This is gross. Sorry. But truth will out...in this record of Life with a Lady Sadly Descending into Dementia and Foreign Failing Daughter-in-Law.
I was just now sitting in the house entrance hall playing with the kittens.
Popo was lounging on the chair and pawing with the lace cloth that covers the shoebox.
As there is a flower in a vase on top on the box I gently folded the lace cloth up and back out of his reach. So the shoe box interior is revealed.
I glanced at the shoes - mostly Okaasan and Yujiro's shoes. A garden candle holder. A pot of shoe cleaning cream. A shoe cleaning rag. Another very dirty shoe cleaning rag.
No. Hang on. NOT a shoe cleaning rag.
It's pink. It has a lace edge. It's not brown shoe polish.
Oh YUK. It's a pair of Okaasan's very, very soiled underpants.
On the shoe box shelf.
GROSS.
Very gross. I've thrown them away now. Washed my hands. Washed the shoebox interior.
Oh gross.
I've read about this: dementia sufferers soiling underwear and hiding it/leaving it in unexpected places. But, apart from the plastic bags with wet underwear in Okaasan's room that we always find, I have never found any dirty underwear elsewhere.
Until now.
I'm trying to imagine HOW she did this?
She soiled herself while she was out or on the doorstep as she was coming home...and then took OFF her underpants outside/in the hallway???????? Came in and stashed them under the lace curtain on the top shelf?
Is that what happened?
I can't begin to think. Actually don't want to think too closely.
Yet again, so sad that this lady (and her son) won't get a doctor into their lives so that she can be taking some kind of medicine to help her control bladder and bowel functions. Because while it IS part of the dementia - forgetting that you might need to go to the toilet soon - there are medicines which would help control.
Sad.
I'm a pretty practical, non-finikky person. I can clean poop - kitten poop or Okaasan poop. But it's a sad sign of where we are all heading.
Meanwhile...
* Yujiro and Okaasan got eachother all riled up this morning over that missing sun parasol Okaasan lost a week ago. I was listening from upstairs.
I think Okaasan asked for money to buy a new parasol. Yujiro gave her the money, but he made the BIG mistake of challenging her use of the word "stolen". As in "the woman sitting next to me on the subway stole the parasol after I got off the train".
"Stolen" or "lost" - who knows. But since Okaasan came home originally last week and said she didn't know WHERE she'd lost it...maybe coffee shop or train - "lost" is probably more accurate.
But not in Okaasan's mind of course. By now she had decided that some poor Sapporo subway passenger who was sitting next to her on the subway STOLE the parasol after she got off the subway car!
And Yujiro - stupid man - decided to endlessly challenge her version of events. Their voices got louder as each got stressed. "Lost!" "Stolen!" "Lost!" "Stolen!".
WHY does he do this? Why does it matter what Okaasan thinks? Why does he want to argue the point with her?
And even after he came upstairs and I gently remonstrated with him...to just leave it be and accept her story - he went right back downstairs to go to work and started AGAIN with Okaasan in the kitchen.
Is the man a fool? WTF????????????????
Anyway.
I've had a busy week with work, translations and Couch Surfing guests. I am giving myself a quiet Sunday at home with TV and books and kittens.
I'll feed Okaasan lunch and see if she fancies going by car downtown to see the hula dance festival. I need to buy some summer work shoes and it would be easy to take her in the car too.
Hey! Okaasan could buy more underpants at the same time...........
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