Prepping for winter....

Got that carpet to the dry cleaners today.
Told the staff I didn't care how long it takes - just clean every single fiber of that thing.
I switched round the carpets in Okaasan's room, so the central area just has carpet underpart. It's enough for a few weeks.

Huge relief. Strange thing to be happy about.
But I feel it's a cleaning out - getting her and her surroundings ready for the long, snowy months...with me in charge.

While she was in the bath this morning I swooped in to her room: did the carpets, vacuumed, wiped down surfaces, hunted down rotting stuff - generally had a good old clean. Tossed three more bags up into the bag museum....top of the closet, where Okaasan can't reach or see....all the bags she has either bought or got as magazine-give-aways over the past five years. Japan is obsessed with bags - and as Okaasan buys at least two magazines a month that include a free bag, she has more than she will ever, ever require. 
I started the bag museum collection a year or two ago, when I realized that she was putting a few bits and pieces (tissues/a little purse/some candies) in EACH bag - and then hunting desperately for something really important: subway card or house keys.
I knew I had to step in and hide away as many bags as possible, so that her searching could be limited to a few bags within reach.

I have a vague plan to sell them at a Flea Market - for a ridiculous low price - just to get rid of them. I think there are about 50 bags...one day one day...

Thankyou SO MUCH for the comments recently! I am still amazed that I sit here writing this and people all over the world read it. 
A lot of food-for-thought recently.

* The Nishi-exercise regime : Okaasan is reading the book. Has bookmarked pages. Is keeping it with the rheumatism book I gave her a few weeks ago. All good.
I haven't actually seen her DOING any of the exercises.
But I have a plan.
If want to buy the exercise DVD from the bookshop.
I want to set up a DVD player in Okaasan's room.
But .... if we start playing the DVD - will she eventually start to exercise with it?
Will she just say:"I know about this already." And just watch it. Or worse, get annoyed with us for playing her a DVD of stuff she knows...trying to force her into action.
In an ideal world I'd get down on the newly cleaned carpet with her and do the exercises together. But I'm not a housewife - Monday to Friday I am out of here to work by 9.30 am and often not home until 7 pm.....
In the early mornings Okaasan is usually dozing in front of the TV - not in exercise mood at all.
She may be doing the exercises while we are are away - but I doubt it. I'm 99% sure she sits and looks at the TV/newspaper/magazine/shopping receipts. Or sleeps. All day.

So. My cunning plan.
Get a DVD player with a timer. Set it to play the Nishi exercises about 10 am three times a week.

Okaasan will probably just think it is another TV program and should be happy that her old favorite Nishi-sensei is on the Tv. Might - hopefully - start DOING the exercises along with the Tv teaching.

My inspiration for this is the "Not the Nine O'Clock News" chapter/case in And Still The Music Plays, a dementia book by Graham Stokes.
This is about a man with Alzheimer's, who gets stressy if his wife is out of the room for even a moment. He follows her everywhere. Stokes' idea to get the man to settle calmly is to key into his love of the evening BBC news program. He makes a videotape of 11 BBC news programs, back to back with 3 minutes of break between each.
They play it for the client.
The client LOVES it. watches it intently, heads for the TV as soon as he hears the familiar opening opening credit chimes of Big Ben - sits thru the same broadcasts for hours at end. Happy.
And his wife gets some time to herself.

So. This is my inspiration for Okaasan and this Nishi-sensei exercise DVD.
To just get it switching on and appearing on her TV screen as she sits there. A little at first. Get it into a routine. I am sure seeing and hearing people doing the exercises will be more motivating than just reading about them. 
How aware will she be that we are manipulating her? Pretty aware at the start I think. If the Tv program she is watching suddenly cuts out and the DVD player whirs into action. I think she will notice. But after a few minutes she will just look at the images on the TV and probably believe they are a TV program.
And start to follow along? I hope so.
And if I have time - I will try to get down on the carpet and do the with her! Show an interest in her interest. Bond.


First. Must check out the wonders of a Japanese electronics shop and hope that somehow in this day and age there is a machine with a timer we can set to play. If Xmas lights and pet feeders are on times, I don't imagine there  should be a problem with a DVD player!

So. There is the plan.

************************************

Oh shoot. S#]*!!!!
I just casually thought: I wonder how many bags there ARE in the bag museum? Oh, Okaasan's out now. I'll pop downstairs and open up the top closet. Have a look. Count.

50 bags?

That would be: 176 bags and purses !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How? Are these all from magazines she buys? She sometimes buys bags too. Japanese shops also give customers free bags with the purchases. 

S$#****** !

I think I'd better have that flea market stall in the spring.

The closet is only so big.

What a way to spend my Saturday afternoon. Counting bags and photographing them....

I need to get a life.

Can do, can't do.

Okaasan WENT to the hair salon all by herself :-)
Success.
We primed her for it from early morning with two notes - one on the table in front of her and one on the kitchen table: "Today at 12 you have a hair appointment, so you should leave home at 11.15. Call Yujiro's phone if you get lost downtown".
Left her some food to eat before going.
And we exited to our respective work days.

