Grandpa is definitely becoming more accustomed to me tending to his needs. It has taken months, both for him to get comfortable with me and for the reality to sink into his brain. He still always wants to know where Grandma is, and what she is doing, but now for many (and perhaps for most) things where he needs help he looks for me to assist him. A few nights ago, after I put him to bed, he peed in our bedroom garbage can. When he came to the bedroom door with one of my shirts twisted around him he didn’t call for Grandma–he said “Yoo-hoo!” and motioned for me to come. Before if he had any kind of trouble it was always Grandma he called for, and I simply had to answer the call instead.
Anyhow, that isn’t related to the point of today’s writing except as it is tangently related to bathroom issues. More directly related, Grandpa had further problems last night.
I can’t say I know all that goes on with Grandpa during the night because I only wake up when I wake up. In a normal healthy life I am a light sleeper and usually wake up for any going-ons. When driven to utter exhuastion, and faced with activity constantly every night, I think my mind has begun to ignore or partly shut out some things. Which is not to say I sleep through the night–far from it, I still wake up multipule times every night for Grandpa’s activity. But now there are times when I wake up and Grandpa is already absent from the room, and how am I to know if there are other times when he comes and goes entirely without my notice? This troubles me, but there is little I can humanely do about it. I still wake up instantly to any loud crashes, and I hope that will be good enough.
In the regular activity of Grandpa’s trips to the bathroom during the night I must constantly make sleep-befogged decisions about whether he is going to make it all right by himself, and whether I should go investigate. The dutiful part of me says I should get up and follow him out of the bedroom every time Grandpa takes a midnight venture. This sense of duty runs headlong into the harsh reality of being utterly tired in the middle of the night and getting up five times if you don’t absoloutely have to, is something you try to avoid. I put a sauve on my conscience (and perhaps decieve myself that it is sufficent) by trying to listen very carefully as I lay in bed to see if he makes it to the bathroom. If I hear the proper number of scuff scuff to indicate Grandpa has walked the proper distance down the hall, and then the slap slap of his bare feet on the linolem of the bathroom floor, then the flick of the light switch and then the click of the door I figure he made it all right, and isn’t going to take a leak in the hall coat closet. If I were a very good boy I would get up and stand by the bathroom door until he was ready to get out. If I was simply a good boy I would lie awake in bed until I heard him get out of the bathroom and return to bed. As it is I usally roll over, hope he does everything all right, and then drift back to sleep. I’m not pleased with this, and suspect this type of reaction will eventually come back to haunt me, but in the middle of the night you sleeply think, “What is the worst that could happen?” And then you think that the worst thing you imagined won’t happen tonight, so just tonight you don’t need to get up.
With that said, if I get any inkling of something amiss, I do get up. I just don’t get up before something does seem amiss, and that is the sore point.
Last night I woke up to find Grandpa returning from the bathroom. Nothing odd there. Once he was too his bed I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. About ten minutes later as I was dozing off, Grandpa got up again. A good night is when Grandpa returns promptly from every trip to the bathroom and gets back into bed and falls asleep promptly. A bad night is when a bathroom trip turns into a complete derailed procedure, when it can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour to get Grandpa settled back down. A second time out of bed made me thing “Oh boy, this is not shaping up good,” but wasn’t enough for me to go after him. Maybe the first time he had got to the bathroom and then forgot to actually use the bathroom so he had to go back now. But my sense that all was not right with Grandpa’s world had been perked, and I didn’t promptly fall back to sleep.
I lay in a restless dozing state, noting with growing concern that this second trip out to the bathroom was growing rather long. Finally I dragged myself to full wakefulness and decided I had better brace myself and go check on the scene in the bathroom. I reached the bedroom door just and Grandpa was returning. He didn’t seem agitated, so I made sure he got back into bed, and then I went back to bed as well. But Grandpa was restless, tossing and turning, and finally setting up in bed. Ten minutes later he got up. I asked him what was wrong, and he muttered “I better go back to the bathroom and get it unstuck before someone else tries to use it.”
That is the unmistakable sign of needed intervention. Just because Grandpa says the toilet is plugged doesn’t mean that it is . . . but it does mean he thinks there is an issue (which must be addressed) and if he thinks he is going to tend the problem, you’d better get there first. So I scrambled out of bed and squeezed past him in the hall to get into the bathroom first.
I seeing the state of the bathroom I surmized that Grandpa’s previous long absence during the last trip was because he imagined there was something wrong with the toilet and had tried to fix it . . . somewhere along the line dumping the contents of the bathroom garbage can into the toilet. Sensing that his efforts had not resolved anything, Grandpa had decided to leave the problem for the time being and come back in the morning. Thus he had headed back to bed, and I had met him at the bedroom doorway. On lying down he had begun to think about the matter and had become uneasy with the idea of leaving the non-functioning toliet for someone else to attempt to use. So he got back up to take another stab at “fixing” the problem. Thankfully I was there this time.
