Mom's been after me for weeks (months?) to get her new glasses. She can't tell me the last time she had her eyes examined, so this is not so simple as taking a current prescription and getting a new set. Oh no. This is an Adventure. This requires The Bus.
I decided some time ago that we would transfer their eye care to a practice that has an office near them and also near me. This is the same practice that The Boy, Himself and I all use, so I had some confidence in them. It's also very helpful that they are located inside a Lenscrafters, which makes getting new glasses a tad easier.
If you know me, it won't surprise you that I do as much as I can online, electronically, via email. That's another great thing about this practice - appointments can be scheduled online, new patient paperwork can be downloaded from their website. It's a marvel of modern convenience.
Appointments made, paperwork printed, The Bus and my FMLA time scheduled, I filled out the new patient paperwork for each of them as best I could. The Sunday before the appointment, during our weekly visit, I grilled each of them about things I couldn't know. "Is your vision blurry now? Do your eyes feel like there is something in them?"
The day of the appointment, paperwork in hand, I arrive at Lenscrafters to find them waiting, along with Mom's very patient caregiver. Mom goes in first. The door to the exam room is open, and we can hear her talking to the doctor. While we wait, I take Dad out to look at frames, and he picks out a couple he likes. We come back to the waiting room and sit down, only to hear this from the exam room:
Mom: "...And you are Doctor....who?"
Doctor: <chuckles> "Yes, I'm Dr. Who."
Mom: "....."
Doctor: <realizes she doesn't get it> "Dr. Lavoie. I'm Dr. Lavoie."
No one died, no one cried and no one pooped their pants = a good doctor's appointment with my parents.
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not sugar-coating any of
these experiences. I think to gloss over the difficulty of having aging
parents makes those who may yet to go through it feel worse about the
reality of the feelings when their time comes to deal honestly with the
experience.
* * * * * * * *
It's been about a month and a half
since Mom was released from the nursing home. In that time, we've
striven to find our new normal, to develop a sense of routine, a sense
of rhythm to let all of our lives fall back into some semblance of
predictability (or as much as one can have with elderly, unwell
parents).
The first few weeks were intense, stressful and chaotic
- Mom had a hard time adjusting to the new boundaries of her world, and
came across as both demanding and unappreciative. Himself, my brother & I
were all tired and stressed, worrying about getting everything just
right and not missing some key component. Her first weekend home
included yelling and tears on both her part and mine, but it helped us
both see where the other was coming from and the path has been smoother
since.
We seem to have resolved the caregiver issue, but not
without challenges. Mom has opinions on everything from how soon after
the dishwasher stops it should be unloaded, to how often laundry should
be done. We are working with her to adjust her expectations in matters
like this.
We often said that in the dynamic of my parents
relationship, Dad was the body and Mom was the brains. Since Dad's
stroke, it fell to Mom to ensure bills were paid, appointments made and
kept, meals made and served while she relied on Dad to fetch and carry
and bring. All that has changed. One of the hardest adaptations for
Mom is how much frailer Dad became in the 4 months she was away. He is
even more unsteady on his feet, had a spell of falling repeatedly, and
we have had to tell both her and her caregivers that he cannot go to the
basement and he cannot carry anything heavy or unwieldy.
Where
Mom was once on top of everything, we see a significant degradation in
her ability to process information, to remember things, to follow a
complex conversation. She is easily overwhelmed with information. After a
few very frustrating interactions, I have had to learn to provide her
with information in small chunks, a definite change from the
balls-to-the-wall, get-it-all-done-NOW mode I was in for the weeks
leading up to her discharge. As someone who once planned the food
services for a high school on a monthly basis, Mom is now challenged by
planning for seven days of meals to make a grocery list. So we have a
method for that, which includes a pre-printed list of the things she
most commonly orders, with boxes to mark a quantity because she
struggles to write. Once a week, we go over her list and talk about
whether or not she has enough proteins for 7 dinners, and will she have
leftovers or sandwiches for lunches.
I make charts, lists,
reminders - anything to make it easier on her. To the grocery list I
have now added a meal planner to help her think it through; she has a
form to chart her blood glucose, and a chart to show what medications
are taken when (although we fill her pill case weekly, she is reassured
that she can grab this chart in an emergency).
