It was a long day.
And the phrase popped up repeatedly. This
is my son. I was up before dawn, and long before the alarm told me to rise.
The morning lay asleep, black, with super-bright lighting in the streets
telling me that I might be awake. I moved things around, preparing, preparing,
preparing.
Security lights tracked my movement. I
switched those off, unlocked the door, and fetched the long-handled broom. When
we head out somewhere, using transport at the end of the garden, I make sure to
sweep the path free of pebbles and stone chips and whatever falls off the wall
in stormy conditions.
The wall had a new texture applied to it.
Much like the old texture, bits of rendering are dislodged in high winds. And
we’ve had high winds recently. True to form, I stepped onto the path and
started sweeping. Why do this?
For many reasons, shoes are gone. I wear
heavy-duty gear when out and about. But the cared-for, being cared for, can
only manage soft-soled boots. And she’d feel every pebble in the world if I
didn’t sweep that path on her days out.
The wind dived after me. I stood in a sturdy
woolly winter jumper and ignored the wind. At the path’s end, I paused to open
the gate and I planted a brick there. There’s a lot to run through when
transferring to a vehicle, and I always remove the possibility of the gate’s
swinging in the gale.
I’d arranged an early carer visit. The
earliest they’ll arrive is 8.00 in the morning, though they’ve come in earlier
than that if it makes things easier once they leave for the next job. Patient
transport was arranged weeks ago. They could turn up as early as 8.00. Awkward.
The night before, I took a telephone call.
Patient transport would come in earlier. Okay. Not really okay, but okay.
They’d get us there in plenty of time. But now, coming earlier, they’d get us
there in PLENTY of time. Meaning we’d sit that much longer in the waiting room.
I was told that the clinic would be held
open for us, no matter how late we turned up. So being offered an early slot on
the transport side of things was not important. It is far better to minimise
the time waiting, with someone who is distracted. Luckily, there’s very little
random shouting when in public places. And hospitals are awfully awfully public
places.
As the carer left, the ambulance arrived.
Timing is everything. I didn’t wait for the carer to arrive. Instead, I rattled
through morning routine, applying pills, sorting everything, and taking my
mother upstairs ready to go through her shower. Having her sitting there
upstairs, listening to music, cut a few minutes off the whole process. And that
allowed us to make it through everything with seconds to spare as the carer
left.
All I had to arrange was a pair of soft
boots, and away we went. Before we made it out the door, I was introduced as
her son. You never know what you’ll get when you attend clinics. Mood can be
great on the way, and crash like a bomb through a greenhouse after you’ve been
in the building for ten seconds.
I was introduced as her son, again. Grim
day. Clinic visit. Checking on results. The whole thing wouldn’t take five
minutes. Yet I was up before 7.00 to get the both of us to that five-minute
slot. We had our appointment bang on time, and didn’t wait too long for the
journey home.
What was this like? Slow. I was her son. Was
I going along? Yes. I wasn’t listed as going along. They’d have room for the
wheelchair. I knew they meant another passenger. It’s an ambulance that’s not
an ambulance. In the end, we are five-strong.
Music plays. Radio. There’s a chat on radio,
offering up information. My mother starts repeating that information, kicking
off a conversation that makes no sense to the handler opposite me. I finish the
conversation for her by explaining further. The handler had zoned out entirely,
and didn’t even notice the radio in the background.
As a dementia carer, I am used to nonsensical
conversations. The week before, I waited outside the toilet for my mother to
finish what she was doing. She talked away to herself inaudibly. The mood
changed instantly, and she let out a yell that caught me by surprise.
“DARTH VADER!”
No further explanation. And no further talk
on the subject of a character from a galaxy very far away. In this case, as we
ambulanced along, the random conversation made perfect sense if you paid
attention to the chat on radio.
We passed housing scheme after housing
scheme, each bleaker than the last. Before we settled in at the far end of the
style known as Soviet Nuclear Reactor Housing, we reached a grim enough
concrete wasteland and picked up a passenger who put on the style for a
hospital visit.
I always thought it unlikely that we’d be
sharing the same ambulance bus outbound with the people who joined us inbound.
This was the case here, though. You juggle waiting time and length of
appointment for clinic attended, and so on.
The bus ambulance filled with banter. Most
of it made sense. In the past, we detoured to the rear of the building to drop
someone off at an out-of-the-way clinic. Not this time. In we went, straight to
the front door. By this time, we were all in wheelchairs. Yes, even the driver.
I jest.
