jmgoyder

wings and things

Sep 20

Jigsawing

by jmgoyder

Blogs can be like those really difficult jigsaws that it might take you years to complete but, at the end, you can’t quite complete because of all the missing pieces. You know exactly what those missing pieces look like, and how they are shaped, but you have to accept that they have probably been gobbled up by the vacuum cleaner, then used to make a bird’s nest; they’re gone but not gone.

Some time ago, I paid a small amount to have my blog converted to book-like format so that I could print it out. The reason I did this was not so that I could admire my clumsy, incoherent handiwork, but so that I could re-shape it into some sort of coherent story about Parkinson’s disease.

Okay, so the PDF conversion meant that it would print from 2011 to now rather than backwards-in-time. Because each year consisted of hundreds of pages, I ended up with seven PDF files and happily printed out one and a half of these files until my printer
spat
the
dummy!

Well, after weeks of wrestling with/ coaxing/ swearing at /wanting to OBLITERATE/ and finally giving up on, my uncooperative printer, I came to my senses and put all of the files onto a usb and took it into a print shop. Half an hour later
hey
presto!

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Now, hopefully, within nearly 3,000 pages of blog words and images – a jigsaw of thoughts and emotions spanning nearly four years – I will find something that is worth editing into a useful and publishable book.

IMG_4776

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Aug 22

Whoops!

by jmgoyder

Oh I am such an idiot!

Okay, this is what happened. I stayed with Anthony later than usual this afternoon because his favourite nephew arrived for a visit and I didn’t want to miss out on that. Then, Anthony’s 5pm dinner arrived as the nephew was leaving, so I ended up helping Ants with the soup, mornay and dessert.

Once that was done, I turned the television onto the ABC News channel and put it on mute as I gathered my stuff to leave. Usually I say I am going shopping, or to the chemist and I’ll be back soon but tonight I told the truth.

The only reason I admitted I was going home was because the first thing he said to me when I arrived this afternoon was:

You didn’t come back last night. Where did you go?

Now the trouble with lies is that sometimes you forget them. So I said:

I can’t remember!

Anyway, as I was putting a jumper on him, and getting a blanket for his knees, and putting the two camellias I’d picked into water, and settling myself into a chair next to him, I suddenly remembered. The following is our conversation:

Me: That’s right! I remember now!

Anthony: You always say I’m the forgetful one.

Me: Well I’m getting just as bad. Anyway, I went home to make the pea and ham soup – remember I showed you those massive ham hocks?

Anthony: Where is the soup?

Me: Whoops – I forgot to bring you some. I will tomorrow. Sorry!

Anthony: Well I’ve just come back from U. and I.’s place in Serpentine. [Note: these relatives are deceased, and Serpentine is 160 kms north]

Me: Really? So you must be exhausted!

Anthony: Yes. So I just want you to get some paper animals in the glove box.

Me: Okay – anything else?

Anthony: A couple of paper animals.

Me: Which ones?

Anthony: Well, they should be in the letterbox … but dead.

Me: Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.

Anthony: You might be sitting on them. Get up.

Me [getting up]: Nope – no paper animals.

Anthony: They don’t appear to be there.

Me: You’re hallucinating again, Ants.

Anthony: You always say that.

Me: Can you just shut up so we can watch the series?

Anthony [fussing with the blanket on his knees – a constant thing]: The little chap’s had a good day; he hasn’t moved much.

Me: That’s good. It means he’s happy, Ants!

So the fragments of our afternoon conversation ranged from eloquent to incoherent, nonsensical to logical, silent to noisy etc. and I still haven’t figured out if the ‘little chap’ on Anthony’s knee is baby Ming or a dog!

All in all, it was a great afternoon but, just as I was leaving, Anthony suddenly became agitated.

Anthony: But you can’t leave me here. We need to be in the same bed.

Me: I have to go home to rescue the pea soup and I’ll come back tomorrow morning.

Anthony: Why can’t you stay here with me tonight? I don’t know this place! I’ve only ever stayed here once before and it’s where J. and P. got married.

Me [sternly]: Listen, Ants, you are in a nursing home and you are sleeping here tonight and I am going home but will be back tomorrow morning.

Anthony: No!

At this point one of the wonderful carers, having overheard our conversation from an adjacent room, came into Anthony’s room to reassure him and I gave him a millionth kiss and left.

It’s the first time for ages that I have felt distressed driving home. No tears but just distressed that he was distressed.

So an hour ago I rang the nursing home and the nurse-in-charge told me that he had just been settled into bed but she would go and check again. She is, by far, Anthony’s favourite and, when he was upset and confused earlier he actually asked for her by name, describing her as the nice one in the red shirt. She has even been nicknamed his ‘girlfriend’.