In the meantime,
as my brother puts it, "Dad has gotten what he wanted, for good or ill. Mom is
home." She casts a large shadow, and almost immediately upon her
return, Dad faded into it. He sits quietly most of the time, waiting for
instructions or ways to help her. He gets upset if he's told he can't
do things for her because they are risky to him - "I will take care of
her! She's MY wife!" he insists. But helping move her, fetching and
carrying for her (because she will still tell him to and he will still
do it, no matter what we say) is hurting him. His back aches, and his
hip, and the ankle that he broke which never healed right because he
wouldn't wear the boot. When company comes, he's happy to see them but
she dominates the conversations. He misplaced the opener for the garage
door that goes to the ramp; she yelled at him. He lost his house keys;
she called him names. It's heartbreaking no matter what - when she
wasn't home, he pined for her, asked repeatedly to be taken to see her.
Now that she's home, he is trying so hard for her and very often it's
just not good enough.
In the meantime, we do the best we can for
them. My brother stops during the week to take trash bins up or down from the
curb. Except for this weekend, I go each Sunday to get the grocery list,
fill the pill cases and check the grocery supply in fridge, freezer and
pantry to ensure she isn't ordering things she already has. The guys have built the ramp, installed grab bars, removed doors and
anything else that needs modifying. I schedule the handicapped bus for
appointments, make sure the bills are paid, the groceries and personal
care supplies ordered and interface with her doctors.
This is
our new normal - making the best life we can for them in their last
years, the way they made the best life they could for us.
We
are at weekend number 3 of utter, bone-crushing exhaustion due to the
effort involved in getting Mom home from the nursing facility.
While last weekend was getting her home and settled, this weekend was mostly about trying to establish a routine, getting the railing on the ramp and meeting the latest in a long-line of caregivers (again, that's another whole story).
Today, I arrived later than Himself and my brother. I had errands to do, but I came bearing the fixings for a nice Sunday dinner...spoon roast, broccoli and cauliflower medley, she has potatoes, onions and gravy. She called while The Boy and I were en route, trying to give him a list of things she needed. I asked him to convey that I would shop later, not on my way there.
It was a bad day for my brother - he released one caregiver early expecting the second, and in the hour gap between them, Mom needed the bed pan...and I was not there. The whole experience left him raw, and while I spent my day in the house orienting the newest arrival (and assisting with Mom's numerous transfers from bed to wheelchair and back), undoing the chaos created by the previous attendants and sorting out what was needed today from what was wanted in the weekly grocery order, he spent the day helping Himself get the railing and balusters installed on the ramp.
There was less snarling and snapping today - only one instance, where I observed her bedroom window open. "Remember to close that when you connect to the Baxter tonight." <she shrugs> "When did you open that window, Mom?"
"I didn't. I had Dave do it yesterday evening."
"Did you close it to connect and disconnect?"
"No. And I'm not going to, it's fine."
"Mom. Door closed, windows closed, fans off...this is to avoid an infection."
"It's fine."
"Okay. Sure. You want an infection? You want to get sick? Go ahead." <exit>
It was another non-stop day, resupplying her room with boxes of dextrose, reorganizing the closet trashed by the previous attendants, evaluating the stock of supplies, trying now to estimate ordering times to ensure we don't run out of anything critical. When I have a better understanding of supply run rates, I will set up automatic deliveries.
I fear for her cognitive state - trying to get her to focus on meal planning in support of a grocery list, interrupted a half dozen times with things not related that she needed an answer to immediately. My own mental state is so degraded, with interrupted sleep and stress and worrying about finding the right caregiver, that not keeping on track throws me into a fugue state while I try to recover my train of thought.
But when I left, the caregiver was in control and seemed to be competent; dinner for tonight, tomorrow and Monday had been planned; immediate grocery needs had been seen to and the weekly delivery list confirmed.
Gods above, I need to get this into a predictable routine, if only for my own sanity.
The weeks leading up to discharge were a flurry of Amazon orders, phone calls, coordination touch points: nursing home social worker, durable medical equipment vendor, wheelchair van, disposable briefs, under pads, wipes, relatives, home care agency.
There were visits with Mom where we tried to assuage her anxiety about all the moving parts coming together, unsuccessfully. "It won't happen," she'd say.
"It will. It's just another complicated project like the ones I do at work. Don't doubt us - we don't plan to let you down."
Her realization: "You never have."
