Blogging again :-)

YES! STILL HERE!!!

Actually I wasn't. Had a 2 week holiday in the UK - ate everything I saw, drank whatever I could and talked with lots and lot of people really really fast.

Happy trip.

Came back to Japan and had jetlag. Then a headcold. And a pile of teaching work and tourism consultancy work (gonna get paid by Japanese TV to go and eat season sushi :-) someone has to do it....)

Ok.

Okaasan.
Still in hospital.

When I last bothered to write this blog she was in a bad state: with a fever and a mystery knee pain. That lasted more than 10 days. Her energy went right down and she didn't do any physical therapy. So, of course, her muscles got weak again.

While I was away she started to improve. Dear Son continued visiting the hospital and finally in the last week, she has started to do physical therapy again. Much less that before - short distances. But her speaking voice is stronger and she seems to have turned back on course.

So.

While in England many friends asked me about my life with boyfriend's mother. And what is the future.
I said - I can't see her ever being able to come home and live with us again. I hope she will go to live in a care home. But boyfriend isn't at that point yet. In Japan it is a recent idea - putting elderly family members into the care of strangers.

So. I came home and wondered how to bring this about...

I talked to him. He agrees - the likelihood that she is going to come home in the coming month is zero. We couldn't safely leave her alone in the house. From the end of November he will be ski teaching.

It's time to start looking for a place in a care home for Okaasan.

I used two arguments....which I hope will persuade him...or at least give him a feeling that it is the best thing to do for all of us....

* Best for her.
Now she is sharing a room with an even more demented, and deaf old lady. Who shouts. Okaasan's TV is usually on a bedside table that is pushed back out of reach and vision. Okaasan herself doesn't have the decision-making ability to ask someone to set it up for her. When someone asks she says "Oh, I don't watch TV", but of course she does. Hours and hours. The nurses clear it out of the way. I think in a private room in a care home we could set up the TV exactly how she can watch it easily from her bed, or a chair. She could have all her stuff around her. It would be "home", not "hospital bed". I think her hour to hour life would be happier.
When we come to see her she will get 100% of our attention, not the usual harried conversation of tired, working people.
She will be safely monitored and at far less risk of falling again.
She will have all the activities - the singing, the seasonal events, the hobby things....a community of activity. Not just us and the cats.

* Best for us.
We can get on with our lives knowing she is safe.
We - and really I - don't have to worry about being late for work etc when Okaasan suddenly refuses to go to day care...I can imagine the driver coming and me trying to get her dressed to go out...her refusing and the care unit van blocking a snowy road....lots of staff and I try to get her out.....and my work responsibilities pressing.
When we see her we will be happy to go and chat. No stressed.

So. Let's see.
I think it will be hard to start this process....Dear Son seems to think it will be easier.....just a matter of applying and then getting her to move to another place in the same, or neighboring, building.

I doubt she can get a room in the same place. It is a hospital and care home - but it IS a city wide company, and the fact that she is already a patient in the system must be good. Japanese systems take forever to unwind....it won't be easy. 

Anyway. Cross your fingers!!! It may be happening......but it won't happen at the speed I am hoping for, that is for sure. I will have to keep on his case...can this all happen by the end of November??

Watch this space...

A timely visit.

Okaasan's younger brother has died.
The gentleman and his family who were the main focus of our visit to the hometown in November last year.
SO good that we went when we did.
That evening in the hotel he was well enough to be with us, talking and eating and drinking - meeting his older sister for what we and his family knew was probably the last time as he battled cancer.

So Dear Son - on a one day visit home in his crazy ski season - went into Okaasan's room to tell her yesterday.

She appeared to take the news well enough, looking many times at the party photograph she has by her sitting place. Mind you, she did comment: "I thought he'd got fat at that party, people shouldn't eat too too much, it's probably why he died, eating too much!".
Her answer for all of life's illness. If Dear Son dies in a bus crash in front of his mother, she will probably say: "ahh, he ate too much".

Anyway. All that work and stress to get Okaasan to go to Kawagoe with us in November. It was worth it. The family came together that evening and all met again. Kazuko and her brothers from those sooooo familiar stories I hear every evening at the kitchen table.

The stories are still there, although often mixed up. One evening this week Okaasan was gaily telling me that she herself didn't ski as a child, because she was always busy looking after the younger kids and helping with housework...but that her youngest sister Hiroko skied as a child near their home.

Hard to believe that in the early 1950s in the post-war Tokyo rural hinterland little Hiroko somehow had the family money and connections to go skiing...in a usually no snowy place. LATER in life, when she married and her daughter married an Austrian there was skiing...but that must have been the 1980s.....


