Pokemon to the rescue :-)

Yes. That's a click bait title...but actually true.

Yesterday Pokemon rescued Okaasan. Kind of.

I'd been out working and at lunch with a friend all Saturday morning, unusual for me to work at a weekend. But a high level translator group invited me. Lots of translators and interpreters gearing up in Sapporo now as we'll stage the 2017 Asia Winter Games in February.

Anyway. The weather was finally a kind autumn day again. Okaasan hadn't been out for a walk in a week. I called her from the restaurant and told her to go out.
45 mins I got home and she was still fussing around with sweaters and gloves, but I got her set up and escorted her down the street round melting snow lumps. Sent her on her way.
Her walking looked frail, but the weather was kind and the cell phone with GPS was in her bag. I noted the time and thought I'd probably go and get her in an hour or so.

Came back into the house, did a few things. Then...as you do...if you are addicted to Pokemon like me...I realised I was a little low on balls, and popped out to the local park to stock up.

To my surprise I could see Okaasan down the street, standing looking at the cars on the main road leading to the shops. Hmm..."must be frailer than I thought, she needs a rest after walking only so far...but good that she is pausing".

I went to stock up on balls.
10 mins later I circuited back to home. Okaasan was in the same position.
I watched her. She stood there. And stood.


I walked down to her. A confused, uncertain face -"I'm deciding where to go..."
I reminded her that the supermarket was straight. Offered to walk with her. Got rejected.

I left her. Walked home...got the car....10 mins later I was back. Okaasan was in the same position.
Standing by the motorbike shop and the trash bins. Staring down the street.

How long? Maybe 25 mins in all? A street she has used regularly.
Lost. Not sure where it all was. For sure.

If I hadn't gone out to get balls for Pokemon - HOW long would she have stood there? Would somebody have helped her eventually? Would she turn around and make it home ok?
Pokemon luck!

Big light bulb moment. Why she hasn't been going out this summer. Confusion about location.
Totally. Coupled with frailty after not going out for a week, of course. We have reached that stage in her dementia. Sad. Walking out alone was her big pleasure. It kept her physically healthy and was an independent pleasure.

Sigh.

I persuaded her to get in the car. Took her to the supermarket. Picked her up an hour later in Macdonalds next door. Took her home for dinner. She was much brighter of course, having been out. The bad experience of standing by the roadside lost seemed to have gone - but I guess the bad feeling from that experience has got attached to "Going out" this summer and so...we are for sure entering a different phase in her care.

Spent my summer walking the injured cat on a leash.
Gonna be walking the Okaasan from now on...

Dear Son is still away. Back next week. I've got several big proof reading jobs and a speech in Japanese to prep. a Long week..

and oh hell...that fucker Trump won the US election. What a week....

Slowly downhill..

That's Okaasan's mental condition according to the mental health clinic.

4 years ago she scored a 14 on the Hasegawa Dementia Test scale (out of a maximum of 30?),  2 years ago she was a 12...and this week she scored an 8.
I think a score of 3-7 is considered Severe Dementia?
Okaasan isn't severe at all, but when she becomes stressed thru fear/anger/sickness we suddenly see the wildly emotional, difficult side of her. So we know it's there.

I guess this means we could be entering a  new stage in the next year or two....

But for now all pretty ok.

"Gradual decline, maybe a little slower than many people - it's good she is still taking a bath on her own, toileting and feeding. And very good she is going for regular walks alone" basically the doctor's report.
This will now be passed on to the city welfare office and when we apply for day care visits and support this winter the test points and Okaasan's care level determines how much care we can request and how much we pay.

Okaasan followed Dear Son happily enough to the clinic, a relief after the fights in the past about any kind of medical check up. She tried to clean her teeth three times before going and wasn't 100% why they were there, or even if they'd already met the doctor 5 minutes after the consultation - but she went along with it all.

After the clinic DS took her out for a walk to a ramen restaurant for a big lunch.

Four hours later she'd forgotten any of that and claimed: "I haven't been out at all today, I'm going for a walk..."

And in other news.
I had coffee with a friend whose mother is far further along in a kind of Alzheimer's. The family have moved that lady to a care home in Tokyo to be near other relatives.
On the flight down to Tokyo my friend's mother kept forgetting that they were IN an airplane. Everytime the plane shook or dipped a little she looked surprised..."why is the table moving???".

