Today's title is from another Barenaked Ladies song, called Baby Seat. It's kind of inspiring, actually.
You can't live your life in the baby seat,
You've got to stand on your own; don't admit defeat.
It's from the album Maroon (2000). That was a good tour. That was the first BNL concert we saw, I do believe. That was many, many BNL concerts ago. For serious; we've seen them so many times, I've lost count. That's how good they are in concert.
Well -- that's how good they used to be in concert. That was a long time ago, and at a large venue -- I think it was at the Target Center in Minneapolis? The good news is that you can now see BNL in smaller, more intimate settings -- I believe the last time we saw them was at Mystic Lake Casino, from the third row.
The bad news is that they're not really BNL anymore. Not since Steven Page (former co-lead singer) left. The side-bar good news from that is you can also see Steven Page in smaller, more intimate settings -- we've seen him twice at the Dakota in Minneapolis, and I actually much prefer his solo stuff to the "new" BNL stuff that's out -- but I digress. This is not what I came here to write about.
I came here to write about that it is, indeed, tough growing up. To give a quick update from my last blog post, my Dad "finished" rehab at the nursing home and was cleared to be discharged back home.
What a joke that turned out to be.
So, he was discharged on a Saturday. I drove into town (it's so funny that I call St. Paul "town" now) to pick him up and bring him back to his house. My mom had said that she personally had seen him stand up on his own without assistance and without any problems, up out of his wheelchair, many times, right? And that was the hurdle to going home, was being able to transfer himself, and being able to walk a few feet at a time with the use of his walker. All of which he could apparently do in physical therapy.
The first red flag should have been that it took us like half an hour to get him transferred from the wheelchair into my car. Mostly it seemed like he just didn't want to, which seemed more like a dementia thing than a physical thing. But no, we were determined to get him out of there, so we pushed forward.
The second (and third and fifteenth) red flags should have been when we got him back to their house, and it took like literally an hour or so to get him from where the car was parked in the alley, to the back door of the house. He just had, like, no strength in his legs. He was getting frustrated, my Mom was getting frustrated, I was trying to keep it together and figure out how to get him inside and NOT get frustrated like everyone else was. He literally made it like 10 steps out of the vehicle and then we ended up getting his 4-wheeled walker, the kind that has a seat on it, and sitting him in there in order to wheel him up to the door. Oh, I just made that sound waaaaay simple! I forgot to mention that this involved going down a slight sidewalked incline, and that it was a hot day so we were all sweating, and I was trying to hold my Dad up and keep him from falling while also directing my Mom on things to grab because apparently, in her frustration, she completely lost the ability to formulate any sort of critical thought whatsoever. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.
I mean, I still had faith that once we got him in the house and in the air conditioning, maybe rehydrated and fed and rested up, that he'd be okay again.
I'm a daughter first and a nurse second.
So we got him to the steps to go inside. Three steps. That's it. Sounds easy enough. Except we were all exhausted and frustrated by that point. My mom and I are both giving my Dad directions on what to do and trying to help, I'm kind of lifting him from the back to keep him from falling backward and she's trying to guide him from the front, and our directions are often contradicting each other and my Dad is usually doing something else entirely. And, once you get up the three steps, immediately to the left is the steps down to the basement, which my Dad is now terrified of falling down -- as we are all terrified of him falling down as well. But, even though I've basically just lifted my Dad (who weighs about 250#) up the three steps and got him somehow into a kitchen chair at the top of those three steps (one of those kitchen chairs on wheels because my parents have had the same kitchen set since the early 80's), I don't feel like I could lift a feather, I know in my heart of hearts there is no way I'm going to let him fall down those stairs. (Spoiler alert: don't worry, I didn't!)
Reliving it now, just to write this, makes my muscles ache again.
So no, he didn't fall down the stairs. And in the interest of time, we did get him in the house the rest of the way. Got him fed, rehydrated, eventually got him changed (into some summer clothes, he was still in sweatpants) and after a while, tried to get him settled into his new power lift recliner.
