Family Health Checks

The family that eat and drink together....go to health checks together too!

This afternoon the 3 of us went to the local hospital for a public health check up. He and I made sure of course that we ate healthily for the past few days...since the BBQ blow out....and at 12.30 we joining the quiet little group of people in a screened off area of the hospital. Given our Health Questionnaires to fill out and a little paper cup for a urine sample.

The nurses quickly cottoned on that we should be moved round the checks as a family unit - because the man needed to help the foreigner with the kanji on the questionnaire, and both younger people had to help the old lady with every step along the way.

We had chest echo scans, and measurements, blood test etc

And those little cups for urine.....

I went into the toilets with Okaasan. I held her bag and jacket and sent her into the cubical with the cup.....stood outside making reassuring sounds.....and waving silently to some of the hospital staff who are my students in the staff classes who were just finishing their lunchbreak.

She couldn't pee.
Or she DID pee and forgot to put the cup in place?
I gave her the remainder of my bottle of water..
No go.

Whatever. Couldn't.
Then a nurse tried. Went into the cubical with Okaasan and made reassuring noises. I hovered, listening.

No go. Okaasan, who goes from toilet place to toilet place - with many an accident in between - when NEEDING to produce pee. Couldn't :-)

So, the nurse told us to go off to lunch and come back and try again.
We ordered bowls of noodles with lots of soup. Drank tea etc.

45 mins later I rushed back to the nurse to get the cup with Okaasan's name etc. Back into the toilets.
Back right into the toilet stall with her, actually.

I've crossed so many privacy lines in my relationship with Okaasan. Crouching down on the toilet floor, holding a paper cup between her legs - well......can't get more personal than that! All the while, chatting about wartime food and the heat....

No go.

I'd find it hard to pee in front of someone. So finally I left the cubical and stood guard at the door. Finally! Success!!!

Okaasan looked tired and stressed by it all. Poor thing.

Finally the three of us were brought into the doctor's room to hear the initial results of all the tests. Blood work results come next week.

Okaasan has some heart problem. Maybe before she had  stroke or a small heart attack? Something? Nothing that DS can remember.
Mind you - this family is not very open with eachother, I think she may have had problems years ago - and never told her sons. I definitely remember about 10 years ago that she told DS AFTER the event: "Oh I was in hospital last week, that's why I didn't answer the phone"...

The doctor said he would recommend a further check at a local clinic. No problems today....

DS and I? No problems. The eating and drinking can continue. Yay!

Did Okaasan understand? Will she be worried? Will she care? Will DS care? Will he actually get his mum checked out further? I wonder.....she IS 85 years old. She probably wouldn't take medicine. Certainly wouldn't have an operation.
She is very physically healthy for 85 years old.

Like the awful Brexit vote in the UK, this result may go nowhere.

Dentist Double Date

Open - wiiiiiide!
Doesn't get much more personal than this...sitting with a ringside seat at the dentist while someone is prone with their mouth open and bits being picked out of their teeth :-(

Okaasan and Me - we went to the dentist together, she at 3 pm and me following on at 4 pm.

I was there for a brief checkup (recent night guard and cleaning) and she was there because of all the recent complaints of tooth pain and strange comments about going to the Ear, Nose and Throat doc. Except she didn't know why she was there. The tooth wasn't painful today. We had to keep telling her.

I drove her downtown and to my surprise the dentist actually invited me into the treatment room, instead of leaving me with the magazines and staff pet photo display. This meant I was doing the chatty small talk to ease Okaasan's mind. I chatted about the realistic imitation flower display, the hotel across the street, the picture, the festival in the park, the dentist's daughter (a student many years ago)...and on and on.

An XRay showed a large cavity top left - no wonder she felt pain recently. Okaasan was trying to wriggle out of it though - "Oh it's ok, the dentist is so busy, I don't want to bother him!", "it's not so bad, is it?" etc
But she caught in the web of decisionmakers - I called Dear Son on my cell phone, Dear Son and dentist chatted, Dear Son gave the go ahead for treatment, then dentist explained it as a done deal to Okaasan and before she knew it the chair was back down and she was being prepped for root extraction.....

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I felt lots of sympathy actually, after all the treatments I had last year. But, not enough to let her wriggle out. She is 83 years old, but she needs to eat and stay healthy. And increasing tooth pain isn't good.

