly. “It’s the same for every person,” she said, “Don’t stop bringing him home.”
So guess what? Anthony is being wheelchair-taxied home in around 2 hours, for lunch and the afternoon. Wish us luck!
Oh no – I better hurry up and hide those two pots with the dead azaleas in them! On the other hand, Anthony does know that I am not a gardener.
Disorientation dilemmas
Over the last couple of weeks I have become more and more reluctant to take Anthony out of the nursing lodge to either bring him home or elsewhere, even with the use of the wheelchair taxi, because of how often these ‘outings’ sort of backfire.
One of the nurses said to me the other day that when he gets back to the nursing lodge he is often moodily unhappy and it has been suggested to me by friends, family and staff, that taking Ants out of an environment he is still adjusting to might be detrimental rather than delightful. Now, in principle, I already knew this because I spent many years working as a nurse, then undertaking a PhD about dementia and finally having a book published. Wiithin that book, I devoted a chapter to this very issue, so I do know.
Back then I was writing about a patient who always wanted desperately to go home so one day, I took him out for a walk up the street and, instead of being delighted to get away from the nursing home, he became even more disorientated and I had to bring him back much sooner than I expected. It was a humbling experience because I had thought, at the time, that I would cheer him up but that little venture out exacerbated his confusion and he was more agitated than usual for a couple of days. Yes, I felt bad but I also learned something.
That was years ago – well before Anthony and I were married. I told him the story of this man and Ants was proud of me for undertaking the thesis and he said I was too kind and I should have just left the situation alone. He said, “Jules, he needs to settle.” Ants felt so sorry for that man.
Now he is that man.
I am pregnant!
I bet that shocked you! Of course I am not pregnant; after all I am 53 and Anthony is in a nursing lodge. But I keep having dreams about being pregnant and they are so real that I wake up in the morning and am surprised that I am not pregnant.
Last night, everything in the dream was initially as it is in real life: Ants was in the nursing lodge and Ming was 18. Then it got really bizarre because in the dream I had only just given birth to a beautiful little girl, to find myself pregnant again. I was bewildered at how this could be possible and my friends were looking at me askance as if I were some sort of alien, or else had dabbled in an affair. I woke up whilst still pregnant and trying to figure out how and why this had happened.
I don’t find these dreams disturbing at all; I find them rather interesting adventures. Also it is easy to see why I might be having these dreams: (a) the birds are madly mating, and loudly, because it is Spring; (b) Anthony has begun to think I have found another man; (c) Ming is giving me the whoops; and (d) Tapper, the duck, is still sitting on her eggs hoping they will hatch. As for deeper, psychological interpretations, well that is probably a minefield that I would rather avoid at the moment.
Perhaps these dreams are a signal that something really great is about to be born. That would be good!
[Or perhaps it’s just that we are inundated with eggs, the peafowl keep pooping on the chookhouse, or I need to go to the gym? Who knows!]
Pokemon!
Before Ming was eighteen months old, I had over three huge albums with photos. I couldn’t bear to get rid of any of these pictures of Ming, even the ones in which I’d accidentally missed his head completely and all that could be seen was a torso, a nappy falling off and stubby, grubby little legs.
Those faulty photos, in which Ming’s eyes glowed bright red, became his favourites. “Ming dwagon – Mummy look!” he’d exclaim, delighted.
I’d show my albums to anyone who seemed remotely interested, but it wasn’t until my mother got a fit of the giggles that I realized I was overdoing it – just a bit.
“Julie, all of the photos for fourteen pages are exactly the same – just Ming sitting in the baby bath,” she laughed.
“No they’re not, Mother,” I said, indignantly. “Look closely – in this one he has that coy expression; in this one he’s twitching his nose; in this one he’s scrunching his eyes; and in this one he has bubbles all over his cheeks. And see, here, over the page, the light is slightly different, so his eyes look bigger and….”
By this time my mother was hysterical with laughter. “But it looks like pages and pages of quadruplets,” she spluttered.
It was months before I took another photo!
Eventually I got my ‘photographer’s’ confidence back, but by this time Ming had, unfortunately, developed whiskers. Not real whiskers, of course, but black texta does have a certain texture about it, especially if applied thickly and often.
It was the Pokemon creature, Raticate, who provided the inspiration. Raticate, being rat-like, had whiskers that Ming just had to have. His first attempt wasn’t so successful; he ended up covering most of his face from the nose down with black lines and then got a terrible fright when I showed him a mirror.
After that, it was my job to draw the whiskers onto Ming’s face. Ming became more and more particular about each hair-like stroke of the texta. One application would last around three days because he violently resisted having his face washed. “MING’S RATICATE WHISKAS! MING’S RATICATE WHISKAS!” he’d yell repeatedly, frantically avoiding the sponge.
The trouble with all of this was that I wanted to take the next series of Ming-photos and the whiskers didn’t fit my vision of cute. Neither did the fierce scowl that accompanied the whiskers, for a truly authentic Raticate look.
But, like many things, I got used to the whiskers, so much so that after awhile they just seemed a natural part of Ming’s face. I started taking photos again. So I now have two albums of identical photos of a severe looking two-year-old boy with what looks decidedly like a moustache! The phase only lasted a few months. Gyarados succeeded Raticate and, although Gyarados didn’t have whiskers, he did do a pretty effective water attack. “SPRISE ATTACK!” Ming would yell.
Give me whiskers any day.
I miss Pokemon!
jmgoyder 