Pasting on some happiness

So.
The legs are slightly better.
She is getting up off the carpet fairly easily and getting around the house ok.
Only went out twice on her own.

Outside the front door I moved the garden bench nearer the steps so she can use it for support. It used to be there, but as I was drying lavender on it recently and there was heavy rain I'd moved it back against the wall. Maybe she really does need that as physical and visual support.

And I bought a book about rheumatism. For Okaasan.

Just a start, to try and get her thinking about her condition and how to help it. I discussed with DS about the book - "she won't read it" he commented and I share that worry. She firmly believes she knows everything about health because of the health-guru Dr Nishi 40 years ago.

So she rejects any other advice or suggestion.

In my mind I have rehearsed some possibly persuasive conversations: Yes, I know Nishi-sensei was a genius, but that was 40 years ago. You were a young woman then. He didn't need to teach you about rheumatism. But of course study about health is important at any age! You can never stop learning about health can you? Maybe this book has some ideas! Have a look!

I've had that conversation with myself while sitting on the train, vacuuming, feeding cats. Replayed that scene many times.

But at the end of it Okaasan is always dismissive of the book: I don't need a book. I know about health. I studied health with Nishi-genius, I don't need a book. I know about my body. 

and on an on and on and on.

I can see me. Like Ellie in the NHK drama, standing all dewy-eyed and lip trembling. My hopes crushed.

So.

I sneaked the book into her room and onto her table. Put it under some newspapers and bits of paper. Left it for her to find.

This way she can think that maybe she bought the book. That it's her book already. Can glance at it. Get used to the  sight of it on the table. And eventually maybe open it and look at the exercises and recipe ideas inside.

If she mentions it we'll just say: "oh, you bought it didn't you..recently?" Her dementia is advanced enough that she isn't 100% sure what she bought recently.

Okaasan  deep into a program about dinosaurs...with the rheumatism book among her clutter.

 (and yes, I should clean the windows in the door!)

Sneaky. But maybe the best way to introduce the book and any good ideas it has.

* Other news.

* A local convenience store telephoned the house and said they were still holding the magazine that Okaasan bought recently. She bought it and asked the staff in the shop to keep it for her - because it was too heavy to carry. And then forgot it.

* Sorting out thru Okaasan's handbag (I periodically throw out old receipts and forgotten bits of food wrapped in tissue paper)...I came across... Okaasan's TOOTH! The one that dropped out last month. Nearly wrapped in a bit of paper and in a side pocket of the handbag.

This week has been okay. About Thursday Okaasan suddenly had a very swollen top lip. She looked like a chimpanzee. But no bruising. No idea, of course, how it happened.

She ate a little food and said it was tender to touch. But not a toothache. We don't know. She fell on the day I found her sitting on the step? She has some other problem?

Don't know. It's faded again now.

Yesterday we took her out for a Family Outing.

Lunchtime trip to a department store downtown. Car ride, walk round two floors of the store looking at clothes and shoes. Then Japanese lunch in an old fashioned restaurant.

She loved it. Trotted round the shop behind us, touching the things we touched. Commenting on the sale items in loud whispers: "That is too flashy, no ordinary woman wants THAT! Only nightclub staff, that's why they couldn't sell it!". Loving being in a shop.

She ate the largest amount of food she's eaten all week and responded to chat about fish names and shopping. A good time.

When Okaasan first came to live in Sapporo, 5 years ago, she used to go to this department store culture school for hula dance class. That's amazing in fact: she used to get dressed, on schedule go downtown and join the class and its events. Chat to the other members. Enjoy. Until the alleged "bullying".

Now she can't. The whole getting ready to go out on schedule and join a group event thing. Can't get herself on target for that.

Made me think what has changed in 5 years.

And so.

Winter cometh. DS says he'll get the day care manager to come in for a meeting with Okaasan and we'll try to get her interested in going once a week to a hula dance class and lunch. And if a wall of negativity defeats  that, we'll arrange for the local taxi to come once a week and take her out.

Thankyou for your comments:

I hear you. I really do. He IS passive about her medical care. I know. He takes the easy way out.

I am sure it is frustrating to read about this. This inaction with an elderly woman who may benefit from medical intervention.

I feel frustrated writing it.

But. A few points by way of explanation/excuse.

a) It's not my mother. I'm not even married to this guy. 14 years of co-habitation. So until he is away working in winter and she is my total responsibility - he has to be the primary carer. In any society, and definitely in Japan.

 

In winter, when he is away - if she falls down or can't get up to the toilet etc - I am going to be on the phone to an ambulance SO QUICK she won't know what's hit her. Some nice friendly paramedics will carry her out of the house and into a local hospital. And I will sit back with a glass of wine and a big satisfied smile on my face. I'm hoping that will happen this winter. I really do. :-)

b) I think there is a different attitude to crawling on the floor in Japan. The floor is not an alien place, as it is to adult Western people. Japanese people sit and sleep on the floor. Live their lives on the floor. Okaasan certainly does.