Kind of interesting to see how they did an old patient: they had a special cushion for under her back, they fitted a heart rate monitor to her finger and kept checking it as it beeped up and down, they questioned her about taking medicines and general health (Okaasan got stroppy with me when I mentioned that she was energetic enough to do dancing at day service, she doesn't like outsiders to know she goes to that...)
And then they started...carefully injecting and treatment. I sat there - on a stool at Okaasan's feet for 45 mins...as close as any non-medical person wants to ever get to a treatment without it being your own out of necessity!
My dentist and his nurse were soooooooooooooooo goood......so good......

Poor thing. Okaasan. When she finally sat back up again she looked whacked. I felt a rush of human-to-human sympathy for her and almost hugged her.

Then there was the whole process of deciding whether she would wait for me and my treatment, or go off shopping alone. And who would pay (me) and who would decide next appointment (me)....which was another 15 minutes of toing and froing.
I called Dear Son and his bike taxi to come and pick her up and take her to the subway station and waved her off in the elevator hall - me actually wearing the dental paper bib as I was being prepped for MY check-up...

and so.....Dentist Double Date.

Exhausting.

For both of us.

Dementia Hunting.

Do dementia sufferers know their condition?

It's been written about a lot and experts seem to think that - yes - on some basic level people do know what is happening to their mind, and they take endless steps to hide the troubles from themselves and others...to present an OK face to the world.

I've been thinking about this recently cos I found Okaasan's interview with the doctor at her general health check recently.
I was hunting for the COSTCO card in the car and found the envelope of test results and interview where Yujiro had left it in the glove compartment...
As I have no morals at all, I got a kind student to help me translate it so I can peer into Okaasan's self-presentation to the world. Apparently Yujiro was in the room with her during this interview..."she lied!" he noted wearily. Of course he could hardly contradict his mum in front of her!

Okaasan scored very well for her age on the physical things and general life circumstances questions:
Do you go out on your own every day?   (Yes)
Do you take public transport unaided?   (Yes)
Do you exercise daily?   (Yes)
Do you talk to people beyond immediate family?   (Yes)


That kind of stuff...

She admitted to:
Do you do your own banking and financial affairs? (No)
Do you visit the homes of friends or family?  (No)

But then a few little porky pies:
Do you do daily grocery shopping?  (Yes!)...errr...well squid, and icecream, random veg., fish paste sausages....
Have you fallen over in the past year?  (No!)
Do you have problems remebering the current date/time/month?   (No!)
and my absolute favorite....
Do people around you sometimes say:"You've told me this story before?"  (No!)

The last question is a Beaut!
How would a person with memory problems REMEMBER people saying this?
And who would say this to a person with dementia? No stranger would say it. No aquaintance would say it. Only very close friends and family maybe. And if they already realize you have dementia ...they are unlikely to be pointing out your failings.
It's a real chicken and egg situation.
Of course this is a very general, quick health and living cicumstances check-up and I expect the doctor knows there is a certain amount of Economy with the Truth.

But even so. It isn't very representative of Okaasan's current condition for the local health service records. She scored a very respectable 3/20 on the Daily Life questions and 1/5 on the Emotional Wellbeing questions.
I reckon 6-7/20 on the Daily Life would be a truer reflection of Okaasan in 2010.

I did think about suggestioning to Yujiro that he drop the doctor a note for the file - pointing out that Okaasan's answers about herself were a bit off the mark. But I've decided to leave it this year.
She would never submit to any medical care for dementia (or anything else!) and at the moment she is bumbling along in life ok. Another year or two it may be different. At least she HAD the check-up and is on the files now locally as an elderly woman living with her son and being cared for at home.

But it's interesting.
Okaasan of course knows that she is physically very healthy. She credits this to two meals and day, no food before 11 am, regular exercise etc as recommended by Katsuzo Nishi, a Japanese healthy living guru in the 1940s and 50s.
I reckon she does know that her memory is not good....so she writes endless little notes to herself in her room, and she constantly checks her bag and often asks us the name of things.
But of course, she isn't going to tell a strange doctor with a waiting room of people anything about this. She has no close friends. Yujiro is her one and only confidante.

We noticed recently that:
a)  she really has very little awareness of weather, even if she's been out in it. Sapporo the past few days had had torrential rainfall and if we mention this she looks puzzled and says: "Was it? Not where I was. I must have been inside!" when the soaked umbrella in the hallway tells another story.
b)  she often buys foods that are on her mind, but she doesn't know why, either i) something we served for dinner the night before; ii) food mentioned in a conversation or iii) food she's seen on a TV program. And there are definate Foods of the Moment. The past few weeks there has been a lot of squid, fish paste sausages, green beans, ice cream...
c)  the Going Out Routines - at the moment late afternoon/early evening it's a walk to Seiyu and then coffee and McNuggets in McDonald's.