Thinking ahead to my trip with Okaasan in November. I think she won't be like that. She'll enjoy an airplane trip I think. Maybe think we are going to New York?? 
Fun fun fun.

A subtle change...

There's been a change in Okaasan.

Her walking power/ability/confidence has diminished. She is happier to be taken out and led by the hand round streets or a shopping center. With a kind of mask face....

And Dear Son is right in it.

This week he has taken his mum out several times, walking round local streets and on trips in the car to supermarkets (including Costco again). It's good. He is spending time with her and getting to judge her mental and physical ability more.

He is worried about the walking. He says she is really precarious when she walks, tripping over small rough surfaces or slight slopes. Threatening to teeter and topple at any moment. Holding his hand - and she takes his hand very willingly - gives her confidence to walk.
She is still walking a long way. They walked from home to my classroom one evening for a family trip out to a restaurant, and  she's walked all over Costco.

So, she isn't so weak and incapable.
But somehow her balance? Her confidence? Her coping with a change in surface - all has declined since summer.

So he has taken her out almost every day this week.

One more week of him being at home. Maybe. Then the ski season starts. And she is my responsibility.

I can take her out at weekends, in the car to a safe walking place. And on Wednesdays the day service helper will be in charge. DS doesn't think she should go out alone....and Okaasan's attitude to using a stick is...hmmm....not great.

So. A new stage we've reached.
I see other families doing this a lot. The aged member being led by the hand, or steered by the elbow by a middle aged family member. Sometimes the aged one is marching with determination, but usually they are passively being lead and not really connecting with stuff happening around them.

Tonight we went to a local store and while I whizzed around grabbing our dinner and cat food, DS walked his mum around two floors...she gripped his hand and walked willingly with him.

Will she walk with me like that? She takes my hand if she is getting in and out of the car, and on steps. I wonder if she'll walk with me hand in hand.

When we moved to this house 5 years ago Okaasan took long, daily walks all over this area and regularly went downtown by train.
That narrowed to fixed routes locally and downtown. A few falls. Less and less going downtown. Over ambitious distances locally. Then the past few months less and less actually going out herself....

A new stage of all of this....

The winter plan...

The plan is: every Wednesday  late afternoon a day care person will come to the house, help Okaasan get ready for going out, take her by taxi to the local big supermarket, walk around it with her for exercise and chat, come home by taxi, cook/heat up food for her dinner and leave her to eat it.
I will be out working. DS will be away ski teaching.

That's the plan.

The day care manager, Dear Son and maybe Okaasan...have agreed to that.

I was out at work. But I agree to that.

It'll start next week. And we'll see if that is a good idea. Exercise/chat/someone apart from me to stimulate Okaasan's body and brain in the long winter months.

DS says Okaasan was a bit negative about it all - of course didn't think she needed outside help etc. But the carrot of "going to the supermarket for a walk" seemed to work.

Crossed fingers.

One side point: she is happy to go to Supermarket A...but not Supermarket B, because "the staff are bullies"......first we've heard of her having a negative about that supermarket. We wonder what happened to her there, or what she thinks happened to her there....

Meanwhile...you need to see this cat picture...current cat craze sweeping Japan....Neko Montage....give your cat cartoon eyes:-)
Have you got a cat handy now? Pick up a pen and a bit of paper - give it a go!

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.

Well...not off the carpet 100% yet.

We are still locked in a dance of toilet/walking/denial conversations.
And on-going carpet dwelling.

Okaasan IS a whole lot better than last week.
She sits upright and watches TV, she eats a little food.
She has walked herself to the toilet....twice in the past 2 days.
The rest has been...predictably a carpet and pajamas and diapers situation.
She made it to the kitchen table...once.

So, you can see - we aren't off and walking yet.

Trying to persuade/recommend/encourage her to wear the diapers - or even the sanitary towel-like pads is a struggle. She constantly claims to be on the verge of going to the toilet room herself. But usually doesn't. Her focus goes back to the TV, or if she is trying to actually move she will reach one stage of the journey from carpet to toilet - and get stuck there, for an hour or more....one knee off the carpet, sitting on the side chair....

Hard.
The moaning/screaming painfest on the carpet was easier to 'nurse' - but emotionally/physically tougher for us.
Now, because she is mentally more together, everything we try to help her with has to be discussed WITH her and reasoned thru again and again...repeating the messages in loops.