Weekend 1 was split between a Saturday shopping for all the items that hadn't been ordered from Amazon (linens and bedding, mostly) and a Sunday - the hottest of the summer to date - spent purging closets, moving obstacles, and generally preparing the house for her return. Five adults and a teen, sweating, hauling, reorganizing in preparation for the delivery of a hospital bed and Hoyer lift, making clearance for a wheelchair. Himself measured and drew and designed the wheelchair ramp to be built. We made room in closets for medical and personal care supplies, our original plan to remove the table and use the formal dining room for storage nixed.
Weekend 2 was discharge day. The wheelchair van is to arrive at 10am. Himself, The Boy and I arrive an hour before, intending to pack up her belongings and make sure she's at the curb on time. We find her still in bed, unwashed, still in her pajamas. I try not to telegraph my anxiety as Himself and The Boy carry her packed bags to the truck. I keep trying to send them ahead, they insist on waiting for the van. With the help of The Best Nurse Ever, she is washed, dressed, lifted into her wheelchair and discharged with 5 minutes to spare.
I board the van with her, still trying to send the truck ahead - we need Himself to be at the house with my brother when we arrive to get her up the temporary ramps into the house. They end up behind us, caught in accursed summer traffic headed to the beaches, while our savvy van driver gets us ahead of the pack of cars. Pulling down the driveway, we see Dad sitting on the front step, fistful of Black Eyed Susans clutched in his hand, waiting for his bride of over 50 years. Bittersweet to watch him walk toward the van, look at the flowers, and put them down, forgetting why he had them.
My brother and Henry get her in the house with help from the van driver. Himself and The Boy pull in not long after and unload her bags. My brother and I wheel her through the house, noting what's changed. "The bookcase - the one from the spare room is in the living room now. We'll show you why in a bit. Yes, the kitchen island is gone, there wasn't clearance for a wheelchair on either side of it. No, we didn't get rid of the stuff in it, we found places to put it."
Her first comment upon seeing her room, with me so proud of the coral coverlet and matching pillow sham, trying to make her as pretty a bed as possible: "This won't work. The dialysis machine needs to be close to the bed so I can get up to see why it's alarming at night." Crestfallen. Hurt. Sad, that she doesn't recognize, even still, that she won't be getting out of bed at night, that she'll need to call for her caregiver, a woman whose arrival we await at noon.
<aside> Through all this, her inability to transfer from bed to wheelchair means she is restricted to using a bed pan. My brother - who can hunt, skin, gut and butcher an animal to feed his family - cannot fathom the concept of having to help his 82-year-old mother use a bed pan. This is okay - we all have our bright lines, and this is his. As Khaleesi would say, "It is known." </aside>
As we survey her room, and I try to point out to her where her supplies are stored she announces with conviction that we'd best be prepared to try the Hoyer out, because she needed the bed pan. The look of horror on my brother's face was likely mirrored by mine. This, we were not prepared for. We could not call on Henry, for fear of my father's wrath. It was all on us. We managed, but there was a mess to clean, and lessons learned, and my brother at some point tapped out to regroup, which was fine. When I needed him back, he came.
Her caregiver arrived at noon. The caregiver saga is a story for another post.
In the meantime, my brother and Himself began framing the wheelchair ramp. The Boy and I emptied the pantry closet to organize, inventory and purge expired items. This project was met with no small amount of upset by my mother, who was as aghast at what we were getting rid of as I was at the amount of instant potatoes, gravy and Jello she had.
Grocery list was worked up with Mom's help and the caregiver's. The Boy and I took off to pick up all her prescriptions and the food, only to be stalled at the first stop. There were questions on the meds. She'd been prescribed injectable insulin but not been trained to use it. The pharmacist called the nursing facility and lambasted them. We settled on a plan, left the meds where it was cool and headed for groceries. The Boy was immensely helpful - a consistent theme as I've gradually headed down this path of mental and emotional overload - and we shopped successfully, collected the meds and made it back to the house.
From there, it was unpacking her bags, sorting dirty from clean from supplies, washing soiled linens and dirty pajamas, storing it all, ensuring that all the supplies needed were readily accessible in her closet, that all was as I felt it should be. And then...it blew up.
Tired, drained, constantly questioning whether I've thought of everything, if I'd missed anything, was the thing I missed something critical, I sat down in the living room to take the tags off the new, larger clothing I'd bought her. She snaps at me, "What are those?"
"Clothes, for you. You said the ones you had in there were too small."