But on the other hand - at the kitchen table Okaasan on another night stunned me with a comment of such complete clarity I almost didn't understand it.
"This plastic tablecloth  comes from your family home, it's useful because you can wipe it clean".

At first I was confused. Japanese language doesn't have pronouns, so I thought she was talking about HER family home. But, no - she meant MY family home in England.

Just amazing. She remembered that I brought this back from the UK after my Dad died, and yes - this tablecloth has been part of my memories for years. We haven't talked about that at all recently, so this knowledge from six years ago is there and suddenly popped up - clear and correct.

Such is dementia.

Busy January is over. It was crazy. And the result was obvious when I ventured back to the gym after one month absence: I weigh 63 kg. Usually 60 something. 59 something If I am very good.
But 63 kg is waaaay too much.

Having to fight back on it. Have started a secret Facebook group of supportive friends to help me Get Back on Track by mid-March and my birthday.

So February. Got some new students. Got a narration job. Got editing jobs. Have just put my foot down over needing more pay for a particular job - got Couch Surfers coming for Sapporo Snow Festival.

The cat's ear has recovered. But it is bent back at the tip. Like a boxer's ear. He is back outside getting into trouble. He and his brother sometimes fight because they are bored with inside life.
They came to live with us six years ago today. I found them on a poster in a convenience store and couldn't chose which one - so brought home both...

Love them. Despite all the noise, fights, stress, vets bills....

Naaah

Did I ask Okaasan how to cook burdock and carrots?
Naaaahhhhh.
I came home on Monday at 6 pm after 4 hours of classroom time and NINETY minutes of the dentist chair (ongoing and almost finished root canal treatment) and poured myself a large glass of Chardonnay. Flopped on the sofa with a cat draped over my knees.
Dragged myself upright enough to put the burdock and carrot in a miso soup creation, and heat up supermarket fried fish for dinner. Gave Okaasan 30 minutes of chat time at dinner.
And retreated back to a 2nd large glass of wine and more TV.

Didn't have the warm, relationship building joint cooking thing at all.
I have a dream, that if I wasn't working full time I would be spending lots of quality time with Okaasan chatting to and doing things with her to build our connections and give her fun in life.
But - too many days are like this Monday. Work comes first, and Okaasan care is limited to getting some kind of food on the table by 7 pm every day.
In between work we fit in the bathtimes/the walk times/the laundry/the cleaning/the lunches left on the table or ordered in for her.
Two people working don't have much extra time to give to quality caring.

We do what we can fit in, without feeling too guilty.

Meanwhile - DS is back from Tokyo and getting ready for his ski season.
I've turned up the nagging level so that he has been forced to call the day care manager and arrange a home visit for next week to discuss what they can do to help Okaasan this winter.
We are hoping for a friendly woman to come every Wednesday afternoon and take Okaasan out to a local big supermarket, let her walk and shop for snacks and magazines, bring her home and maybe cook some dinner for her. If that happens mid week thru December to March, then I can take her out at weekends.
If she gets out of the house and walks at least twice a week - it is a good enough basis for life.
Plus - if I can get that Nishi Guru exercise video set up....

Have to give up on going to day care for now. She is too negative about it. And DS isn't eager enough to push her.

We did a big clean of her room today. Got the carpet back from the dry cleaners and threw away a lot of papers and stuff in her room. 
Found more #$*?<" in a supermarket flyer...left on the heater in the kitchen :-( I'd noticed the paper there for a few days...hadn't realised what was inside the fold....

yuk.

We really HAVE to check and clean her room and areas more now.....

Dear Son has realised that his mum's walking isn't steady at all. He doesn't want her going on her own to much. In fact she hasn't been out on her own for a walk for a week or two, and she has been downtown on the subway for maybe a month or more.
With winter coming her life is about to get much smaller...

and my life is about to get....BUSY!
This blog, which has been comatose during summer will probably liven up.
Probably.

Dementia views

HI!
A few hours from now I will be taking Level 4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test at Hokkaido University. Trying to improve my language skills so I can be a volunteer at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

So, I should be studying. Cramming. Trying to get my ga's, ni's, kara's in order.

But I'm here instead, cos it's more relaxing. :-)

Was my last posting a whole week ago? Where did all that time go?

What on earth happened in the past week?

Right......it was Dear Son's birthday! He became fifty five years old. Absolutely ancient. I took him out for cheese fondue and red wine. 

What else? I was still recovering from the Tokyo lurgy, so operating on half energy for much of the week. I still have a pile of stuff on the table that I took out of my handbag pre-Tokyo - haven't had the energy/interest in putting it all back in there again.

I'm getting like Okaasan.