Anyway, I’ve now decided to never ever tell Ants that I am going home – never! I will go back to saying things like:

Just going to the chemist to get toothpaste; what kind of chocolate do you feel like; do you want beer? etc. AND: I won’t be long – see you soon….

No more whoopsies!

IMG_4653

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Aug 21

Home is where the humour is!

by jmgoyder

After posting that boring boredom post yesterday, and in thinking about writing more seriously again, I made a couple of simple decisions.

1. Persevere with the idea of writing a book about Parkinson’s Disease (utilising various blogposts over the last few years), with the working title of Anthony’s Smile; and

2. Concentrate on blogging my conversations with Anthony, not just the current ones but the past ones. I have already blogged some of these but I have also made notes over the years so I will have to transcribe these.

The reason I want to write this book (which has almost written itself via my blog) is mostly to demystify the nursing home experience – to make it less frightening for both relatives and prospective residents.

Of course there are other reasons to write this book, i.e. I wish I’d known about the UN-stereotypical symptoms of impending Parkinson’s Disease (inability to blink, blank face, constipation, hallucinations, strange behaviours, weird wordage etc. etc.) before we got Anthony’s diagnosis all those years ago.

So my focus over the next few weeks will be on dialogue – mostly Anthony’s and mine with a bit of Ming thrown in. I think that these dialogues are an important way of recording/remembering all of the words that are so easily forgotten, or dismissed as nonsense.

For example:

Me: Ants, you’re so skinny! (patting his absence of a tummy). Are you doing sit-ups?

Anthony: Yes (looking at me in a sneaky way).

Me: So, when exactly do you do these sit-ups?

Anthony: When they need doing.

He makes me laugh more than he makes me cry, this fantastically funny husband of mine!

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May 30

Today

by jmgoyder

Okay so I’ve been reading Tolle and trying to do all of that ‘being in the now’ stuff and I think I have a better handle on things.

In dementia there seems to be an unhappening; today is simply today, this minute, second, moment is just that. Memories are painful and confusing and the future is bleak. Now becomes all-important.

So today I visited my friends in the dementia cottage with a completely different attitude. As an ex-staff member I felt the wonderful freedom of just being a visitor!

I did a whole lot of hugging today.

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May 12

On-line/off-line dilemmas

by jmgoyder

With the blog I write here (we can just forget about other blogs I hoped to establish ha!) I really don’t quite know, or even remember, how it all began. Okay so it was my friend, Nathalie, who first suggested a blog so I began to write one and even included photos.

Fast-forward to now and I have learned a lot about the politics, joys and disappointments of blogging. WordPress is a blog-site I would recommend to everyone and I have had the most wonderful fun, made friends, and connected with people and groups who share their photos and stories beautifully.

But I just can’t keep up with reading, commenting, replying and so on; the blogdom for me has become a bit of a problem. I so admire people who CAN keep up and feel really guilty for not replying to comments etc. My gratitude to blog friends is difficult to describe; how people who are unknown to me have become known friends – extraordinary!

Anyway, I’ve decided to go off-line for a week or two just to remind myself what it feels like to be off-line. Oh yeah, and I’m beginning to ‘get’ Tolle’s NOW thing!

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Apr 9

So much for the autumn hiatus!

by jmgoyder

Well my autumn hiatus didn’t last long did it! Neither did my ambitiousness haha! I had another look at the full-time behaviour consultant job description and realised that although it seemed a perfect fit for me, there is no way I could do it and keep my job at the nursing home. More importantly, there is no way I could do it and spend enough time with Ants. I did email the association asking if it might be possible to job-share the position but I haven’t heard back yet. There was a public speaking/teaching component to the job but there were also a lot of administrative duties (of people and paperwork and policies) and the latter does not appeal to me in the least! I’m much better at being bossed than being a boss.

So that’s that for the time being – maybe down the track I will do something like that but in the meantime it’s back to writing, including blogging, for me. And I discovered a wonderful program yesterday that will convert your blog into a PDF document and it’s called blog2print. In just an hour or so and for less than $100 I was able to convert 2000 pages of blogging, from 2011 to now, into seven PDF documents inclusive of photos. For more money the program will also convert your blog into a hard cover book, or books, but I didn’t want that because I want to be able to edit and revise and rewrite all those blog entries into a book about our personal experience with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. I had already begun the tedious job of copy/pasting bits into a word document but it was taking forever partly because of having to read the blog backwards and getting confused with dates etc. It wasn’t until I googled “how to turn a blog into a book” that I discovered blog2print and other programs that will do what would take hours and hours manually in just a few clicks – extraordinary!