"You need to stop spending money," says the woman who would've given a gift to every nurse and every aide in the nursing home had it been in her power to do so.
"I want you to have clothes that fit you, Mom. I want you to be able to have company and put on something other than pajamas."
Inarticulate grumbling. What is the saying? No good deed goes unpunished.
She is constantly interrupting my work for inconsequentials. "Look at the stereo lights. Why are they like that? Why are they on?" "I don't know, but I'll look at them when I'm done here." "Why are you so abrupt with me?" "Maybe because I'm tired." She becomes snappish, criticizing and complaining and demanding. Telling my frail father to get her this, take her that. I tell her please, don't ask Dad. He's stumbling and yet eager to do his duty to her and get what she cannot. She puts him at risk, falling immediately back into the old patterns. He withdraws, speaks when spoken to, stares off into the distance.
I hit my wall, the trigger so small thing I can't even remember, and go outside sobbing. My brother has been gone for an hour, Himself still working on the ramp. I sit there and vent and try to pull myself together, calling my brother for a sanity check. While I'm out there, the visiting nurse calls. She will be by the next day, we discuss the case, she's seen my mother before and knows she is not the most cooperative patient. We strategize.
I go back in, I tell my mother the nurse will come Sunday and she will show her how to use the injectable insulin and I will get her a new glucometer since hers hasn't worked in months and she refused to get a new one. She snarls back. "I am NOT using that insulin, I want the pills I had before and I am NOT testing my blood all the time, I don't NEED to do that!"
She just pulled the pin on the grenade.
I lose all patience and sanity, and tell her the things she likely needed to hear. That this was her one and only chance to make being home a success. That the alternative was a nursing home, permanently. That she was behaving like an ungrateful brat, not recognizing how hard we had worked to fulfill her desire to come home, at great emotional and mental cost. That her failure to address the arthritis in her knees led to her limited mobility; her failure to adequately manage her diabetes led to kidney disease; her failure to manage her kidney disease led to dialysis and she was no longer permitted to tell us what she was and was not going to do, or we would scrap this whole effort and send her back to the nursing home. There was yelling, there were tears, and there was hurt. But it came out. And then I retreated.
We ended the night with her apologizing when I came back, kissing her and telling her I loved her...but that she had to understand that we were killling ourselves trying to do as right by her as she had done by us for so many years.
It was a 12 hour day...and then we went back on Sunday.
It has been a difficult couple of weeks...but difficult is our new normal.
Dad, stubbornly clinging to his sense of duty and independence, his sense of what his role in the world is, insists on doing things that are now outside the realm of safety. Simple things have become dangerous things - like taking the trash to the curb.
For most people, this would not be a daunting task. For my parents, however, where the curb is so far removed from the house, dragging an automated bin across the lawn and up the bank to the pick-up spot is a project; more so when Dad insists on doing it himself rather than letting Henry do it ("I'm not dead yet!" is an all too common refrain). Of course, in the doing of it, he fell. Thankfully, Henry was at his side still trying to get Dad to let him pull the bin, and he wasn't hurt other than his pride and dignity. But this was the first of a number of falls, enough to cause us concern.
A few mornings in a row Henry found him on the floor beside the bed, awake but unable to raise himself up. When asked why he didn't call out, Dad tells us he doesn't want to bother Henry. What he tries to pass off as a desire to be no trouble, we think is more likely an effort to save face. One afternoon, a sudden desire to take a walk around the yard leads to a face-down tumble in the grass. My brother calls him, I visit to assess his stability and mobility. It's a near thing but I decide on Thursday afternoon that he doesn't need to go to the emergency clinic but will go for a urinalysis in the morning to see if there is a UTI causing the problem.
In the interim, Henry and I work together to put some safety protocols in place. The edge of the mattress that Dad sits on before he gets up in the morning is soft and tends to collapse. Is that causing him to slide down to the floor, conscious or not? Is he rolling off the edge in his sleep? We roll a quilt into a makeshift bumper and install it under the fitted sheet on the side of the bed where he gets out. Henry has already rearranged the room so the other side of the bed is against the wall. Dad and I have a serious chat about drinking enough water and standing up slowly, walking carefully and letting Henry help him. He tries to divert the conversation, uncomfortable with this blatant exposure of his increasing frailty and decreasing independence. He makes jokes and when those don't work, tears leak from his eyes. My heart breaks as I tell him we aren't trying to bully him - we just want him to be safe.