He and I did escape for a few hours yesterday afternoon and early evening - to meet friends in the beer festival downtown. Then back by 7 pm to feed Okaasan.
She was aiming to stand and get to the kitchen table all the time the food was being prepared. So she got up off the carpet. To the sofa. To the side chair.
When the food was ready and on the table - she was still 4 meters away on the side chair in her room. She examines her feet and legs as if they are a disconnected from herself and she is waiting for them to kick into action...as if somebody somewhere will throw a switch and she will be mobile...
The food was in the bowl all hot and waiting. That 4 meters gap looked undoable. She refused to use a stick or a supporting arm from a caring family member.

We gave her a small bowl of pasta at that half way station.
Then she slipped back down into the carpet nest.

And so it goes. I'm home today.
Next week - if he and I are working - we'll have to leave food for her within reach of the carpet nest.

Ah. The carpet.
I am trying to clean it up. Hard with her in situ of course.
I've got towels and newspapers down to mop up pee, I am trying to dry it out - with a hair dryer!!! And the blanket that covers the kotastsu heated table is damp too.....

Yuk. Yuk

I am doing mopping up operations in front of Okaasan - because it's a way of trying to enforce the idea that "you DON'T always get to the toilet, and it IS embarrassing, but I'm ok with it, but it WOULD be helpful if you wore the diapers or pads"...trying...trying to get that message across.

Of course she doesn't think that sitting on a pee-soaked carpet is a good thing. Every good-housewife cell in her brain tells her that. But there's a vast disconnect between knowing that and agreeing to help us with that situation.

Oh, and it's all in a second language for me.
:-))

Ho hum.

Meanwhile...just to add spice....one cat has brought home TWO still-alive catches this morning!
The bird that was in this computer room - I managed to let escape thru open windows.
The baby rat/large field mouse is still lurking somewhere in the living room.....last seen shortly after 5 am behind the CD collection.

Ahhh...the weekend. So relaxing.

Pain pain pain

So.
Was going to be a blog posting about Okaasan suddenly announcing: "I have no money, I'm going to take this ring downtown and sell it!".

But, instead.

Early evening she was still downtown and we started the phonecalls to her to remind her to come home for dinner.

I have leg/knee pain and can't stand or walk. 
Get a taxi?
I can't go downstairs from the coffee shop.
Ask the staff to help you.
I can do it myself. I have to go to the toilet.
...............
Ok now? Ask the staff to help you, get a taxi home.
I can't stand. I need the toilet.

Repeat over the next 30 mins. Same conversation.

Finally I drove downtown to get her.
She was sitting outside the coffee shop. With lots of pain in her left knee and arm. I helped her, agonizingly into the car.

The coffee shop staff said she'd come in around her usual time, and mentioned "falling". But had somehow gone to the second floor of the coffee shop as usual! And then got stuck.

Came home.
It's my rheumatism. It suddenly comes. Fall? Me? No, I didn't fall. It's rheumatism.
DS helped her from the car, painfully, agonizingly the 5 meters to the front door steps.
To the entrance hall chair.

Where she sat.
And sat.
I don't need dinner. I can stand myself. Just give me time. I don't need any help.

So we sat in the kitchen and ate our dinner.
Okaasan sat in the entrance hall.
The cats peered at her round the door frame.

We finished dinner. Washed up. She was still in the entrance hall.

Remembering the past situation we decided to lift her ON the chair.
Between the two of us we can just about do it. Okaasan weighs..what? 55 kg maybe?
With her screaming in agony and moaning we huff and puff the chair across the entrance hall, thru one door and to the toilet door.

I can do it myself! I can stand!

Okaasan then sits on the chair 1 meter from the toilet - for the next TWO hours.
Refusing help. Fighting help.

We go upstairs and watch a DVD. Come down sometimes to give her drinks of water. Get only refusal of any offers of help.

Come 10.30 pm our movie has finished.
We push the chair right up against the toilet, Okaasan is trying to hold onto the towel rail to pull herself up. Can't. 
Finally. Finally - DS puts his arms under her arms and hauls - really hauls her onto the toilet.
Screams of agony.

I am making telephone gestures to him and mouthing the word H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L-!! and he is shaking his head.

Then another struggle to get her off the toilet. He is standing behind her - between her back and the toilet, I am trying to position the chair as close as possible at the front. Then we are dragging the chair, lifting the chair out of the toilet - into the kitchen - into her room...and Okaasan is finally finally slipping/falling off the chair, onto the sofa and down onto the carpet.
Crying out in pain constantly.