Anyway this discovery also reminded me of how much blogging has become a part of my life. Not only is the camaraderie between bloggers a fantastic source of joy, but if I hadn’t written all of those posts I never would have remembered the chain of events of the past few years. I guess what I’ll do now is to print it out in 50-page sections and do the hand-written editing in the nursing home with Ants, then come home and finish the job on the computer. That way I can add material retrospectively.

Also, in anticipation of a blog break, I suddenly felt quite bereft! It is such a great way of keeping a record of things that can easily be forgotten – especially conversations both with Anthony, the women in the dementia house, and with the Ming.

For example, he rather reluctantly came to find me at work the other day and I let him into the dementia house and introduced him to the ten women who he proceeded to charm easily, simply because he is a male, and young! Oh I am so relieved not to be going for that behaviour consultant job. I work this afternoon and I can’t wait! I have never felt like this about any other job and I am very much ‘at home’ in my OT role now. Even though none of the women remember me, I am greeted with welcome smiles and the oft-repeated “Oh you look so familiar. Have we met before?”

Anthony doesn’t remember who any of the staff are either and the other day introduced me to one of the carers by saying to her: “Have you met my wife?” She and I exchanged a grin and a ‘yes’; after all, we have known each other now for over three years.

Blogging helps me to remember and record these tidbit gems, these moments of pleasure and humour in amongst the pain of illness and age. And autumn is a good time to write and be because it is too rainy to go for a bike ride, Mr Tootlepedal!

It might also be a good time to convince Ming to get himself some new shoes. IMG_4473

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Mar 1

Writing

by jmgoyder

It has been a very long time since I have had anything published, which is probably due to the fact that it’s been a very long time since I have submitted anything for publication, which is probably due to the fact that it’s been a very long time since I have written anything new. Sigh.

Of course I realise that blogging IS writing and I am very grateful for the fact that I have kept some sort of written record of the last few years’ events via this blog. And I am also grateful for other bloggers’ support. However, I am frustrated with my writing self in that I STILL haven’t put together a manuscript about Ants and Parkinson’s disease. I have begun the process of copy/pasting blog entries into an manuscript but it is quite tedious work as I have to do this post by post by post, get rid of the photos and ensure the dates are correct. I’m doing this but am still in 2012!

And now that I am spending many hours of most days in the nursing home, where this kind of job is impossible due to internet connectivity and my own iPad ignorance, I find myself slackly watching series with Ants, and always quite tired! Not that this time with Ants is wasted; it is brilliant to be together but when I began to do a crossword today (for me this is what old people do – no offence to older readers) I realised that I had to make better use of this time than pass it in such a passive way.

So, I am going to retrieve the notebooks from the top shelf of Anthony’s cupboard and begin to type our conversations out (the ones I began to jot down before he became so quiet). I can do this on either the iPad or the laptop as neither will require the internet.

I can easily put aside all of the things I don’t do very well: photography, acrobatics, raft-building, gardening, cartooning, etc. etc. because I know I can do one thing really well and that is writing. I want so much to write something meaningful and moving and encouraging for those who are afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, and those who care about them/for them. I want to write unsentimentally about the pragmatics of hope and care and comfort, beginning with Anthony’s story.

Writing.

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The irony of my one and only published book (about Alzheimer’s disease) is that I had no idea, at the time, that my own husband would one day look at his windowsill and ask me to get the dog out of the room.

http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1039

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Jan 18

The end of an era

by jmgoyder

Well today I said goodbye to the last of our geese, and the duck, Zaruma (pictured above). The first photos (below) are from 2011 when all except Godfrey were little. The latter photos show them all grown up. The reason? Too many casualties via foxes and the dogs who lately have been able to get out of their yard by hook or by crook and they attacked my beloved Zaruma the other day (that was my turning point).

So I was having to pen the birds 24/7 plus the dogs versus birds argument was becoming a regular source of conflict between Ming and me. So Ming advertised them on the internet and an animal loving couple came to pick them up at 1pm yesterday.

I was dreading it and didn’t even want to be here at the time but Ming was at work so I had to be. I didn’t want to see Woody, Seli, Ola, Diamond, Zaruma, and even grumpy old Godfrey, traumatised.

Well I needn’t have worried. Belinda and Tom arrived with a trailer and a few big cages, water containers, and when she saw my eyes fill, she gave me a big bear hug and told me to go inside while they caught “the gang”. So I did and wrote all their names on a piece of paper then made myself go back outside immediately to oversee things.