Because his blood and urine tests are inconclusive, his primary schedules him for a brain MRI to ensure that he isn't experiencing TIAs (mini strokes).
I pick him up this morning for that test. Before we leave, I gather up magazines that have come in the mail for Mom, and sort all the new mail. Driving to the imaging center, I field multiple iterations of the question "Where are we going and why?". The answer is always the same, but the fact that he asks repeatedly tells me it's preying on his mind. "They want to see if my head is on straight?" "No, just want to see if there's a reason you fell so much last week. We have to be careful of little strokes since you had a bigger one before. It won't take long, you've had MRIs before. We'll go out to get a bite to eat for lunch after and go to the credit union together. Do you need some cash in your wallet?"
This distracts him a bit while he counts his money. I don't want him to feel powerless and dependent. We agree that he could use a bit more money in case his sister comes to take him out to lunch.
The technicians at the imaging center are kind to him, and to me. They notice my hovering, invite me back to the interview and changing area, let me guide him through the process and help him answer their questions. Every step, from car to door to changing room is slow, deliberate and more than slightly unsteady. He's hunched and frail and it's all I can do to keep smiling at him and keep the conversation light. In my head, he is still straight and strong and I remember how he never stopped moving until he dropped from exhaustion. He was scything brush and plowing gardens; he taught me to follow the plow picking up earthworms for spring fishing. He was walking the woods for hours, stalking deer, dragging the kill to the truck to feed us when times were lean; my brother remembers "how he walked my legs off, up and down hills, and I was little and my legs would ache at night after a day of hunting and he just never stopped and I never didn't want to go."
When the test is done, the technicians treat him like a favored pet, telling him he did well and laughing at his little jokes. When he's ready, I ask him where he'd like to go for lunch, and he can't decide. I take him to the one I know is his favorite, and we walk in, my arm around his waist, his arm around my shoulders. I'm not obviously supporting him, just ensuring his stability. He says, "People will think we're in Loooovvee." and then we both giggle. As we eat our lunch, we watch the people and talk about things that aren't serious. Any talk of Mom leads to tears, so we avoid that.
We take the long way home after lunch - I know he misses the car rides and he confirms this by asking me if there are any other stops I need to make, any stores I need to go to. I hesitate a moment - but the thought of his painful and unsteady steps give me pause, and I tell him no. I feel guilty for weighing his pleasure against his safety.
As I leave his house, I kiss him on the cheek, and I thank him for spending the day with me. I know there will come a time when I will wish for just one more.
Time moves forward, but inertia holds things in place. We stand at the brink of changes in our lives, knowing we need to step off the cliff and yet...we can't.
Inertia.
Mom continues in the rehab facility, but has been discharged from the therapy program for "failure to make functional progress".
Change.
We face the challenge of finding a place to move her to that can meet her needs, and is in some reasonable proximity to my brother and I.
Inertia.
Dad continues at home under the watchful (and very patient) care of Henry, his live-in care giver.
Change.
Dad is becoming hostile and antagonistic towards Henry. We wonder if we need to change over to a female care giver to eliminate the antagonism.
Interactions with either of them have become even more draining. He still asks if she'll be back home in a few days. She still talks as though she can come straight home, ignoring her inability to do something so simple as transfer from a bed to a wheelchair.
We have become the parents, but more than that. We've become the doomsayers of their lives. We must try to make them understand truths that are more than uncomfortable. Rather, they are truths that are heartbreaking, all the more so for having to say them often and in different words, on different days, with differing amounts of understanding on their part each time.
Why do we stand so still on the edge of this cliff? Is it, perhaps, that we are as yet unwilling to take that step that finalizes the loss of their independence, knowing what it means to them?
In the meantime,
the cork that is Dad rode his own tide. He stayed with me, one on one,
over Easter weekend. I cooked for him, fussed over him, fit him into the
fabric of my life while Himself and The Boy visited the in-laws. He
spent a couple nights with my brother before coming back to my house. My
brother and I had to face telling him how dire his wife's condition
was, and hope he understood us. He went to my brother's for a week once
Mom stabilized, while my family - guilt-wracked - left for a vacation
long in the planning.