She did it. Got dressed and out of the house on time. Got downtown by subway and found the salon.
Great. A real success in her terms.
Yujiro went to the salon later to pay, because we try not to give Okaasan large amounts of money. However, it was a good normal thing to go and do by herself.
Her hair looked wonderful and she was perky about it all.

Dementia is strange like this. Somebody can do such normal life stuff, and then take a weird side-track, and then back to normal behaviour again. All depending which brain cells are functioning, I guess.

Recent, typical, weirds:

*  Yujiro took Okaasan to lunch at a local curry restauarnt, on the road that she uses almost every day to walk down to the supermarket and McDonald's. "Is this the road to the downtown shopping area?" she asked, peering down it. "No! This is the road to the supermarket, you come here almost every day!"
*  Okaasan set out at 7.15 pm for a walk, having slept all day. And came home at 9 pm. Why, why, why....a whole day of sunshine and nice weather. Why?
*  Three lots of "Goodmorning" greetings in the space of 20 mins.
* Sitting watching Sunday morning, kids' cartoons on Tv for over and hour.
*  The phantom doorbell ringer called again...however I was sitting right there on the doorstep reading a newspaper, so I KNOW nobody rang the doorbell....

I'm rereading a book called "And Still the Music Plays" by Graham Stokes, stories of dementia sufferers in family and care home situations. It's a good read, stories of people from family-confused early signs of dementia thru to the sad, don't-know-anyone later stages where toileting and feeding are impossible tasks.
Stokes writes about family/carers who too often jump to "well that's the dementia" assessments when the cared for does strange stuff, when it might be a sign of someone coping with non-dementia, failing abilities such as hearing or eyesight - just old age problems. I think I do that....not everything Okaasan does is because of dementia, sometimes it is just an old lady doing things slowly and without clarity.

He also writes very well I think about trying to interpret the world from the sufferer's perspective, the here and now reaction which might be influenced by emotions of a far back experience. A story I read yesterday was about a woman who got highly stressed and violent when care home assistants tried to get her to the toilet, but she was fine when visiting district nurses came to dress her leg ulcers.
Eventually they pieced together a possible reason: a victim of sexual abuse as a child, the poor woman of course became upset when people in ordinary clothes took her into a toilet and tried to remove her clothing. But nurses, in uniform, were ok because the experience was more clinical.

It made me wondere about Okaasan and her big fear of Visitors at the House. I Can't Go Home Yet.

On one level it seems strange. She is/was? a sociable person. Always the skilled hostess, in fact. Her husband had his office staff round to the house for dinners. She cooked for them all. Now, our guests are Japanese people, or foreigners who speak Japanese - and the parties are outside in the garden, away from Okaasan's rooms. She only needs to walk through and say "Hello/Goodbye". But she has often stood out down the street, looking anxious and stressed.
I wonder if the stress goes back to emotions from an earlier experience?
Okaasan's father was a truck driver, who had two? or more trucks. He delivered valuable wooden chests to customers, he transported things all over the Tokyo area pre-war. The family home was the office. They were a well-to-do respected family in Kawagoe city. Okaasan was the eldest daughter, with a gaggle of younger siblings.
When visitors came to the family home I imagine she had to work by watching all the younger kids, keeping them away ? from the house and occupied until the visitors had gone. Her mother would be making and serving the tea etc

Is THAT the experience that now fuels her emotional reaction to Visitors at the Home? She is maybe a little nervous about strangers coming to this house, but the emotion she brings to that situation is back to when she was a small child with big responsibilities to take the small kids/babies and stay away from the family home until the visitors had finished talking business.
Is that why she stands out in the dusk, looking at the house and stressing about Can't Go Home Yet. People Are There???

Could be? Or maybe I am over-analysing it all.

But, could be. Who knows.
Those are thoughts in my mind, anyway.

And:  in MY here and now....have to tackle Yujiro about the getting-Okaasan-assessed-for-daycare-this-winter.
Never mind HIM not wanting to enter that battle, I don't want to enter that discussion with him either!!! Leaving it, leaving it....pushing it away. Delaying.
Even found myself thinking this week, ahh...she isn't so bad really. Maybe we can get thru another winter of just making sure she goes to a hula dance class by taxi once a week.
Must. Stop. That.
I need to hold firm to my resolve, because this winter her condition WILL get worse and I'll be here alone with her for weeks, while he is away skiing. I know it.

R.I.P.

R.I.P.  - my ovaries a.k.a The Yubari Melon Monster.


A year ago my left ovary was an unwelcome star of this blog and I went into hospital to have both left and right ovaries whipped out. Thankfully non-cancerous.


Today is a beautiful, late-summer sunny day in Sapporo and I am sitting in my classroom just round the corner from the KKR Hospital - this time last year I was sitting up there in the Women's Health ward, anxiously waiting and waiting to be taken off to surgery.


