Posts Tagged: mom
Today’s Narrative
Efrosini
Ok, so this isn’t “today’s” narrative anymore, since I got sidetracked after starting it. But it’s the only one I’ve got, so I’ll stick with it for now.
I try to see my mom every weekend. Usually, I go pick her up from the board and care facility and bring her to my house for an hour or so. Mostly we just talk. Sometimes, I’ll make her a little lunch with some feta cheese, olives and bread, or some Greek coffee.
Of course, these are not normal conversations on account of her dementia. In fact, it is charitable to call them conversations, but they are still important to me, and to her, I think. For example, we usually cover the same ground over and over again. Sometimes we only utter about eight to 10 different sentences; we just repeat them, sometimes with different inflections, or emphasis.
Interestingly, though she can’t really remember much anymore, she manages to maintain a theme for an entire visit, sometime over the course of a couple visits. Today’s narrative was something like this.
Effie: Come here pulakimou (my little bird). I don’t remember much anymore. But I think I loved you when you were little. Didn’t I?
Neo: Yes, momma, you loved me. You loved me too much. You let me get away with too much.
E: You have to indulge the children. We had a good life.
N: Yes, we did.
E: I took care of you didn’t? I don’t remember much.
N: Yes, mom. Do you remember Fresno?
E: Oh yes. You were there too weren’t you?
N: Yes, of course, momma.
E: I don’t remember much anymore. But I think I loved you when you were little. Didn’t I?
And so it goes, through a few repetitions on the same topic. Naturally, on different visits she is interested in different things depending on what dreams she’s been having, or something. And so, we get different narratives on different days.
It is quite striking to me how different her memory will be from one day to the next. One visit she’ll be out of it and not remember much of anything about the recent past, say 20 years. Then the next time she’ll even remember really recent things I’d told her over and over again on previous visits, that I was sure would never stick. It’s easy to get optimistic when the good days happen and think that maybe she’s getting better. But it doesn’t take long until the tide of memory recedes back to a low ebb.
Staying busy part 1: eldercare
Ever since I was laid off from my job in February, life has been exceptionally hectic. This seems completely counter-intuitive. This is because I obviously have much more free time than I did when I was working full time. Nonetheless, the free time seems to fill up fast with things that I either wish to do or that come up that I must do.
One huge thing that has come up is caring for my mother. This started the very day I was laid off when she fell and broke her wrist. About three weeks later, her left hip, which had been painful for months as the prosthesis from a much earlier hip replacement was rattling around loose in her femur, finally just broke. That is, her femur just started disintegrating. It was time to attempt a total revision of the hip replacement. This was a major undertaking that just a couple months before was seen as not worth the risks by an orthopedist at Kaiser Richmond. But now the risk of a failed surgery, becoming wheelchair bound, was already a reality.
The first orthopedic surgeon to look at her new situation, basically thought he could not do anything for her, but offered to refer us for a second opinion. The referral was to Dr. Bini, director of orthopedics for Kaiser East Bay. Dr. Bini was very confident he could fix her. “I can cut this and replace that; and if that doesn’t work, I have some other toys I can play with.” But he was very upfront about the risks: “For a 91-year-old, the anesthesia is dangerous. Or afterwards, she gets a clot and it goes to her lungs, that’s it. Or she gets pneumonia, which it’s unlikely she’ll recover from.”
We decide to move forward with it, and he schedules her for April 29th, at the end of an already full day of surgery for him. He just adds her in. So, there were three days of appointments for tests, including blood, urine, ekg, and biggest of all, a heart stress test with nuclear imaging.
Finally, she has the surgery. Dr. Bini calls me 5 or 6 hours after I left her with the pre-surgery team to say that the surgery went great, and that she came through it well. By Friday, she was recovering really well and they were planning on discharge to a rehab home the next day.