When
we returned, we agreed - he would stay with me and we would have a
day-time caregiver to stay with him while we worked. He would no longer
be bounced from house to house, living from a duffel bag. Our first day
back from vacation was a flurry of laundry, setting up the guest room,
settling him into it, and folding him into our daily lives. I made him
breakfast each morning before work while we waited for his caregiver. We
had coffee together and every day he asked: "When's Ma coming home? Are
we going to see her today? Do you have to work today?" to which I
answered, every day: "I don't know, yes we are and yes I do." Because I am only 15 minutes from the rehab, we took him in to see her most every evening.
It was perfect. It lasted a week.
One
night, visiting Mom with my brother, his wife and my Dad I watched as
if in slow motion as Dad slid down the wall of her room to collapse on
the floor, unconscious. He folded like someone removed his bones -
ankles, knees, waist - saved from slumping on the floor headfirst by my
brother, standing closest. Paramedics were called, we tried the usual
stroke tests, and he was bundled off to the ER (two blocks away) while
Mom looked on helplessly from her bed, and my brother & I wondered
if it was another stroke.
It was dehydration - he hates being nagged to drink more water, and yet that simple thing led to so much more...complexity...in our world. He was admitted for observation and an MRI. In the meantime, they found he'd broken his ankle when he fell.
My house has guest quarters and bathing facilities on the second floor only. Ditto my brother's. We made due for a weekend with a twin bed in the dining room before getting services aligned that would allow us to take Dad back to his own home, one level, with a live-in caregiver.
It's been a mixed bag. Dad hasn't the coordination or upper body strength for a walker or crutches, so he's confined to a wheelchair for mobility. He can't remember how he broke his ankle, and that frustrates him sometimes. Having him back at his own house makes it harder to get him to see Mom - I can't manage his mass if he falls, and so we wait for when Himself or my brother to be available. It's 40 minutes from our house to his, time to get him out of the house, load him up, then 30 minutes back up to see Mom, an hour visit, 30 minutes back to his house, 40 minutes back home for us.
The first week, he managed to call my house a couple afternoons before I got home from work. He'd ask The Boy, "Is anyone going to see Grandma today? Are they going to take me, too?" It was heart breaking. He asks less, now. We think that her being out of the house is his new normal, that he's adapting to it. We always thought he'd just fade away without her, but maybe we were wrong. Maybe he's more resilient than we gave him credit for...or maybe it's just the way his memory works now.
Tomorrow is Mom's birthday. She'll be 82. If you'd asked me last August when I was writing Time I wouldn't have thought we'd see this day. Her struggles with renal disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes - all these factors laid the odds against her survival. And yet she has.
I won't pretend it's been easy. There has been surgery for a peritoneal catheter, endless training on manual dialysis exchanges, and then overnight cycler training. Helping her overcome her fear of the unknown, her fear of the machine, being intimidated by all the information coming at her. My brother and I took turns going to both sorts of training with her, together we helped create first an environment for manual exchanges and then one for the overnight cycler. We went with her to doctor's appointments where we took notes, asked questions, became her advocates. We educated ourselves on her disease, the treatments, the diet, the risks...
In the meantime, our lives have gone on. For my brother and I it was work, family, house projects, responsibilities. For my parents, the deliberate routine of their days: appointments, visits, shopping and the denouement of the week - seeing the kids and grandkids. In spite of their frailty and disabilities, they continued to manage to live - independently dependent. My brother described it as a 3-legged stool...one leg breaks, the stool is no good.
Dad's relative freedom of movement offsets Mom's limited mobility; Mom's awareness and sharpness compensate for Dad's cognitive limitations. Together, they are whole. Take one out of the equation, and it all falls apart.
A leg came off the stool last month.
Mom suffered a recurrence of the issue that had her in the ER last August. She was admitted to the hospital for a weekend, then released. Once released, she developed a wet cough that rapidly degenerated into a full blown respiratory infection. She was hospitalized again, this time for two weeks...and we nearly lost her. It was recommended that she spend a few weeks in a rehabilitative setting before coming home, 2 weeks off her feet took its toll on her already limited mobility.
She's been in rehab for five weeks, and she still can't stand. "We aren't seeing any functional progress", they tell us. "Without functional progress, we will need to discharge her." We continue to advocate. "What's the next step in her pain management protocol?" we ask. They ask us what we'd like them to do. We are gobsmacked at how passive the process is. Nothing is done without us pushing them, without aggressive advocacy and relentless phone calling. The waves of her care and her needs and her demands wash over us, but she is like a cork atop the foam, riding where it takes her. We encourage her to be her own advocate, too. Tell them to do your dialysis earlier. Tell them you want analgesics before therapy, not after. Try harder. Push yourself more.