It was a looong evening.
From 7.45 pm to midnight.

And then, just now we  were all awake at 6 am and we've done it again.
Carpet to chair. Chair carried/dragged to the toilet. And all the way back again.

But - we have managed to persuade her to put on the old people diaper pants. Because he can take the day off work today. I can't. He can't get her to the toilet alone. It's the first time she has agreed to let us put her into them.


I know. Hospital would be a really good idea.
Maybe she did fall downtown. There are no external wounds. Her knee looks swollen. And this time her arm or hand - or both - are painful. It suggests she fell and put out her arm to break the fall.
But it's the old story. Utter refusal by Okaasan and her supported by DS to even consider help.
At one point last night I was half way up the stairs to the telephone to call the ambulance myself. Trying to remember the emergency number in Japan - then she cried out and he shouted at me to come help again, and I was back downstairs in chair-lifting mode.

And so - here we are again.

I actually wish this would happen when he isn't here. Then I could just call the ambulance myself and get professionals involved. I don't care if she is angry with me. I don't understand why he lets her decide the course of inaction.

So. Here we are.

My beautiful laundrette

Thankyou all!
I've been off doing something called Life. Hadn't checked in here for a while, and Comments Awaiting Moderation hadn't forwarded into my email - so there was a little rush of friendly comments when I just logged in here.
Thankyou :-)

And here we are - getting into December and all the usual end-of-year panic.

And.

Skiiiiiing...................................................

Back at the ranch of underpants and old newspapers: Okaasan had a laundry day. A very rare occurrence.

A year? Maybe 2 years ago - she would take some of dirty clothes into the bathroom, either when she was having a bath, or just to do laundry. She'd hand wash everything and rinse them in the bath and spin dry them in the machine. Then she would take the clothes in a bowl into her room or outside to the line and ever so carefully hang them up to dry. Later take them down and fold them up, unfold and refold several times...and leave them around her room to get mixed in with the remaining dirty clothes...

Now: the clothes mount up in the two laundry boxes in her room, and around on the sofa and carpet and table. I sweep in when she is out and grab what I can to do it all in the washing machine and hang them up upstairs in our apartment. I iron/fold and give them back to her. Very occasionally she will wash a pair of underpants, or wash stuff at day care and bring it home wet in a plastic bag.....to be forgotten for days unless I happen to hunt thru the bag.

Last week I tried a different tactic: "Oh Okaasan! Look, your wet clothes from day center! In a bag! What shall we do? Do you want to wash them?"

"Wash clothes? It's too cold...."

I heated the kitchen and bathroom.

"Wash clothes now?"

I gave her the washing powder and bowls.

I put the bags of wet knickers on the carpet in the entrance to her room.

And finally she did.

I say finally, because it turned into a two or three hour event: first she got dressed, then she sorted thru ALL her clothes and tried to decide what was dirty. Then she opened the bags with a few knickers in them, and lots of other stuff and set to on an orgy of handwashing and rinsing and hanging.

Really: hours. I left for work. I left her lunch flasks out. Dear Son came home from ski teaching and Okaasan was still doing it all.

I thought I was encouraging her to just open the bags and wash the few knickers. But once she got the idea of "laundry" in mind she was locked into the Full Wash Cycle. Couldn't stop once started.

It was good for her: mentally and physically. I should prompt her to do it more often. Really. In fact, it made me admit to myself that she should be having a bath at home (and doing laundry) at least once a week. Since she started daycare we haven't been bothering to get her to bath at home. Twice a week she goes to day care. But, we should be making her bath at home at weekends when we are around to check safety etc. We really should. She sits and stares at the Tv for so many hours.

Apart from that? I took her twice to the local supermarket and left her wandering around inside for an hour, with instructions to phone us when she was ready to come home. 

Her legs are so much weaker. She walks with a shopping trolley for support. She complains about knee pains. So different from the hours and hours downtown she was doing earlier this year.

Maybe another trip to the laying on of hot hands and chatting treatment?

Actually, although I am still a skeptic about it - I went back to that place myself last week. I had some scary repeats of my thigh earthquakes. Was it stress or dehydration? Don't know. But the young woman with hot hands and a sympathetic ear made me relax.

maybe Okaasan should go back.

:-( Toilet problems are increasing....