All well here - I am about to enter the final week of work before my holiday. The dentist visits are ongoing - but he has found the correct dosage of how to sedate a large, emotional non-Japanese woman and the cat is still wearing his bandage as he jumps around the neighborhood after bugs in the grass and birds on trees. Just hoping he doesn't meet the fox again - we saw it at 3.30 pm the other day! Merrily trotting along under the subway line in the grass area....amazing to see a city fox out in daylight.


Okaasan is doing ok - no hula dance outings, but she is going for late afternoon walks and doing some of the washing up in the kitchen. This morning Yujiro managed to get her out early enough to go to the dentist for a check up. It takes her ages to get bathed and dressed for going out - and she often gets to the front door wearing slightly off choices of clothes or out of season outfits.


I've finished rereading "And Still The Music Plays" (see side panel to the right) - which made me think I should TRY to be more understanding and kinder with Okaasan. Try.
As I cleaned her room this morning - safe in the knowledge that she was at the dentist's - I did it with the thought: "well, it doesn't matter if she has 3 years of magazines all over the place here, it isn't harming anyone and maybe seeing all these magazines gives her some kind of comfort."
The book is full of tales of dementia sufferers and their carers coping with increasingly strange or difficult behaviour - and the author's attempts to try and find out WHY the patients are acting like this.
Okaasan makes endless lists of information about cooking programs and food, and she screws up balls of newspaper and keeps them in plastic bags, and she has underwear everywhere...
I should be grateful that she isn't digging up all the rocks in the garden or following us around the house or shouting at strangers.
Regular incontinence, a messy room and passivity in conversation are things we can deal with.


AND......to celebrate having no ovaries - well actually the date is just a coincidence - tonight Yujiro and I are going to Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo for a Night Zoo Visit event. Guided walk round the zoo with the staff, dinner and wine and candles etc etc.....a little bit expensive for us (Y6,000 each!), but it is an event organised by one of my old students Saori Abe and sounds like a lot of fun!
Here is a link to a similar event in June....
The rain has finally stopped and I have a feeling it's going to be an interesting experience to visit a zoo at dusk....yippeeee!!!!


Anyway - better go to the gym now and work off some calories, then home to feed cats and Okaasan....and then off to the Zoooooooooo!!!

Caring for the afflicted.

A sloooow weekend at home as the slowest typhoon ever edged sloooowly toward Japan.....and the rain went on and on and on and on and on......


Just as well really. Needed a quiet weekend to be home and take care of things.


Popo - Yujiro and I took him to the vet again and this time got to see the bite wound that is causing all the trouble. The vet gently peeled and clipped away the sumo belt to reveal a hairless flank and three bite punctures. Redressed it all and sent us home with Recuperation Food and medicine.
We are all sleeping better and our daytime is spent monitoring our little neko-chan (cat) as he sloooowly eases himself around the house.
"He's drinking water!" "He's looking out the window!" "He's eaten two dried pellets!" "He's climbed down the stairs!" "He's walked onto the front door step!"


I had flashbacks to myself in hospital last September - when just sitting up, then swinging my legs down from the bed, walking to the ward toilet, walking to the hallway toilet, walking to the dayroom - everything seemed a "first".


Anyway - Popo does seem to be slowly making a recovery. But nightime open windows will be thing of the past from now on. We must make sure that both cats are home and safe from the local stray. I have learnt that lesson very well this week, seeing this baby so hurt and sad.
Thankgoodness this happened now and not near my Australian holiday - it would be very hard to leave Yujiro with a sick cat...

Maybe I feel ok...

Okaasan - caring for the Okaasan too. Days of rain meant she hasn't been out  either. So yesterday we did another Family Outting. Stimulate her brain and legs.

Took her to one of the big shopping malls - walked around the shops a bit and ate sushi for lunch.

Okaasan brought some Tshirts for dry cleaning - because she always wants to go to the dry cleaning shop near the old apartment. 

So we made a detour round to that neighborhood...as we pulled up outside the drycleaning shop: "Oh, we used to live here! I used to come to this shop!"

"Err, yes, you ASKED to come to this shop today. That's why we are here!"

"Did I? We came here for me? Oh yes, this cleaning!"

And in she went.....

Later at the sushi bar, Okaasan and Yujiro ordered and ate their way through huge bowls of crab miso soup, picking out the crab meat and chatting happily about it all. We sat at the counter eating plates of sushi.

"The crab soup hasn't come has it? Did we order it yet?"

???????????????????????????????

"Did I eat it already? I did didn't I?!"

While I was sitting on the doorstep monitoring Popo's garden chair adventure I started rereading one of my books about dementia - "And Still the Music Plays" by Graham Stokes, personal stories of patients from a clinical psychologist. He writes interestingly about how early stage dementia patients cope with their failings and inabilities - the list making, the excuses for forgetting, the withdrawing from social interaction, the fixed, safe routines.....how disturbing those patterns that sufferers create for themselves can worsen the condition.

I thought about Okaasan's table full of bits of paper and notes, the comments about weather and shopping and food, the reluctance to engage with visitors and the routine of Going to Seicomart and Drinking a Coffee at 5 pm.

We have created a very safe life for Okaasan here - and that's good.

Do I feel well?