But tomorrow, there will be none of that. We will go see her with cake and cards and flowers, and we will celebrate that she made this milestone. I will be tasked with finding her Efferdent and filling her water cups and taking her dirty pajamas home to launder them.
And I will be glad to do it.
It was a busy weekend - hauling mulch, hauling the kid to parties, weeding, trying to get caught up on the never-ending laundry. One thing I never did get to was a trip to Sam's Club. Out of dryer sheets, among other things, I resolved to take advantage of a work from home day and go there right after work.
Moving through the kitchen to put away my Sam's Club booty, I saw the two deer were back. Once again, just on the other side of the brushline at the back of the yard. Lucky for them that my haul included 3 bags of little Empire apples, so I grabbed one up and went out to the deck. The little buck was eating from the ceramic dish of sweet feed, so when I tossed the first apples, he saw where they went. Within moments of the apples hitting the ground, both deer started moving closer, finding the path out to the lawn, no hesitation in their steps.
With a half dozen apples on the ground, the doe moved in to eat. The buck took longer, browsing in the scrub, until he realized she had found something good. He moved in for his own, skittering like a kid goat as the rabbit pair raced behind, startling him. As the doe finished those apples farthest from me and moved closer, every bite was consumed with a pointed stare in my direction - the question was, did she want more or was she suspicious of me? I rolled a couple more apples out, and it seemed at that point both deer registered the sounds of digging from out front. Himself and The Boy trenching to run a drainage pipe had gone unnoticed until then, but once noticed, became cause for concern.
Tonight, I got a good look at the doe. Where the buck is still winter-thin, her belly bulges. Is she carrying a single fawn? Twins? We'll know soon, I think. Even so, her belly notwithstanding, both of them have thin, delicate faces and large eyes. Staring straight at them puts me in mind of a colleagues Italian greyhound. So fragile and thin.
Once the noises from out front - and the rabbit races going on under foot - became too distracting, both deer moved back into the woods. Rather than leave a scatter of apples to the skunks and woodchucks, I gathered them up and walked them out to the ceramic feed dish. Again, the whole time eyes were on me.
I came back in to finish putting away the groceries and within minutes, they were back at the feed dish...and the rabbits are still racing in the yard.
The winter was hard on them. They went missing for a full month, while I watched and worried. Finally, the snow receded enough to draw them out from wherever they took shelter, and they brought friends. Not just the customary doe and her buck fawn from last year, but three others as well. It was hard to tell who traveled with whom as they milled about on the lawn, one group wary of the other. I started putting feed out again, and they came regularly until food sources started to improve - or maybe our doe ran the others off.
What with one thing and another, this Spring has not been so leisurely, nor has it afforded the normal spans of time for reflection I normally gain from garden and yardwork. But now and again, I am reminded and rewarded.
A week ago, filling a thistle feeder and a suet cage (the latter in hopes that the woodpeckers will find it more appealing than our cedar siding) and I heard a rustle down the bank, in the gully on the east side of the house. I stopped moving and looked, really looked. Four big eyes and bigger ears looking back at me. I sat down, filled the feeders and hung them all while listening for the crashing that meant they had taken off in panic. Nothing. I stood up slowly, and realized I was still being observed. As I moved off from the feeders toward the house, they paced me - still in the brush but traveling along the property line towards the north, the back.
I can take a hint. I came back out with a small bucket of sweet feed and poured a pile on the lawn as they watched, not too close to the deck but without getting to close to them in the sanctuary of the brush line where they feel safe. I moved back up to the deck and sat down. They watched, decided I wasn't a threat at that distance, and came out. They never came close enough to feed while I was out there, and when they decided I wasn't going to quit the field, they did...but only a little, only going a half dozen feet into the brush, then watching. I took a ceramic planter bowl I'd used to hold a salt lick through the winter and took it to the brush line, staying west of where they were and moving slowly. I put the dish down on the edge and filled it with sweet feed. They never took their eyes off me.
The doe didn't present me with the right angles but I think she's carrying. I hope she brings this year's fawn back around once she drops.
