The response to my first diary in this series, "My Mother Has Died. Reflections Of A Caregiver," available here: http://www.dailykos.com/... was incredibly heartening, and I'd like to once again thank everyone who responded for their kind words and support.
I'd like to begin this diary by picking up where the last one left off, and detailing how I came to become first my mother's part time caregiver, living in my own home, before moving in to assume those duties full time.
When my father died my mother was just two days shy of her 89th birthday. She had just returned home from a two week stay in the hospital due to pneumonia, was seriously underweight, and now used a walker in addition to the brace she'd worn on her polio weakened leg for not quite twenty years.
She was plainly depressed over the passing of her husband of sixty-five years, and every evening would complain of chest pains, which would be alleviated by a nitro-glycerine tablet dissolved under the tongue. She would always burp after the nitro, and my sister and I wondered if it was in fact indigestion or her heart acting up. She'd sit in her chair with her head back. Eyes closed. Mute.
This sister and I felt strongly that the odds were 50/50, if not worse, that our mother would also soon pass away. She'd been underweight even prior to the pneumonia, and now had no reserve whatsoever if she fell ill again. For two weeks it was a toss-up as to whether she'd even be able to attend my father's memorial service. At the last minute she was convinced to attend, in a wheelchair. It was a wonderful gathering that honored my father's wishes in being a celebration featuring good food, an open bar, a showing of the video I embedded in my earlier diary about the construction of the family home, and yes, Dixieland music.
I have two older sisters. The younger of the two is fourteen years older than I am, and many decades ago moved to a southern city a good six hundred miles away from our mother.
The other sister is seventeen years older than I am, a "senior citizen" herself when our father passed away. She too moved hundreds of miles away after marriage, but following a divorce many years ago returned to our area, where she has remained ever since.
She worked for years as a quality control inspector in the electronics industry, until her employer went out of business. She was unable to find work, and upon turning 63 decided to begin collecting Social Security. I remember calling her up on the morning of her birthday and saying "Congratulations! Yesterday you were unemployed. Today you're retired." Her Social Security is inadequate and she eventually found work twenty hours a week as an office manager, a job she holds to this day.
My own employment during this time consisted of piecing together two part-time jobs in an effort to make a living. I worked a few hours mid-day as a delivery driver, then went to my job as a customer service representative for a utility company.
I considered this a far from ideal situation, and it made for a very long day, but the utility company provided excellent insurance (or rather, the IBEW saw to it that I was provided with excellent insurance,) and the schedule allowed me to accommodate my own health issues. You see, I'd been diagnosed with fibromyalgia years before, following a year of unrelenting pain from two ruptured discs. As the delivery job started late in the morning, and I lived only five minute's away from the business, I could stay in bed late, work that job, then run home to grab anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours' rest, then go to the second job, returning home around 10:30 to collapse for another night of non-restorative sleep.
My local sister has her health issues as well. She struggled for years with mental illness, which was finally properly diagnosed and treated. The turnaround was, and continues to be, remarkable, and she has done well for herself. But she was robbed of the very years in which most people learn certain life skills, and to this day does poorly with decision making and handling stress. She is also morbidly obese with badly arthritic knees, although when our father passed her mobility had not yet been markedly affected.
I went to my supervisors at the utility company, and explained that I needed to apply for some leave under the FMLA, the Family and Medical Leave Act. Thank-you Bill Clinton.
I immediately ran into trouble when I attempted to explain that I could not predict, with certainty, exactly how much time off I would need, or precisely when I would need it. My mother's status was in flux. She had her bad days, and her not quite as bad days. I was one of several hundred CSRs who were on duty at any one time, yet I suddenly, magically, became irreplaceably invaluable to them. It all proved to be a moot point when it was determined that in my part-time status I'd not worked the requisite number of hours the previous year to qualify under the FMLA.
My other employer, however, had always been remarkably flexible and willing to accommodate me when I'd had to take my folks to doctor's appointments, or tend to them in other ways. I was one of only a handful of drivers on duty at any one time, and I always endeavored and usually managed to provide as much advance notice as possible, but my boss never hesitated, upon receiving a last-minute call from me, to say "We'll find somebody to cover you."
I spoke with this employer, and learned that additional hours were available for me. I quit my job with the utility, surrendering the wonderful health insurance (a story for another time,) and adopted a schedule that allowed me to continue living in my apartment while tending to my mother throughout the day. But the hit to my pocketbook was significant, and finances became a struggle.
I mentioned in my first diary that my mother was the most resilient person I'd ever met, and as time passed she proved herself to be yet again. She took well to using the walker. I built a slightly elevated platform for her recliner to make ingress and egress easier for her and installed elevated toilet seats and grab bars in the bathrooms. Fortunately the house is a ranch, with no stairs to navigate.
I signed my mother up for one of those bracelets a person can use to summon help if no one is around, and had a phone company tech come out to run a line so the base station could be placed in the best spot in the house.
The wonderful cardiologist confirmed that angina and indigestion often presented with identical symptoms, that nitroglycerine could indeed cause her to burp, and that if it was indigestion causing her discomfort no harm would come from being on the safe side and giving it to her. Over a number of weeks the mystery chest pains lessened in frequency, then stopped. She began to gain weight, to resume reading the newspaper everyday and then a book from the library every week.
I signed my mother up through the county's senior services department for Meals on Wheels. Thank-you Ted Kennedy. I learned from the same department that the county would pick up the cost of the monthly alert bracelet subscription.
Before very long I'd arrive at my mother's in the morning to find her already up and dressed, the house full of the aroma from the beloved, decades old, stove-top dripilator. I'd stay with her until I had to leave for work, then keep in touch via my cellphone. It became more and more common to arrive to prepare my Mom's dinner, the Meals on Wheels, only to find her seated at the table, microwaved meal already in front of her, glass of Rhine wine to the side.
In hindsight, we were taking foolish chances back then. My mother would get up several times during the night to go to the bathroom, using the walker, but without her brace and shoes. She never fell, but how we dodged that bullet I'll never know. There's no dry run for this sort of thing, no rehearsal. You make it up as you go along, and hope your mistakes don't bite too hard.
A year later, now weighing in at around 130 lbs., my mother celebrated her 90th birthday at her favorite restaurant with her two daughters, her son, and her three grandchildren in attendance.
It was, it would turn out, the best period my Mom would experience after my Dad's death. But it was not to last.