AMAZINGLY, Tom had simply gone up to Godfrey and picked him up, carried him to their station wagon and put him in a cage in the back without the slightest fuss from Godfrey! For those who don’t know, Godfrey is the gang boss and has been so protective of the others since they were little that he turned aggressive, and he BITES! But he didn’t even attempt to bite Tom.

Even though the rest are so tame I could easily have picked them up and put them in the other cage, I just couldn’t do it because I was so sad. So Belinda and Tom did it and talked softly to them to calm the more panicky ones (Woody – oh my poor heart!) and it only took around 10 minutes – smooth and gentle and I felt incredibly relieved!

Belinda and Tom live two hours away but they are better equipped, with huge yards for all of their poultry, big swimming ‘pools’ etc. so it’s wonderful to know they are going to a great place and will be there by now. We have exchanged email addresses so she can send me some reassuring photos, so I feel great about it all now.

But after they left, I cried like a baby. I will miss them and the amazing peace they brought me in the months before Anthony went into the nursing home.

      

Thank you, Belinda and Tom.
Goodbye, Gang.

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Nov 18

Before and after!

by jmgoyder

Ming has spent several months travelling to and from Perth to audition for a variety of acting roles, and to undertake training in this field. For much of this time, he didn’t have a car or car licence so took the train or bus and either stayed with kind relatives and friends or at youth hostels. Now that he has his licence back and his cute little car, going to Perth and back has been easier and he has been relishing his independence.

But now that he has this full-time job at the restaurant (which he loves!) he has decided to put the whole acting thing on the back-burner so he has now had his acting hair cut off

Before (this photo was taken at Meg’s 80th a couple of weeks ago):
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After (this photo was taken tonight):
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Nov 9

Catching up

by jmgoyder

After weeks of fighting a tenacious flu that kept coming back after each course of antibiotics, I finally got a chest x-ray which was clear (phew!) but my dr seems to think it was probably a case of pneumonia treated with the wrong antibiotics (I saw another dr to begin with because mine wasn’t on duty). So now I am on a fifth course of two different antibiotics and already feeling a lot better instead of a little bit better. It is such a relief because, despite being well enough for my mama’s 80th b’day and well enough to visit Ants most days and to do some volunteer work, it is only now that I am beginning to feel normal well ha!

As my role as ‘care-giver’ has become most of my identity now, I have a bit of a terror problem when I get sick because I am so needed by Anthony so to have been given the gift of a clear chest x-ray is like gold!

I’ve been trying to catch up and re-connect with blogger friends but have now decided to simply read blogs in a from-now-on mode rather than go back to see what I might’ve missed. It’s been a bit of a relief, too, to let go of the self-imposed feeling of obligation to blog every day if I just don’t have the time or inclination. Perhaps someone should write a book about blog psychology because I get the impression that other bloggers often suffer the same kind of ridiculous guilt. Interesting.

My volunteering at the nursing home, though interrupted by this flu, because you are not supposed to go in there if you are sick (paradoxically, this is probably where I first got infected), continues to delight me and I have now sent an ‘expression of interest’ email in response to last week’s advertisement for a “lifestyle assistant” in the dementia wing. This is a permanent part-time position from 3-6pm for someone to provide activities while the nursing staff conduct the evening showers. As I have already been volunteering in this wing from 3-4pm on the weekends, I am familiar with each of the ten residents and have developed a bit of a rapport. Tomorrow I will fill out the application form and hope for the best. I think this kind of arrangement would be a perfect match and hopefully there will be no perceived conflict of interest as Anthony is not in the dementia wing. I am quite excited about this job possibility and the money would be a relief!

Ming has a job he loves at a restaurant called ‘Corners on King’ so he is gradually becoming independent financially and in other ways. He hates for me to make him any food so my tactic has been to make him a smoothie every morning into which I pack a punch of secret ingredients (if you want to know the secret ingredients you will have to email me!) For those who don’t know, Ming has, from birth, had a rather extraordinary unhungryness – long story which I can’t be bothered telling now but my best illustration of this is the 40C degree day, when he was about one, in which Ants and I had to use a syringe to push a bit of milk into his ungreedy little mouth.

The last few years have been enormously challenging with me having to resign from my job as university lecturer; Anthony’s permanent admission to the nursing home; my mother’s horrifying injuries after falling from her bicycle; the car accident and court case and cousins’ heroic recoveries; Ming’s two scoliosis operations; some friendships rekindled and others on hold; peace, joy, guilt and wretchedness in equal amounts; Ming’s short-lived, but loved, dairy worker job abandoned due to his spine; finding out that you really love eggs on toast; and that if you don’t like what you look like, you need to stop looking at yourself and look away…..

Best-Wise-Famous-Quotes-335

…. and finding out that the width of hope is immeasurable!

Catchya later….

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