But the next day, Saturday, she started having terrible trouble breathing, and a chest x-ray showed patchy fluid throughout her lungs. It looked like pneumonia. By Sunday, she was moved to ICU, on an oxygen machine that helped keep her lungs inflated (bipapp?) and the doctors there were mostly talking to me about her health directive and “do not resuscitate” (DNR) status. We were all preparing for the end game. But I know these old Greeks, and her in particular. She’s too stubborn. Monday morning, the doc on watch suggested that she could be on the breathing machine indefinitely and that if she goes a couple days without change it might be time to think about pulling tubes out of her and just keeping her comfortable till the end. I said let’s see what we can pull back in terms of intervention and see how she does. So, over the course of a couple hours, we took her off the back-pressure oxygen, and got her down to just a little oxygen through a nose tube, not even a mask. And there started the big rally. The ICU docs were surprised.
She continued to improve through the week in terms of her infection and ability to breathe. However, she refused to eat, take her meds or otherwise cooperate in any way. Her lack of English, baseline dementia, and combination of lack of sleep and regular morphine all had her totally delusional. I was having to come in everyday to try to get her to eat and take some meds. By Friday, the ICU docs were again concerned that this was going to send her into decline again. And they felt like the hospital environment was a big factor in her disposition. They wanted to discharge her to a skilled nursing facility for rehab and focus on getting her on a normal routine. Saturday they did that, and sent her to Kaiser Post-Acute. Of course, that didn’t change her attitude much. They called me this morning to talk to her about eating, letting them take her vitals, and starting physical therapy on her hip. I tried. Later in the morning, we (Sarah, Theo, and my friend David) all went there for a mother’s day visit, and to see what the situation is. I actually got her to eat several bites of pureed food (can’t blame her for not liking it), and let them get her vitals. It looks like that is going to be the drill for the coming days, until she gets oriented. Assuming she ever does.
Watching Over Me
A portrait of my father taken when he was a young man, probably about 1918 or so. Here it is up in my mom’s apartment in Albany CA. 2009.
It hung on the wall in the living room, in the corner, next to the door, over the couch, when we lived at 1210 Griffith Way. When I was really little, up until at least seven or eight years old or so, I was scared to be alone in the room with it at night–i felt like the eyes followed me. I surely loved my father, and i was not scared during the day, but somehow, at night everything changes.
I can’t quite bring myself to put it up in my mom’s room at the rest home. I’ll have to scan it and print a copy for her to have there.
i was holding it in my hand today, and really looking closely at it, noticing the various imperfections, damaged corners and so on. I also really noticed what a fine looking young man my father was. He was 63 when I was born, so my concept of him is, of course, of an older man. I wondered too, about his motivation for having such a portrait made of himself, at 18 or 20 years old, fresh off the boat in New York and not speaking much English at the time. Was it a simply convention to do so? Was it vanity? Was it for family?
I’ll never know.
The Last Supper with More Than a Grain of Salt 2
The Last Supper with More Than a Grain of Salt 2, originally uploaded by neocles.
This print of the last supper had always hung near the breakfast table in my parents’ home. It was no different here at my mother’s last apartment, although it had fallen off the wall and sat around for a few months. I set it back here the other day, and it seemed a fine place for photo. A detail shot would reveal drops of this and that, and a spattering of tomato sauce.
It is a bit of an odd assortment off things on the cupboard, most sitting for weeks without notice from mom. Tomato sauce, orzo, salt, vanilla flavoring, the Greek coffee pot (the briki), and assorted trivets. A couple times in recent months my mom had cooked food with some odd flavorings, like baked chicken with a heavy dose of cinnamon or ground cloves. Eventually she gave up on seasonings and then finally on cooking much of anything besides boiled eggs, green beans, or broccoli.
Today, we went to Kaiser for an eye check-up and to start the process of getting a new pair of glasses. She had misplaced her only pair. It turns out that her right eye needs just about the strongest lens available. The doctor could not determine a prescription for the left eye at all because she is nearly blind from a cataract. So, we’ll be going back for cataract removal, and then eventually for a prescription for the left eye. Shit, no wonder the apartment was a mess. And no wonder the chicken was seasoned with salt and clove instead of salt and pepper.