The point is to grab an empty seat next to
the main walkway. And the nearby seat is almost always vacant. I snared that
for myself and parked my mother next to me. What do you do to pass the time?
You take in everything.
Fire exit sign. Forward, further into the
building around the corner, and not back or to the side the way we came in.
Toilets. Water cooler machine. Bucket. Clinic rooms, visible. Others, around
the corner out of sight. A man appears…
The faces on nurses are familiar from
previous visits. There’s that doctor. She resembles a movie-star. The man is a
stranger, and not a patient – or he’d have an off-green appointment letter in
his hands. He apologises on behalf of the woman with an appointment this
morning. She was admitted to hospital the night before as an emergency and
she’s still in…so won’t be attending the clinic.
He can speak on her behalf concerning
details, and hopes to chat to the consultant to clear a few things up. They’ll
see what they can do. I note this, file it away, as we might be in the queue
for that consultant. In which case, instead of a full consultation, there’ll be
a gap.
This man paces the floor. He can’t leave for
a coffee. There’s a chat about cards, and about which nurses use which machines
or who goes where for a coffee over the counter. It’s all about paying with
cash or with cards. He settles on the water, as he doesn’t need to leave this
trench he’s walked in the carpet.
If we all see the same consultant, then we
are now one up in the queue after someone else’s misfortune. Trench guy is
spared a minute for a conversation out of our hearing. He goes away happy.
People are here for results. I don’t see anyone leaving unhappy.
Instead, I see two women leaving looking
happy. They were here last time we were here, and they left happy and upbeat
then. Tests take time to arrange, and follow-up checks are part of the deal.
Annoying. Fiddly. I used to invest a great deal of energy in getting my mother
to town for a clinic or a dental visit.
Now the dentist comes to us. And patient
transport is available at the special price of free…but be up at the crack of
dawn.
She repeats the phrase to other customers.
This
is my son.
She develops the sniffles right in front of
me. Being organised, I break open a pack of handkerchiefs and I ferry used
tissues to the waste bucket. Can’t leave a used tissue in her hands. There’s no
telling where that would end up. I might stand suddenly, and find it hanging
out of the back of my trousers. None of that, now.
I deal with all this. And I’ve left out a
lot of information that would identify people. So I can’t drop any witty
anecdotes on you, based on banter along the way.
We had to go to a clinic for a follow-up
check on general wellness. As expected, most of the people in the waiting
wasteland went off before us, as they were in to see entirely different
consultants. I imagined our appointment would kick off fifteen minutes after
the intended moment.
But we were more or less seen on time. I
guess jumping up one in the queue helped with that. On the way in, I steered my
mother around back-to-front. The hospital wheelchairs are worse than supermarket
trollies for steering.
The doctor who resembled a movie-star caught
my acrobatics, and declared…
Now
there’s a man who knows how to steer a trolley.
Everyone knows those wheelchairs are
trolleys. In we went. And for five minutes we covered the general situation.
All was well. Except for that obvious thing – being told all was well took up
my time from the crack of dawn onward.
Even good news will exhaust you. We will do
follow-up checks again, at a decent time of the day, just in case there are any
changes. Out we went. We were blocked by an indecisive woman with a walking
stick, who couldn’t quite decide which of five ambulances she wasn’t getting
into. She realised she was heading the wrong way, and made a not-so-hasty exit
through the door for people who weren’t leaving by ambulance.
We picked up the woman who came in with us,
and off we went into the cold rainy day. Back we went to the housing estate,
where we dropped the woman off. She hugged the handlers/drivers. Once she was
gone, the handler chatted away to me.
And that chat was tough to take.
This
is my son.
And I’m told by the handler that I’m doing a
good job, and being a good son in looking after her. That stuff is always tough
to take. What’s the alternative? Abandon her? She gets the care I give her, and
it never feels like it is enough. But those in the business stop to tell me
that I am doing great.
In a few days, I’ll abandon her. But that is
to respite. A holiday for me. No routine. A whole team steps in and takes care
of that for me. We’ve gone through these breaks, and…even if they are only for
two nights at a time…they are nights without being a prisoner of routine.
They make all the difference. The relentless
pressure goes away, and you realise you were under relentless pressure without
knowing it. And things are fine. Even knowing routine is on the way back, you
have that time and you’ll have that time again. There are more breaks planned.
That’s help that’s there for me, in the background. Anyway, if you were
wondering…I’m writing about dementia and dementia care. I invest a lot of
energy in just going to a clinic for news that things are okay. That’s what I
do. I am her son.
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