The snow is deep on the ground out back. When I left for work Thursday morning, it was unspoiled - a pristine white blanket. When I looked out Friday morning, the scene was quite different. Tracks into and out of the woods, tracks from one side of the yard to the other, and in the middle, right where I customarily seed the lawn with apples, it looked as though a conference of wildlife had been held. The snow there was not just walked through, it was churned up, excavated, rearranged. It had to be the deer looking for the apples I'd put out before Monday's storm.
I watched for them again today as I went about my business, checking periodically from the upstairs window in my room as I put away clothes, or the window over the sink as I washed dishes, or from my office as I frittered away some time in front of the computer. I eventually decided they wouldn't come out today. Perhaps it was too cold to venture out of wherever they were bedded down - in the teens with a stiff wind.
But just at dusk, I looked up once more and saw them moving toward the yard from the tree line. I hadn't put apples out yet, so I hurried out to suit up - boots, scarf, coat, gloves, hat - and headed to the sun porch for the apples. My coat, scarf and hat are all red - there is no hiding in that, nor do I try. I'd like them to not be fearful of me when I go out. I don't try to approach, but I hope they don't run.
They didn't hear the interior door open, but they heard the click of the storm door's latch. Heads came up - wary and watchful but not running. I stepped out slowly, bag of apples in one hand, huge Cortland in the other. "Shhhh, mama. Look here." She stomped...but stayed. I moved slowly, deliberately to the edge of the deck. Underhand toss of the apple in her general direction. Ears up, she watched where it landed. One, then another, and another. The little buck trotted to where one landed, the snow deep but with no crust at all so the apples hit in a puff, and sink straight down. Six, maybe eight tossed out, some big Cortlands, some small, before my attempt at an overhand throw sent her spinning and dashing for the woods. In past the treeline, about half way back they went - and stopped. Turned, watching, waiting. I sent out a couple more, and took myself inside, stomping off snow.
By the time my boots were on the tray, my coat and scarf on the hook, they were back. He was eyes-deep in the snow, pushing it away from the treat, she stood staring at the house. Could she see me in the window over the deck? Or did she just assume I was there? As dark gradually fell, I saw them find three or four of the apples before making their way back into the woods.
I'll look for them again tomorrow.
It's not the first snow of the winter. We've had a couple short-lived dustings before now, however today it was enough to cover the grass and reflect the moonlight once it got dark outside. But it all started earlier in the day...
Just about 2pm, as I geared up to fill bird feeders and seed buckets from the new bag of seed I picked up yesterday, I saw a flake, then another. It started as a lazy, half-hearted flurry, the kind you have to look closely to be sure is really snow and not just stuff in the air. In less than ten minutes, it became a pretty, but steady snowfall, the ground rapidly whitening around me as I topped off feeders for the noisy customers waiting impatiently in the brush.
Once the seed was stowed, I took the bag of apples with me to the octagon of the deck - my favorite place for salting the lawn with deer apples, the woodland version of an Eostre egg hunt. I lobbed a half dozen Empire across the back lawn, from the cedar deadfall to the side hill, then another half dozen for good measure. I hear they are hungry, not many acorns in the woods for them to eat.
Back inside, with shepherd's pie made and waiting for dinner and a hot cup of cider, I watched the birds converge on the feeders, the woodpecker on the suet. It was only about an hour before the four legged diners arrived, not quite enough snow on the ground to completely hide the apples and they found four or five before wandering up into the brush of the side hill.
They wandered back down again later, didn't seem to find any new apple locations, and eventually made their way out the back towards the power lines behind us.
Dinner time for the humans came and went, with dishes washed 'camping style' (heating hot water in the tea kettle) while Himself finished installing the new hot water heater. Returning to my office, the yard out the window glowed with snow in the dark and there - off at the edge - were long legs. Off went the lights and I sat in the dark and watched the two of them, nosing again in the now-deeper snow and finding still more treasure.
The most entertaining thing of all...the young one, plowing snow with its nose, head tilted sideways, would start to gambol about. The movements so reminiscent of a young goat, with the long legs going in so many directions and invariably ending with an attempted head butt of the mother, an invitation to play that was ignored until it was rebuffed, by a hoof on the head. Off the young one went, back to snow plowing, then kicking and leaping, then another try at getting mom to play. I watched them for fifteen minutes easily, sitting there in the dark of my office, the young one dancing in the snow and the mom going about her serious business of browsing before some noise startled the youngster off into the brush, with mom following sedately along behind, in her own time.