Oh! And blog reader K-san and her family came to stay!!! Via Couch Surfing, the people to people homestay website. I think she looked on CS and suddenly realised the British woman in that host profile - is the same woman living with that old lady and cooking tofu in a million different ways. We had a sushi dinner out with her and her husband and children, but not really enough time to chat about Okaasan and Me and our lives. But still, nice to know there are real people out there reading these ramblings and enjoying them.

Okaasan good this week. She went to day care twice - although stuck again on the thought: "I go there twice a week? Really? twice a week?", but she got up when reminded and got ready and went. Apparently she saw "someone" at the front door and actually greeted them....although there was nobody there because the driver and Dear Son were chatting by the car.

Day center recently have asked us to send Okaasan along with an extra pair of black trousers, because the toilet accidents are more frequent and they need to change her into clean clothes. At first we were handing over the extra clothes surreptitiously to the pick-up driver. Now we just do it directly and if Okaasan asks we say "clothes for after your bath", and she accepts it. I went and bought another pair of black trousers, so there are 4 in rotation - worn/being cleaned/extra/lurking in her room. The night before going to Tokyo I was sewing the hem of the new pair - my duties as Oyomesan :-)

Experts talking dementia and home care.

Last week NHK Tv broadcast a special program about dementia and care in the family. A retired producer had videotaped his mother over many years at home, from the start of her dementia to the sad, last gasps in hospital as she died aged 99. 

Many of my students - middle aged and elderly people - watched it and commented on it. We recorded it and finally got to watch it last night. Dear Son and I.

Oh, the familiar scenes.

The Okaasan in the program had lived alone for many years after her husband died, independent and healthy. But a good neighbor noticed strange behavior first about money management and housekeeping, and less and less cooking.

It sounded so familiar.

Then there was a period when the family were pre-cooking trays of food and leaving How to Cook in the Microwave Oven instructions, and going in to clean and sort out a messy house.

Then there were toilet accidents. Shit everywhere. And the Okaasan very surprised about it - reminded me of my conversations here last year? with Okaasan about soiled underwear.

And then loss of mobility after a stay in hospital, and more toilet accidents, and confusion...and feeding, and dressing.....and decline.

Of course, there were funny and happy scenes as the mother and son laughed and talked. The studio experts said how important it was to have routine and normal family life.

The producer and his mum.

As the program was finishing I glanced at Dear Son and realized: he was crying.

I comforted him and reassured him we were doing great. HE is doing great. These years now are forming a bond so that when we have the hard times ahead with Okaasan care, she will trust us and we will support eachother. It's all ok.

One of my students who commented on this program is in her late 70s. Fiercely independent and able.

"All this stuff now about dementia being a sickness, you know...years ago nobody said that. It was just accepted as one of the things about getting older, so people just helped and understood and did what they could...it's how we should think..."

I agree with her. To an extent. It is just a stage of getting older, but it is also more than that. The person with dementia is kind of protected within the sickness, they don't know the limits of their life - that they haven't eaten, or brushed their teeth or hair, that outside is cold and not T-shirt weather, that they have bought 5 pots of the same yogurt, that there is rotting food under the newspaper, that there IS no man standing outside the door at night.....for the family/carers these are the things to help with and gently guide around.

The TV program reminded me what may be ahead for us. The toilet accidents, for sure. Now Okaasan regularly pisses in her multi-layer pants, and about once or twice a week there is shit on the toilet floor or in her clothes. She tries to clean herself up, she hides the soiled clothes in her room. And forgets them. I go in and find them and wash or throw them away.

I think we are nearing the time to get some kind of sleeping mat or sheet - so that we can keep her sleeping and sitting area clean.

Okaasan sleeps on the floor between the sofa and the heated table, under the heater blanket. Under her body is just carpet and wood flooring, and usually a towel.

We gave her a futon when she first came here, but she has never, ever used it. She watches TV in the evening, sitting on the floor under the table blanket. And then sleeps there too. A few times she sleeps on the sofa. Usually the floor - she is Japanese, afterall.

But the toilet accidents are increasing and a easy-to-clean mat would be a good idea...

She hasn't tried to cook (heat rice/egg/water) in  a pan for many months. She hardly washes her own clothes anymore.

But she dresses herself, usually successfully. She keeps some kind of order on her table. She (eventually) puts away piles of washed clothes and she takes part in conversations.

Next week? December 3rd maybe? It is FIVE years since Okaasan came to live with us. Five years since this blog started.

We have done so much to make Okaasan's life better. If she was still living alone in her home in Saitama I think her dementia would be much worse. Actually I think she would be incapable of reason by now. So we have extended her happy, calm life by our care.

I thought - naively - she may live only 3 or 4 years when she first came....

In the NHK program that lady lived to be 99!

Okaasan is 83 now. Plenty more years left in her.

I think I'll be blogging for a while yet....

now....what shall I do with the rest of my Sunday???

Hmm.......