Suitcase 4
Suitcase 4, originally uploaded by neocles.
I’m slowly making my way through photographing the items in my mother’s apartment. I only vaguely remember the suitcase. It was not used very often. In fact, the only time I remember it being used was when my mom visited Greece once. When we moved my mother up here we just packed it full of curtains she had made for her house. She would not let me throw them away.
The chair and end table are part of a set purchased when we moved into a new house my dad had built on Griffith Way in Fresno, back in 1967. There are two chairs and couch which, unfortunately, were reupholstered around 1980. The sofa was cobalt blue and I’ll never forget that thing. But I can’t quite picture the original color of the chairs.
The furniture all has to be gotten rid of soon. I was all ready for that. But now I feel more sad about seeing it all go. I had a fantasy while I was going through stuff the other day that I could move my mom back into her house in Fresno and find a wonderful, reliable, relatively inexpensive 24/7 live-in caretaker for her. Then all the power objects could stay together for another couple years. But these childish dreams must be left behind…
Leaving Home For Good – Family Snapshot
The Grocery Cart #2, originally uploaded by neocles.
My mother, Efrosini Serafimidis, will be 90 years old this month. For the last five years she has been living down the street from us in a little one bedroom apartment. We moved her up here to Albany from Fresno and the home in which she had lived for over 30 years. I was resistant to moving her at the time, but my cousins insisted it was necessary. It is not easy for a person in their 80’s to switch gears like that. She still complains bitterly everyday about this place, and I think she still is a little resentful towards me on that count. But she did okay for two or three years.
The last couple years have been increasingly challenging. She has had a hip replacement and big surgery on a broken elbow. Also, she has been pretty lonely during the days when we are at work, and the lack of interaction and stimulation has taken a toll on her.
The next move is now necessary. This month, Effie will be going to a board and care facility somewhere nearby. It is going to be hard to do, and the transition is going to be a struggle, I’m sure. But her hips are not holding her up very well, and she is suffering from some dementia. She has wandered off a couple times, but her incredible luck with coming across non-Greek-speaking people who are charmed by her old-country, head-scarved, four-foot-ten-inch figure has held up. Each time we got her back none the worse for the wear.
Of course, Sarah and I both work full time, and have a five-year-old to attend to. And living in the Bay Area has its own challenges. So, I would not say I have been an overly conscientious caregiver, but nonetheless, I see her and give her her meds almost every day, try to keep her reasonably safe and fed, bring her back and forth to my home, clean her apartment, pay her bills, take care of her legal and financial matters, manage the renting of the family home in Fresno, and so on.
Chief among the challenges of moving her to a care facility is going to be the dissolving of her apartment home and figuring out what to do with all the things in it. We got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved her to Albany. But a lot of stuff is still packed away in her apartment. I am very nostalgic about these things and have a tough time just trashing them even though they are otherwise pretty worthless.
In response to all this I am planning a photo series. Right now the idea is simple snapshot-like photos of, basically, every object in her apartment. Where possible, descriptions will accompany the photos. Eventually, the series will include photos of each and every object I still have from my parents. I may be an old man myself by the time I finish.
Mom’s Western Holly
A bit tragic. The stove was in mom’s house in Fresno. The renters swapped it out with the Wedgewood that I had stored in the garage there, and left it out in the elements for a couple months. When I found out, I brought it up to the Bay Area and stored it at my work place for a couple years. I fretted about it and wondered where I could move it. I called some old stove restorers to see about having it serviced and cleaned up. They didn’t want to work on it, but said they would take it off my hands for parts, for free. I said “no”. I eventually had to it move out back of the shop wrapped in plastic for several months. But eventually the wrapping failed, and it got wet and started to rust. The other day, a couple scavengers from the neighborhood came by in an old Datsun pickup and asked if we wanted to get rid of it and a crappy old refrigerator that was sitting with it. At this point, I was no longer able to justify spending a lot of money trying to fix it up, and I had no place to install it, or to store it. I gave it to them. Another little piece of my life lost in the mists of time.
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