So, when her legs were so bad that she couldn't stand - and she crawled into the house from the front door steps. I think MY reaction is more shocked than her, or her son's reaction. 

If my mother or father had only been able to crawl into the house, they and I would have been shocked: "My god, it's reached this terrible level! Like a baby or an animal!"

But for a Japanese person? I think that position is just more normal. Not 100% normal, of course, but not a degrading, unbelievable level to have reached. Just a practical adaptation to a physical change. I can't stand, so I will crawl.

c) The whole No Medical Intervention is HER choice. Yes, made thru the murky prism of dementia. But still a conscious, reasoned choice. A large slab of traditional thinking. Pain is to be endured with stoicism. It will pass. Stay calm and eat a little. Sleep a lot. Let the body right itself. What will be, will be. I am old. The old body needs time to recover. 

And you know - it does.

She goes from a screaming, flinching mess on the carpet to tottering around her room peering at shopping receipts in the space of a few days. Sometimes a week. Sometimes 2 weeks.

But she does. It is amazing.

There is something to be said - and OH MY GOD THIS IS HARD TO WRITE! - to her method. Not rushing off for medical intervention at a sign that the body is under stress. But just accepting it, living quietly with the pain and waiting for it to pass.

I don't subscribe to this myself. After my stomach melon situation 4 years ago - I now happily take my problems to hospitals. It's my body and I decide.

She is 84 years old and she is deciding to do a different thing.

In spring this year - when she announced she was going to quit day care - I reached a new stage in my attitude to Okaasan. After my fury about her decision subsided, I decided:

Let her be. Just accept more of her choices about how she wants to live her life at the end of 84 years. Don't let HER choices give you stress. You don't need the stress.

If she wants to endure the pain and pee on the carpet. 

Just let her.

If she REALLY needs outside help. Or you do. Then get it. In an emergency.

But if she (and her son) want to end her days like this. It is her choice. I am a bystander to her life. A recent part of her life. I have an overwhelming desire to jump in and help and make it better. It's my nature. But she is not a person without mind yet. 

Her choice. My life and stress levels need to be my concern.

I am trying to think like that.

Trying to let it all just wash around me.

Sometimes I can. Sometimes I want to jump in and try to change the water flow.

But thankyou for all your thoughts and support! Nice to know there are real people out there reading this and along for the journey with me. I know I am not alone.

Finally. A cat picture. Cos we all need one.

A new cat tower. Thanks to Amazon Japan. The boys are unsure at the moment. But like the TV cat whisperer Jackson Gallaxy: I am tempting them with snacks into their new playland and hoping that it'll keep them entertained in the winter months ahead.

Tottering along

Of course - 24 hours after being unable to go to the concert - Okaasan was feeling well enough to go out for a walk in the local shopping area.
Of course.
Did I let my feelings of anger eat away at my soul? Did I knash my teeth and beat my (ample) chest is rage?
Yes, in private.

A part of me wonders if she was faking it because she didn't want to go to the concert...for some reason. But maybe it really was just an old lady having a bad day.
She's been off and on the past week. Some days apparently ok - standing up fairly quickly and walking around at home. Only been out twice in the past week - and that just locally.
Other days she asks us to open and close the curtains, and struggles to get to the toilet or the kitchen table.
I think this is "just" rheumatism, and the plunge from fall into winter temperatures here are making it worse. She still complains that her arm hurts. But she will never take it to a doctor.

So. Kind of ok.
Her walking style is tottering. Think penguin/Chaplin. She accepted advice to use a stick once. Then refuse yesterday. DS had to go in the car and bring her home from a walk-too-far.

But overall her physical and mental condition isn't great at the moment. 

And winter cometh. We have discussed between ourselves getting a taxi to come once a week to take her out to the shopping area, and then I can pick her up after work. Or to get a day care helper to come once a week and have chat and dinner with her.
I am starting to tell my students that December to March I will be restricting my night work to two or three evenings a week - because I need to be home more. Okaasan needs mental stimulation of a dinner companion and at the moment I generally have evening work 4 nights a week until 7 pm or 8 pm. That would not be good for her.

Happier/crazier news?
I had a one day job as an extra in a TV commercial! I can't say what the product is, or who the celebrity was until November when the CM will be on air in Japan.
But it involved me dressed up as an old lady - aged with the help of white makeup in my hair - paired with a very dapper gentleman, and a street scene, and a sheep, and lots of smoke from a smoke machine.
In the 15 or 30 seconds of the commercial it'll probably be hard to catch me. But it was hard working fun. Watch this space for next month, because after that I can show the photographs from the day. Now, it is all top secret.

Ongoing...with help.

Okaasan's painful leg drama is ongoing, but at least now we are sharing it with the daycare staff.