The towel that Okaasan is using under her body when sleeping is wet with urine almost every day. I've bought a bedsheet from the drugstore, it looks enough like a sheet that hopefully she won't know what it is for and refuse to use it. It soaks in urine and can be washed easily. ;-(

Downtown return

Okaasan went back down town yesterday - first time in 3 months!
August 27th she had that drama of getting to the subway station and unable to walk and being brought back in a taxi and then we carried her into the house on the garden chair.
And then weeks and weeks of pain....and finally starting to walk again....as far as the local shops.

But she never ventured downtown at all. Passes the subway station almost everytime she goes out. Has a rail pass in her handbag. But didn't go. The old routine of the coffee shop, the shopping mall and the convenience store cafe seemed abandoned.

Yesterday Dear Son and I didn't get out of our pajamas. Both struck down by whatever bug we picked up in Tokyo. Headcold central. All day TV and boxes of tissues scattered everywhere.

Checked Okaasan on the GPS about 4.30 om and there she was: right in the center of Sapporo again! Excellent!
She came home also ok a few hours later - and had a vague thought that maybe she'd been downtown...wasn't really sure.....

Why? 
I reckon it's due to the day care center outing they did on Thursday. They took her and other members in a minibus to a cafe in the center of town for tea. I think it jogged Okaasan's memory of downtown and its delights. So she went herself.

Mind you - today she seemed back to confusion.....went out for a walk mid-afternoon and came home within the hour....knee hurting and NOT happy because she'd left her handbag at home, and had no money for shopping or taxi...and ...and ...and...she looked tired tonight from that stress.

But - she got downtown and home again successfully. Winter is just about to arrive here and her walking still isn't as strong as it was, I think this year she won't go out so much.
I hope she won't.

"Good" times a-rollin'....

Okaasan is getting back in her groove.
Back at day care twice a week - and enjoying the dance sessions. Even managing to remember some dance steps, apparently.
Back to walking on her own round the neighborhood, and actually having the energy/muscle power to come home by herself. Twice.
She hasn't been down town yet on the subway alone and walked round all the fun of there. Thankfully.

Interesting that although she apparently doesn't really remember the leg pain saga of September and October ("I didn't go downtown, the roads were bad condition?"), she has some sense that downtown would be a step too far.
Maybe.
She has the subway card, she passes near the subway station on local walks. But she doesn't go in and take a train downtown.
Some sense of her inability? Or just out of that routine now for over 2 months?
Interesting.

As a family we enter winter mode from now on. He has just stopped his summer job as a bike taxi driver. He has the usual November off, to see friends and drink himself stupid and to do all the little jobs I have been saving up for him around the house. Then December he'll start work as a ski teacher. And MY winter job of full-time carer for Okaasan starts.....cos he'll be away for several weeks.

So, with Okaasan getting stronger and walking more we are back to our kind of "normal".

I rush into her room as soon as she is in the day care car: to scoop up old half empty lunchboxes, dirty underwear, old papers, yet MORE bags (will blog about those another time), and try and keep the clothes piles on the sofa and floor to below UNESCO registration as mountains levels.
We shop and cook, and room clean for Okaasan, we do her laundry, we clear up the occasional toilet accidents, we switch her TV channels from repetitive weather or TV shopping to actual programs, and we make sure he has just enough money for magazines and a few snacks.

Onwards.

* My blogging life and so-called reality are gonna meet! I've had a message on Couch Surfing from a woman who is a reader here - and she is coming to Sapporo with her family later this month!!! She recognised me from my CS profile!!! Small, small world.....
I keep hoping the handsome, blonde American exchange student at my university in the 1980s in England will also find me on the Internet....but that hasn't happened yet.
I bet he has an old mother to look after anyway....

The nightly rescue

Every evening - we are rescuing Okaasan from somewhere round the neighborhood, where she has set out for a walk, gone too far and has no energy to get back home with her painful legs.
I guess it's good that she WANTS to go out for a walk.
But it is also waaaay lucky that we come home around 6 pm and can find her with the GPS Ap. on her cell phone, that she goes to the same old places and that the weather is mainly dry and warm....
She got to MacDonalds and the convenience store. We brought her back by car.
At Macdonalds she was actually standing outside and looking hopefully at the road - and said to me when I pulled up: "Oh, I wondered if someone was coming for me!". She is lucky my class finished at 6 pm and that road is on my way home...and I spotted her.

