One of the big problems of dealing with dementia is the arthritis.
Combine those problems for ALL the fucking fun. Any lapse of grip compounds every lapse of concentration.
I step in, vault in, race in...to save the day. No distractions on the stairs. The cared-for stopped cooking things a long time ago, so that's not a problem area.
But nails...
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
My mother's nails grow three feet in the same time that it takes my nails to grow...no distance at all. And nails are a problem. The trimming of them, I mean.
We had a whole procedure that I developed. The special technique of not cutting any skin at all, ever, when trimming nails.
Scissors are right out. Truth to tell, I removed scissors to stop an industrious woman from going around and cutting all the laundry labels off clothes. They irritated her.
Clothes. Translation. Anything with a label on - including towels.
Yes, scissors are right out. Nail files - I don't have the time to sit and file nails down when those nails grow at a rate that's faster than the filing rate is.
Pliers? Tongs? No.
This leaves clippers. And clipping the nails of a distracted person is like shoeing a horse that thinks it is off to the races right now. Come back. Don't go.
Give me your hand.
Hand is given.
Time to clip...
Hand is withdrawn.
Try again.
Hand is given and instantly withdrawn on realising a mistake will lead to pain. If I am allowed to make a mistake, that is. We'll reach that part of the game eventually.
DON'T CUT ME.
This means...don't cut me at any point in the history of the universe. If I cut her once, the ritual of clipping nails is OVER. That negative memory will, perversely, stay with her. No good to me.
And so I trim her nails using clippers she isn't great at using herself. I wield those clippers expertly, and never cut her.
But this task grows harder. More fidgety.
In desperation, I turn to a mad scientist who has eyes that flicker from left to right and back again with all the processing power of a megacomputer.
I'd watched him on a TV show. He was a contestant who had a mad idea every three seconds. It also became clear that he had an excellent chance of winning the show.
What was he known for? Creating a curved pair of clippers. Clippers that trim nails without pinging those fragments all over the countryside.
Anything that makes trimming nails easier...must be useful. I took a risk on these scissor-like clippers. Not a huge risk. The only huge thing? The clippers themselves.
I'm staring across at two pairs of clippers. The small set is a quarter bigger than the old clippers I used. And the large set is the size of a fucking aircraft carrier.
Undaunted, I handed the cared-for her new JUMBO clippers. And she took to them very easily. I helped out here and there with the trickier corners. But she used these giant shears without difficulty. That surprised me.
The sheer bulk of the clippers should've worked against her favour. But she found them easier to hold. Less fiddly. And the cutting action worked well.
It takes a bit of getting used to the new gear, but only a bit. Bringing a new piece of equipment into the house and having it accepted is a MAJOR TRIUMPH.
The mad scientist is Tom Pellereau, and his scissor-action curved clippers are a big hit here. Not a ping. A hit. These clippers countered the wobbly effects of dementia and arthritis on clipped nails...
Anything that frees someone with dementia from unnecessary toil is almost a good thing...it could lead to a degree of dependency that is counterproductive.
In this case, the easy action of the clipper added a degree of independence for a change.
That mad scientist is pretty much the face of the company - those are his mad eyes you stare at, on the cardboard box the clippers arrived in.
And he won The Apprentice with his mad ideas.
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