They came on Tuesday and checked that she was alive. She sat slumped under her heated table and grudgingly showed the staff her legs and knees. But she was lively enough.
Tuesday late afternoon she actually said she planned to go for a walk, but Dear Son stopped her because it was rainy and windy.
She ate lunch and dinner ok.
Then yesterday she started talking about going out - and I was encouraging her - from 4 pm onwards. Then she lay down on the carpet and dozed again...and again.
Finally at 6.30 pm she was talking about going out and we stopped her again: dark and dinner is in 30 mins.
We thought that was all a good sign - showing that she wanted to go out.

But this morning. Day care? Today?
No thankyou.
Dear Son was his usual insensitive self about asking her.....if she gives some rambling, confused answer he turns on his heel and walks out saying: "I don't understand you, you aren't making any sense!". It's a huge help to a dementia patient. Not.

Day care called for the Thursday outing and then sent the staff round at 9.45 am to see what Okaasan was up to. When she arrived I was in the last 10 mins before going to work - rushing around with a towel wrapped round me and cooking Okaasan some lunch for the flasks on the kitchen table.
The daycare staff tried to get Okaasan to go for a "little walk in the fresh air", but she refused...said she would just sit and the pain would go away, as it had in the past. Said she wouldn't eat anything, and the body would get better on its own etc etc
The staff were lively and determined, but Okaasan wasn't playing ball and they didn't force the issue.
But Okaasan was walking round her room when the lady came (well actually she had been crawling round her room on hands and knees JUST before), but she was more physically active.

And so. They left again and grinned understandingly at me...

It IS good that someone else is in on all of this (apart from you lot of course!!), some kind of person with training....who will monitor the situation.

Just have to let her be and see what happens. Tomorrow there is a 9 am dentist appointment. I look forward to seeing how Dear Son is going to get Okaasan to go to that.....

The irony is: sometimes she doesn't actually REMEMBER the whole pain-in-the-leg-drama at all. Yesterday afternoon I suggested that she shouldn't go too far for a walk because of Monday night's events - and she didn't remember anything about the station staff calling Dear Son, coming home by taxi and being carried into the house on a garden chair...and hopefully nothing too much about us shouting at her...

Sigh...

And yes, I forgot to write it. Understandably. Monday night was also the 4th anniversary of my dad's death. In fact the 4th anniversary of getting that phonecall from England to say the postman had found him on the living room carpet. They thought he'd died 2 days before.....
4 years ago. Seems like a lifetime. So much has happened, good and bad. So much.

Rheumatism drama

Had ourselves a bit of a rheumatism drama last night.

Okaasan had a bad rheumatism attack at the subway station on her way home from downtown. She couldn't stand or walk. The station staff rescued her in a wheelchair and called Dear Son.
He brought her home in a taxi.
Then they stood in the street outside the house - he holding onto his mum and trying to help her walk into the house.
She couldn't. Kept shouting out about pain in her legs.

I arrived home from work in the car and found Mother and Son standing in the street clutching eachother.

Dear Son and I then put our hands under Okaasan's arms and slowly, slowly walked her across the street to our garden.

Then we thought it would be easier for her to get into the house thru one of her room windows, because it's 30 cm off the ground - kind of easy to sit and swing her legs round...maybe.
But we'd forgotten about the slightly raised area in front of the window. Followed an agonizing, stressful, panic-filled 10 mins as the three of us looked more and more like a version of that game Twister.
Okaasan, moaning and shouting at us in pain, was hanging onto the window frame and one foot was stretched waaay back on the lawn, her whole body swaying to the right, while Dear Son tried to escape the garden hose loops and I kicked away the garden table.
One cat miaowed at us stressily from inside.
It was a right scene...

It would't happen. She couldn't pull herself into the window. We couldn't lift her.

Then we got the garden chair and got her to sit into that - and we CARRIED her into the house on the chair! In stages, cos we both have bad knees......

She claims it is rheumatism. Says she had it years back. The remedy is to just sit and not walk. And of course - not eat.

So she sat. In the garden chair in her room in front of the TV.

At 10 pm we were getting ready for bed and we wanted to see if she could get up and walk, even a little. Worried of course about nighttime and toilet.
Okaasan got very defensive and angry with us.
"I can do it! I don't need help! Leave me alone!" etc etc.
Finally we were shouting at her to force her to stand up and SHOW us that she could walk. She did for a moment, and then crashed back down onto the sofa.
Very angry with us.
We were angry. 
I shouted some home truths at her. Dear Son swatted her on the head.
It wasn't our finest moment as carers and cared-for.

But she COULD stand and walk.
We left her alone. During the night she took off her own clothes, went to the toilet, lay down again on the carpet.

* This morning was day care day. Of course Okaasan didn't want to go.
So the day care staff just came to check on her.
She is brighter and less angry this morning, and chatted to the day care staff about long ago leg problems and pain. Said she was just going to stay home on the carpet.


I don't know anything about rheumatism.
Her knee looks swollen. Yesterday her feet and ankles were swollen.
Of course, there will be NO doctor for this old lady.
She will be the authority on her own care.

Sigh...................