I knew I had the inner strength in me somewhere, because even though I was dead tired I knew I would've kept him from falling down the steps if I'd've had to. So when it came time to help him transfer to the chair, and he just got tuckered out again after walking to the living room and we had to grab the walker again for him to sit on, and my grand idea to just have him pivot transfer to the recliner didn't work so well and I thought, no big deal, if I can just get him in the recliner, I can pull him into a comfortable position, everything will be alright. Right? I mean, this is what I used to do, working in the hospital. Um, with assistance, of course, which I basically didn't have (yes, my mom was there, but she wasn't much help by that point) but if I could get him in a close-to-good spot, I could then pull him (with the help of gravity -- that new chair almost goes into trendelenberg!) into a better spot, et voila. Mission accomplished!
Except, no. My inner strength failed me. I couldn't move him an inch. I tried so effing hard. We got him into the recliner but couldn't boost him up where he needed to be. My mom finally succumbed and called the paramedics for a lift assist. I hate calling the paramedics for a lift assist. Three strong guys showed up and it took two of them 5 seconds to do what I couldn't do. I'll quit beating myself up over that now.
Because the next morning, bright and early, my Mom called me and said she couldn't get my Dad out of the chair. Again. And that she didn't know what to do. That if she called the paramedics, he'd end up right back at the hospital and right back at rehab again and she didn't want that. She said she was going to call and have him taken to the VA instead. I eventually convinced her that if she was going to call the paramedics, she should still go to the local hospital and not the VA (I'll get into that another time). So that is what she did.
Short story long...they/we spent a few hours back in the ER, ruling out any acute causes for his weakness. Again. Nothing was wrong this time -- no new heart issues, no UTI, everything came back good. The consensus was that he was still too deconditioned to go home without help in place because my Mom can't help him transfer/ambulate.
So, I'm gonna speed this up a bit, or else I'll be telling the story for two weeks. Ha, ha. He was admitted as observation to the hospital, with the plan being he'd stay there until home health care could be in place to begin the day he was discharged back home. But there were issues with that, and he ended up in observation for like a week before he was admitted to another unit while plans changed and he was awaiting placement back at the nursing home again. This time in long-term instead of rehab. For how long, we're not exactly sure; but, that's the plan.
And that's where we are right now. Told you I was going to speed the story up. ;) About a week and a half ago, we moved my Dad back into the same nursing home he was at before, only this time he's in the locked "memory care" unit. I have all kinds of feelings about that, which I will share at a later time. He was in the hospital for about 3 weeks before going there, and that wasn't very good for him, either. Believe it or not, this is actually better. Maybe not for us, emotionally, but definitely for him.
I feel like I've aged about 30 years in the last few months. I don't know if 30 years is accurate; I don't know how old I feel, exactly. I just know I feel older. Like I've lost some of my youth. The thing about dementia, in case you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing it yourself, is that you lose your person in stages.
I remember the first time I realized I'd lost part of my Dad. I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, probably 5 years or so? I had been at their house after work, probably to go out for supper and visit and such. And it was one of the first times that my Dad kept repeating himself in conversation with me. I don't remember the exact question, it was probably something trivial like what my husband was up to or something, but when he asked me the same question less than five minutes later and I realized he was dead serious and didn't remember that we'd just had that conversation, I felt a cold chill go through my body. Like a slap upside the head or something. Like a confirmation, yelling at me, HEY IDIOT! You know how you've been trying to deny that your Dad has dementia? TAKE THAT!!
I cried on the drive home that night. Not for what had happened, necessarily, but for what was to come. And for the first realization that I was starting to lose my Dad. And ever since then, shards just keep falling away, slowly. Sometimes in clumps, like in the last few weeks. It's awful.
My very first job in nursing, as a brand-new nursing assistant back nearly 30 years ago, was on a locked dementia unit. I don't have time to ruminate right now, but I've always had a soft spot for people with dementia, and at the same time I've always prayed feverishly that none of my loved ones would ever be afflicted with this terrible illness. And here we are.
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