There was enough toilet paper in the toilet to jamm everything up nice and good if he tried to flush it all down. However, he had dumped the garbage can contents on the edge of the bowl so I was able to take the toilet brush and scoop the lager portion of the toilet paper contents back into the garbage can and flush the rest away. I flushed the toilet twice to prove to Grandpa that everything was working properly, then we went back to bed.
Moving along in our story, today Grandpa wanted to take a shower. I got the water the right temprature for him and got him a towel, wash cloth, and fresh clothes. After he was done I helped him get dressed. This was all pretty usual stuff that I did inbetween kitchen work. Once he as dressed I returned to working on supper and Grandpa went about his business. A little later he came upon a pare of his socks in the hall and brought them to me, asking if they were clean or dirty and should he throw them in the hamper. I told him they were probably worn before, but he could wear them again if he wanted, or dispose of them if he rathered.
Grandpa made indications that he wasn’t going to wear them, and left the kitchen entrance. Anyone who cares for little children knows the “radar sense” that you develop . . . some ability to know when things aren’t going quite right, even if the problem is not in your direct range of sight. A few minutes later I stepped out of the kitchen into the hall, and sensed in that moment that Grandpa was in the bathroom, knew he couldn’t have walked down to the bedroom and then back to the bathroom in that time–and then heard the toilet flush.
A quick sprint to the bathroom brought me the sight of Grandpa standing over the toilet, watching his socks go swirly-swirly round in the yellow piss water, preparing for the downward plunge to a very nasty end in the guts of the toilet, or somewhere further along in the plumping track. The socks had not completely sunk and with a quick snatch I managed to grab them by some still dry parts and extract them from the foul water. Grandpa looked surprised at my intervention.
“Good guess, but that’s not where they go,” I said lightly.
“What,” Grandpa said. “Some things go here, and some things go there?”
“Yep,” I said. “The socks don’t go there.” I hung them over the side of the garbage can to drip some of the liquid away.
That incident came as no surprise to me. I had been expecting it for weeks. Grandpa’s confusion of objects is such that just about anyone could see that sooner or later (and sooner more likely) the toilet would become the receptical for all sorts of items . . . clothing, dishes–anything that can be “put” someplace is fair game for being put in the toilet. Of my worst fears, this is number 3.
My worst fear is that Grandpa will somehow manage to burn down or blow up the house taking himself and the rest of us with it.
My number 2 fear is that Grandpa will somehow manage to seriously injure himself mostly likely by falling down someplace.
The number 3 fear is, yes, flushing things down the toilet. Grandpa can do all sorts of gross and vile things with all sorts of household objects and bodily fluids and I can handle that. It might not be fun or particularly pleasent, but I can take care of it. But if he flushes his socks or a towel down the toilet and they get bound up somewhere in the waterworks that is going to require some professional to extract it at big bucks. Or if he flushes his dentures down the toilet they might be gone for good.
Grandpa really shouldn’t be alone in the bathroom anymore–that is the plain fact. But it is equally plain that Grandpa still has a sense of modesty, privacy, and dignity and he generally wishes to be left alone in the bathroom to do his business. Most of the time he can manage by himself. When he realize that he needs help he will ask. And when I keep sharp tabs on things and realize he needs intervention I do it. But none of this covers 100% of the time. There are those few occasions which slip through the crack. Grandpa has already once accidentally thrown his dentures out in the kitchen garbage (they were rescued). He occasionally gets confused and cleans his teeth in the bathroom sink. Yes . . . it won’t take but a moment of confusion for him to drop those dentures in the toilet and flush them bye-bye.
So, what do you do? Force a confrontation and tell Grandpa he is no longer mentally capable of being alone in the bathroom by himself? Faced with these type of decisions, I try to count the costs. I know that eventually I’m not going to catch him doing something, and there is going to be a big bathroom crisis that will require someone coming to extract something from the plumbing. That, or I don’t allow Grandpa to be in the bathroom alone.
In my reckoning, Grandma and Grandpa can afford to pay someone several hundred dollars to clean the plumbing. Grandpa can get a new pair of dentures this year under their insurance. Do I want him to flush something down the toilet? No. Do I want him to lose his dentures? No. But to prevent a possible eventual inconvience will I humiliate him now by denying him the natural right of being left alone in the bathroom? My decision is no, not yet. One of two things will probably happen. Either (A) he will reach the state of such confusion that he will no longer be able to let himself out of the bathroom and so the door will, by neccesity, stay open or else someone else with be in the bathroom with him, or (B) he will eventually precipitate some bathroom crises of large preportions and then Grandpa will have to face the fact that he can’t be alone in the bathroom lest he do it again.
But I am going to let events play out as they will, because to me Grandpa’s dignity is worth a few hundred dollars, if it can be preserved a few months longer. Such are the type of decisions one must make.
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