Today she refused to go out with us in the car to go winter coat shopping. Legs too painful. So we escaped and had couple time with a curry lunch and a film festival. Left her lunch in flasks on the kitchen table.
But after we got home, around 4 pm Okaasan announced she WAS ok to go for a walk and off she went. 
About an hour later we used the GPS to check on her location - and found to our surprise that she was apparently only 2 streets away.
Dear Son went to walk her home...and found her two streets away, trying to GO. Still trying to walk away from the house, with a neighbor all concerned about her.
She's gone 100 meters in an hour. And been sitting on a wall talking to the neighbor....

We held her up between us and walked her home. Where she didn't want any dinner.....

And so it goes.
This leg problem is just ongoing. Mixed in with her emotional response to it and the non-eating, when she remembers the pain and feels "it's better not to eat".

I have a sense that this is going to take the whole situation onto a different level - and not a better one. SHE must be in pain and getting frustrated about it. We must get her a stick and hope that she doesn't fall.
On weekends we can take her for a walk, but during the week we usually don't get home till after 6 pm and it is hard to stop her heading out for a walk.
Her dementia means that she isn't using good judgement on her own physical ability.

And so it goes.

Hobbling onwards

Slight improvement on the legs.
We took Okaasan out in the car yesterday to a local noodles restaurant.
She could get dressed fairly ok, and get down the steps outside the front door unaided, and hobble to the car - grasping anything that came to hand like bicycles, the fence, the wall...

Same at the restaurant - with reassuring hand spots she could get along.

Still NOT safe enough to go off walking alone, but better than last week.

Which of course, she doesn't remember. That is the scary thing - she doesn't have a sense that she should take it easy. We worry she will try to set out for a walk alone (while we are at work).
Hopefully today will be rainy and she won't try. And tomorrow is another day center day - and we'll try to get her enthusiastic about that.

So, maybe for now - this legs crisis has passed. But will certainly come back. 
The strongest point about Okaasan and her health is that she walks and likes walking, so this week of pain and inability was a wake-up call to the risk that this situation can change. And then managing her gets much harder.

Meanwhile: a cheerful story.
On one of OUR morning walks recently we found an example of super sunflower power - a plant that grew from a seed that fell at the bottom of an electricity pole.
And grew.
And grew.
The people living in the street helped support it with cord. And now it is in all its glory.

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...................

Walking. Carefully.

Little Family Outing yesterday.
Two days of snow and ice and Okaasan hadn't been out at all.
So yesterday we took advantage of sunshine and a slight thaw and walked with her to the next station down from us for lunch.
Okaasan NEVER goes here, so it was all new to her.


She is very dependent on Yujiro for help with walking on potentially icy places, holding into his hand and following his directions. Her walking is slower now, her balance not great - at one traffic signal crossing, Okaasan appeared to teeter on the slight slope to the curb...and as I rushed to hold her she grabbed the traffic signal to lean against it.


But all was well, she enjoyed the walk in the sunshine and looking at new things. It was a public holiday, so not many shops were open - but a good change from the living room and the TV.


She takes a long time to do things: folding up her shawl to drape it over the chair in the restaurant took several minutes, deciding HOW to put her handbag over her neck/shoulders...each decision seems to take more time.


At home we got done a whole lot of Prepping for Winter stuff, I even made a Xmas card list and thought about end of year things. It's a useful holiday.
I got my icky samples into the hospital the other day. Now I have to wait 2 weeks for the test results. If questionable, I  will need a camera stuffed up a place where NO camera should ever go. In Japan these kind of tests are very regular - I am getting a free one as a 50 year old.I think in the UK only people on big company private health insurance schemes get regular tests.


Slightly nervous about the results.
I've never had much to do with hospitals in my life - until last year of course, when what I thought might be a stomach worm-infestation caught from the cat toilet box...ended up being multiplying ovaries and an operation to whip 'em out. But thankfully, no cancer.
Health can change so suddenly. In 2 weeks time I could get a call back for a closer examination,  then suddenly Xmas and end-of-year could all be a hospital drama....


The other week I was just leaving a private student's home when she got the call from her sister to say that their mother has advanced lung cancer...the late-afternoon "feeling hot" and subsequent health checks had revealed a shaddow in the lungs etc etc. This family have just been celebrating the arrival of the first grandchild....so to have THIS news now is a shock.


So. Nervous. I am not ready for "Camera! Action!" in any part of my lower body....I am very grateful for all that KKR Hospital did fior me last year, but I don't want to spend Christmas there...