The Stopping Channel

8.10 am.......Okaasan deeply into Shoes on the Shopping Channel.

9 am....Okaasan deeply into Shoes on the Shopping Channel.

This is happening more and more, Okaasan getting stuck on either the Shopping Channel or the Weather Channel on TV. Sitting and looking...and looking...and looking. 30 mins...1 hour....thankfully she doesn't pick up the telephone and order anything...thankfully, thankfully....

Of course a lot of Japanese TV entertainment shows are no different from the Shopping Channel - a male and female presenter in the studio, showing off some necessary item while the audience oohs and ahhs - but after about 5 mins. of that there is a change of scene to a male and female presenter showing off some cooking, while the audience oohs and ahhs...and then 5 mins later it will change to a presenter walking round a shop, showing off items, while the male and female presenter in the studio ooh and ahh......

But, poor Okaasan...stuck on the Shopping/Weather Channel.....when I go to Hell for being a bad Oyomesan, it will be like that.

Last night that clothes stand thingy in Okaasan's room collapsed under the weight of T-shirts, scarfs, towels, underpants, bags and God-knows-what. Gave me a chance to try and put two thirds of it away in drawers and cupboards. It's actually only a flimsy laundry drying stand, but Okaasan's compulsion to have all her clothes OUT where she can see them means it gets very weighed down.
I think I'll buy her a stronger stand and take out the flimsy one.

Still hot here. Had an amazing storm last night. Went on for ages. Rainy and thunder and lightening. The cats were nervous. We had little sleep. Okaasan's windows were still open from the afternoon and she was sitting there at 3 am staring at the billowing curtains...but not getting up to close the windows....

And our Popo-chan cat is fighting back to health - we hope. He is an insectholic, and the undigested insects bits are scratching his insides as he vomits them up everywhere (you're not eating while reading this blog, are you??!!)...so then he stops eating...and gets weak....and we go to the vets, and he gets shots of water and stomach-calming medicine...and we try all over again.
Poor little bugger. I wish he'd stay home and watch the Shopping Channel.

9.30 am......

 

Okaasan deeply into Grey Suits on the Shopping Channel....

 

time for me to go and get a life....

 

Jungle fever

Shit. It was hot yesterday.

Can't do much more of this.
And, nor can Okaasan.

About 2.30 pm her room gets steamy. She isn't helping much because she tries to keep the insect screens closed, and the door to the kitchen closed, and there are clothes hanging in the door between her two rooms...and she is wearing long-johns and two shirts.

I have a strong image of my friend's mother-in-law dieing in her underwear on the living room floor of her Osaka apartment a month ago. For all my whingeing about Okaasan, I of course don't wish that end on her.

The jungle of suburban Sapporo. At 2.30 yesterday I was throwing open doors and windows, giving Okaasan iced water in the kitchen and hosing down the concrete steps outside her windows - steps which probably concentrate the sun's heat even more.

And we went to see the musical Lion King! I bought the tickets ages ago, as a post-Olympic something-to-look-forward-to AND as a Happy Family Trip Out. Tickets cost me Y9,000 each. Bit of a  splurge. It is the final week of the show's 2-year run In Sapporo. Both Okaasan and I had seen it before, but Yujiro never.

Thought it would be nice.

At 2.45 pm Okaasan is trying to back out of going: I don't feel like going out, I've seen it before, it's hot......
I ran around like a nutter trying to cool her surroundings down and get her in a positive frame of mind. But it WAS hot. Hard to think about getting ready to go out at 4 pm for us too. At 9,000 a ticket I wasn't going to let her get out of it and I knew once we got her to a cool place, with fun music and songs - she would enjoy it all.

Going out with Okaasan in public, to something that involves a lot of sitting...with a long time to the next toilet break. Bit stressful really.
Overall she enjoyed the show. We enjoyed it, from our seats just 5 rows from the stage - the elephant walked right next to us!!!
But I never really relaxed, always on Care Duty. Rushing Okaasan to the toilet in the intermission, pushing aside other people to get her to the head of the queue etc...trying to be reassuring to her about the embarrassing wet patch on the theater seat....taking her off to the toilet again....grasping her hands through the crowds....sitting chatting while Yujiro got the car.
All a lot of work really.

A 3 hour show isn't very suitable for an old lady with bladder control issues. I should learn this.
Next time, I'll just get tickets for us and leave her quietly at home with some takeout sushi.

Money...NOW!

Okaasan tried to borrow money from the neighbor - and was completely baffled when Yujiro told her this was totally out of order - apart from a real emergency.

We usually dole out about 1,000 yen ($10) a day, for her to buy magazines and yogurt and have a coffee somewhere. If she wants more we give it no problem.

I gave her 1,000 at 3.30 pm yesterday. She went out for a walk and shop.
I left later to go working and Yujiro got home about 6 pm. Okaasan was standing in the street chatting to the old neighbor. She hurriedly left off and came scuttling over to Dear Son: "Can you give me money? I want to buy a magazine! The shop is keeping it for me! I must go back now! I was asking Mrs H for money!"

Yikes.
Really, Mrs H is a sweet old lady. But borrowing money in Japan from anyone outside family is a no-no. It looks really bad and places all sorts of obligation feelings on people.
Okaasan once came home in a taxi and didn't have enough money, so she borrowed from Mrs H. That is just about ok - an emergency with an obvious, immediate need for cash.

But another time she borrowed money for something - again from poor Mrs H - and then forgot.
;-(
About a week later Mrs. H had to come asking us for it. Pretty embarrassing all round.

And now again. Nuts really. The magazine can wait till tomorrow, the shop would keep it until tomorrow. And Yujiro is usually home about 6 pm....both of those facts are pretty obvious. If Okaasan had the Wait Until Later function switched on.
She doesn't. Situations are right now.
I want to buy the magazine - NOW.
I need money - NOW.
There is Mrs. H - I will ask her NOW.

Yujiro was annoyed with Okaasan....and even more so because she seemed oblivious to why it wasn't appropriate to go asking the neighbor for money....

We decided we should make sure she has about 2,000 yen every day - that should be enough for coffee, snacks, magazine, yogurt etc. Should be.

* Cute cat picture? Well, ok then. Very hot here right now...on and on and on. We are all melting.
The cats have the right idea to get maximum air to all parts.

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.