Month: November 2008

Another trip down memory lane today . . .

While I grew up Grandma and Grandpa lived in the country. They lived on the Pennsylvania-New York border, and to reach their house you had to drive along a road titled—fittingly enough—“State Line Road.” Grandma and Grandpa’s old house was at the end of a dead end road, their land butted up against a large tract of village owned woods.

As a young child, I felt a certain air of mystery surrounded their property. Behind the house ran a tiny creek and on the other side was a stand of trees that seemed to me the beginning of a dark and forbidden forest, neatly stacked heaps of dead wood and bramble cleaned up by Grandpa marking the edge of some ominous unknown. In the other direction, across the road, were the two small barns. If you went past them the world opened up to a distant unknown horizon, a curiosity of forests and fields. Where the dead end road stopped beyond the house it became a forest trail that quickly disappeared under overhanging tree branches. To my child’s mind that trail led off to the place where people became lost, never to return. Slightly safer was the pond out behind the house. That was far enough away to hold a sense of adventure, and yet not too far so that after one had looked at the water and frogs one could make a quick return to more familiar surroundings.

Timid and fretful, I saw hidden—or not so hidden—danger on every side, and failed to take advantage of all the interesting places I could have adventured if my sense of exploration had outweighed my sense of paranoia. But if my fears of the unknown kept me from experiencing many of the country pleasures, there was still one I could enjoy: tractor rides.

Grandpa had at least two old tractors which he was constantly fighting to keep repaired and running. The smallest was probably a prehistoric incarnation of a lawn tractor, before anyone thought of inventing a mowing deck. What useful purpose it had served, or could still serve, I didn’t know. To my mind it existed to give tractor rides.

Grandpa wasn’t socially skilled, and entertaining grandchildren was no exception. His repertoire was limited to reading stories, and giving tractor rides. Tractor rides were a rare treat—partly because, I think it usually didn’t strike his fancy, and partly because a functioning tractor was often an uncertain and frustrating proposition. I remember hanging around the barn and inquiring if perhaps the tractor would be fixed soon, and would we be going on a tractor ride today. The answer was “Maybe” in the sort of why that spoke of patience strained by questioning little children, and uncooperative machinery.

But those tractor rides did come, and all the better when they came unexpectedly. Grandpa had constructed his own sled to drag behind the tractor. The sound of the tractor engine—or the announcement that Grandpa was giving rides—would send me running outside. Tractor and sled would pull up, and at the command of, “Hop on,” we would all clamber on. Then it was off across the yard, around and back, and around again. It was excitement—a taste of the country life, and grand adventure. Then, all too soon, it was over and the tractor returned to the barn until next time.

We have a picture of Grandpa giving a tractor ride. A gaggle of cousins are crowded on the sled, grinning like fools. Grandpa rides up on the small tractor, staring intently ahead hands held at the ready, perhaps carefully nursing the fitful machine along.

Grandpa made things. I am sure growing up during the Great Depression taught him to be frugal, but making things was part of who he was. I think I share some of that with him. I look at things and think, “I wonder what I could make from that.” I face a problem and ponder how I might come up with an ingenious solution fashioned out of what I have on hand—something that is cheap and effective. It is a challenge, a skill, and an art. For me, it is also almost like a game.

Many things Grandpa made in his life sprang from necessity. Early in his married life, he built a cinder block house for his young family. It was a tiny house, and it wasn’t beautiful, but he made it with what nickels and dimes he had. Over fifty years later, the he still had the wheelbarrow he used to mix the mortar for that cinder block house. I know, because I used it. The wheel is a simple metal rim, one of the handles has been replaced, and it has more rust than those many years ago. Grandpa never got a new one, because what he had still worked.

If Grandpa made, and fixed, many things out of necessity, or frugality, it was what he made for amusement that earned him more recognition. A story told to me—with no small amount of marvel—was how once in his youth, my uncle Kevin wanted a motorcycle. As a result, Grandpa scrounged up an old engine to a mini-bike and using that engine as a foundation he built a functional wooden motorcycle. It was the epitome of ingenuity.

Whenever an idle moment came upon Grandpa, he was always making something. It was as if his hands could not remain still. I remember visiting, and seeing Grandpa sitting at the kitchen table, snipping apart soda cans to make miniature airplanes. He made a collection of them, and they hung suspended from the ceiling as if caught in flight. Visiting our house for a birthday party Grandpa found some oddity outside and began whittling a whistle. It worked, too, if you knew how to use it.

Grandpa loved music, and had an ear for it. Without the money to afford lessons, anything he wanted to learn he taught himself. He taught himself how to play the piano, the guitar, and the mandolin. He could fix pianos too. He could tune a piano by ear, and even attempted a piano tuning business. I have some of his business cards. There was an entire box of them sitting in storage, apparently untouched. “Accurate” and “Reasonable” the cards say. Accurate and reasonable he was, but a business man he was not. Unwilling to promote himself—as the languishing box of untouched cards testifies—the business went nowhere.

Of all the many things Grandpa could do, and of all the many skills he had, and the things he made, what stands out the most to me in speaking about who he was and what he could do were the Indian and the canoe. Grandpa always had a fascination with frontier American life, in particular with Native Americans. He would read about them, about how they did things, and how they made things. He made a pair of moccasins out of a deer hide. He fletched arrows. Then he made the Indian.

To call it amazing was an understatement. As a first time attempt it was unbelievable. How, exactly, he constructed the life sized realistic figure, I don’t know. He used some type of plaster for the skin, but the effect was almost startlingly life-like. One day I walked into the garage, arriving for a visit, and there the Indian was, standing tall and proud, his face creased with stern lines, his steady eyes staring into the distance. You could stand there and look at him, noticing every care given to the details.

As a first attempt the Indian was certainly not flawless, but with raven black hair, loin cloth, bow, and pouch, he was undeniably a unique and meaningful work of art. To simply walk into the room was to know it was art, made by a real artist. If Grandpa had refined his skill he could have made statues worth significant money and made a name for himself as an artist in his old age. Instead, he made the one Indian, and never made another one again.

Then he made the canoe. If the Indian astounded my child’s mind as a work of art and something beyond the ability of any mere mortal, and certainly a Grandpa (so a child’s mind thinks), the canoe impressed me on a more technical level. You can actually make a canoe, all by yourself? You don’t need some special machinery to make it? And it won’t sink?

It didn’t sink. It seemed nothing was impossible for Grandpa. He painted the canoe bright red and took it out for excursions on the pond. He even let me paddle the canoe.

I don’t know how Grandpa made the canoe. I’m sure he read something about it somewhere. Whether it was just an idea that he built upon and pieced together himself, or careful directions that he discovered somewhere, it was a knowledge collected together in his own mind and destined to die with his mind.

After the canoe, Grandpa never did another major creative project. His days as an artist were waning, and for me the Indian and the canoe would always stand as symbols of what he was, and what he could have been.

Last Saturday while I was drying Grandpa off from his shower I discovered two pressure sores on his bottom. They were in mirrored positions on the bottom of his buttocks–clearly the result from sitting in one place too long. It was a depressing discovery.

The sores themselves were not that bad. They were each maybe a quarter to a half inch in size, and in appearance like blisters. The skin was not broken. But what they were was another sign that things are becoming worse. It was the next milestone, the first foreshadowing of the things I will have to face.

They weren’t bad pressure sores. I put a band-aide over each, and they went down and went away over the next day. But I dread the pressure sores that won’t go away, and that will only get worse. The sores on found last Saturday were only the mildest of pressure sores, but it was a mark of how bad things are becoming, and how close we are getting to the end.

It would have been unremarkable if the pressure sores had been on his ankles, or his hips, where bones are near the surface. Already he has had very minor sores where his diaper chafed over his hips, and when that happened I would put padding between him and the diaper and they would go away. Those problems had a fairly easy solution. The big difference this time was that not only were these sores far larger than I had ever seen before, but they were on the bottom of his butt–that is the anatomical part on all of us which has the most padding. But Grandpa is eating so poorly, and shriveling up so much, that even his butt doesn’t have enough padding anymore. That was the really depressing part.

There are some easy alleviating measures that can be taken if a pressure sore appears on a hip or ankle (lay on the other side, apply more padding to the area) but if you get pressure sores on both (buttocks while sitting on a very comfortable couch), there isn’t much you can do the make the situation better. What are you going to do, sit on your head? Or perhaps suggest that he get up and walk around some more–oh, that’s right, he isn’t walking around because he can’t. The best possible solution would be to have Grandpa lay down some of the time instead of sitting up, but the very reason he spends so much time sitting up is because it is not comfortable for him to lay down (he is having issues with breathing problems). In facing the pressure sores on the bottom I had to face the question, “What do I do?” and I couldn’t come up with any answer. I couldn’t think of anything I could do.

The band-aides weren’t really a solution. They were more a “if this blister bursts I don’t want it to get infected so I’ll cover it” measure. But the sores got better simply because Grandpa was more active in the following days and so gave them a chance to heal. I didn’t really do anything. We were just lucky. But as Grandpa grows increasingly less mobile that path to easy healing will be increasingly less available.

Then what? Ah, that is when your mind starts playing with the “What ifs.” Do you know how nasty pressures sores can get? Check out the description of Stage IV. And here are some pictures. (Warning: the pictures are not pleasant, but I actually did not link to the really hideous pictures of pressure sores you can find. Those are enough to make a grown man scream.)

It was particularly frustrating when I went online to see what advice and help I could scrounge up for dealing with pressure sores. How to deal with pressure sores? Eat better. Drink better. Have better posture. It was very clearly confirmed to me (not that I didn’t already know it) that Grandpa has all of the problems that make him a perfect candidate for pressure sores. And the wonderful solution suggested by the health websites is to make all those problems go away. That way he won’t have pressure sores. Which means all of the wonderful advice was completely useless, because if Grandpa could eat better, drink better, and have better posture he wouldn’t have gotten pressure sores in the first place. It seemed nobody had any advice about what to do, if your patient isn’t eating well, isn’t drinking well, doesn’t have good posture, and is getting sores on the bottom of his behind. They say you should adjust the patient every two hours . . . but if the patient is not willing to lay down, and only sits on his butt, I guess that means I should just pick Grandpa up and shake him for a few minutes every two hours to get the blood flowing.

Enough of that. Sarcasm doesn’t help. Truly, physically making him adjust his weight occasionally is really all I can do. It feels like scant little help. But my sense is that nobody has any better ideas. And I don’t either.

I got a very kind comment today, which reminded me of my shortcomings. Reader Pam said:

Rundy,

Are you managing to hang in there, dude? I keep you in my prayerful thoughts. It’s been so long since you’ve posted anything that many of of worry about your well-being, as well as Grandpa’s. Those of us who share your path, providing care for a beloved elder, are concerned.

Thanks for asking, Pam. I am very sorry I haven’t been more consistent in updating this website. Plenty has happened, and I will try to make an effort over the coming weeks to post a little more (like, at least once a week, maybe). I can say briefly that I am holding up very well, and I appreciate your prayers. The silence has been because of my preoccupation with other things. Grandpa is not holding up so well, but we have not had any crises with him either so I guess that is as good as can be hoped. More details on that later.

Tomorrow is my grocery day. My sister comes over to watch the house while I am gone, and I head out to purchase the week’s groceries. It’s kind of funny, but I think almost nobody knows who I am shopping for. People seem to assume I am buying the nutrient drink for myself.

“You really into the fitness drinks? You drink them instead of a meal?”

I try to keep the “Are you nuts?” look off my face. “No, they’re for my Grandfather. He has Alzheimer’s and won’t eat very much anymore.”

“Oh.” That always kills the conversation. It’s awkward then, and usually they try to say something about what I’m doing is so wonderful, but you can tell they wish they hadn’t opened their mouth.

I don’t know what they think about the bags of adult diapers I buy. It is probably better if I don’t try to imagine what they might be thinking. (No, I don’t have a “problem” okay? My plumbing works fine . . .) And then there is the laxative. The latex gloves. The enema packages (though no more of them since the laxative started working). It’s not embarrassing because it isn’t really my problem, and I don’t care if they think it is. But as those items, and the baby wipes, baby oil, baby wash, and baby food all go down the check out line, and I can’t help imagining what they think I am, and responding in my mind, “Lady, you have no idea.”