We Have Glasses!!
We finally have glasses! I just hope she can hang on to them. In all fairness, it isn’t her fault she doesn’t have her old glasses. Someone on her floor snagged them, I’m told. And I believe it. With a combination of basic memory issues along with regression, who the heck knows if someone thought they were their glasses or just enjoyed the thrill of snagging someone else’s glasses. For all I know, someone has a glasses collection. Everyone “shares” with everyone else on this floor. It really is like a dorm. They do each other’s hair and nails, wear each other’s clothes, sort through each other’s family albums.
One of the things my mom, who is really a very private person, had to get used to when she first moved to this retirement home was the “community atmosphere”. Going in and out of each other’s rooms, walking in without knocking, disregarding time of day, and so forth. She was the new kid on the block and didn’t really know what to expect. One thing I don’t know for sure about my mother, but can only assume, is that she’s never lived in a dorm. The closest she probably came to this kind of living was during her time in the mental hospital. And what a great experience that was.
When she first moved there, she was already experiencing a bit of confusion, so we weren’t able to determine which stories were real and which were a little further from reality. She talked about some man that would come in her room and lay on her floor. Considering there were mostly 85 year old men on her floor, I found that very hard to believe. And then one day I found out it was the son of one of the resident’s. He was close to my mother’s age and possibly a little off, based on my understanding. He may have been interested in my mother, he may have been confused, or he may have been a lecher. It’s hard to say. My point, though, is that I learned early on that I couldn’t discount anything she said.
She talked about the people listening from the walls and laughing at her, the dirt in her eyes when she woke up, the people working in the walls while she was sleeping. Coming off of the hallucination situation, I somewhat assumed she was inventing or imagining some of this. But it turns out the walls were thin so she could hear the tv or radio or conversations of people next door. If they laughed, she assumed they were laughing at her. That was the paranoia, unless of course, they really were talking and laughing about her. There was some construction going on in the building that could be heard in the walls and, consequently, created dust in the vents at times, thus the dirt in her eyes.
There was something that happened every night that she said was a rumbling in the walls. It turned out it was the heating element on her small refrigerator kicking on.
When she started complaining about the elevators I really second guessed her. We visited weekly and never had any problems with the elevators other than the fact that they were really slow. Of course, there are old folks and people with walkers and wheelchairs getting on a off, so they’re bound to be tied up. Mom would say that people were working on the elevator, there was only one elevator, and so on. My assumption was that she was just frustrated with having to use the elevator all the time, so she was just complaining for the sake of complaining.
Well, it turns out the elevators were actually being worked on regularly and one was out of order quite regularly. The timing was such that they were fixed by the weekend when we would visit.
I’m not fool, and neither are they. Getting things fixed for the weekend when family would visit is just good business. However, it did make me think my mother was slipping faster than she really was.
Now she doesn’t have to worry about the elevator. And thank goodness for that. Towards the end of her stay on the upper floor, she was just riding the elevator all day because she didn’t know where to get off. And if you saw her on the elevator, you assumed she knew what she was doing. Someone got wind of the fact that she wasn’t actually getting off the elevator, or she was getting herself down to the basement.
When she was still living in the independent living section, I would call ahead and tell her we were coming to get her. We’d arrange to meet her out front of the building. When we were done with our visit, just as if we were dropping her off at her old house or condo, we would drop her off out front again.
At first, that worked out just fine. She was meeting us out front and was then able to get back to her apartment at the end of the evening. When she starting getting confused about where to meet us and then became very anxious when being dropped off, we knew something was going on, but we weren’t sure what it was. One of the nurses stopped me one day and suggested we actually meet her at her room and walk her to her room at the end of the visit. It broke my heart that I hadn’t realized it was causing her great anxiety meeting us and getting herself home.
We changed our plans from that minute on. When I called to schedule a visit with her, I’d tell her we’d pick her up at her room. When we were done visiting, we’d park and walk her all the way back to her door. For several months after our change in game plan, she was still asking in a very concerned tone if we were going to meet her at the room. I would comfort her and tell her she didn’t need to leave her room. On the way back to her place, she would ask about the drop off in that same concerned tone. We would again tell her very gently that she didn’t need to worry. We would walk with her back to her room.
Although it was a big sign that things were declining, I think was a wake up call for me. I realized that I was being a chicken-shit by doing the pick up and drop off outside. I was afraid of going in the building. I was afraid of what the place meant. By picking her up outside it was me playing pretend that everything was fairly normal.
It’s funny how our basis for normal changes. I think I’ve said this before. In my mind, picking up my 64 year old mother up outside of her retirement home was “normal” as opposed to going inside my mother’s retirement home to meet her at her apartment door. You’re kidding yourself, chick! Reality check! Your 64 year old mother shouldn’t have been in a retirement home to begin with! This isn’t “normal”! This is f’d up.
The first time we parked, signed in, walked up, and knocked on her door to pick her up was very difficult for me. Even more so when we parked, signed in, walked up and dropped her off. When we got to her room she was relieved, visibly. For quite some time, apparently, she had been wracked with angst and concern about our visits. She wanted to get out of the place and visit with us, but the whole process was literally eating her up from the inside.
As we went to leave that first time, she hugged us both very tightly. She didn’t want us to go, but I knew she was tired. She had tears in her eyes. She thanked us for walking her to her room. We assured her it was our pleasure and not to be concerned about it again. Of course she was for some time.
Actually, in thinking about it, it was just a few months after the change in game plan that she was moved to the locked floor. I remember only because when we first picked her up after the move to the new floor, she again asked if she needed to meet us outside. We told her she didn’t need to, and , as a matter of fact, she never had to be concerned about elevators again! That was supposed to be a selling point for the move to this floor. The elevators were past the locked doors. She could see them, barely, but she couldn’t get to them.
It has been quite some time since we’ve had the conversation about pick up and drop off. It has also been some time since she’s actually used a cell phone. In thinking about it, I really don’t even know where it is anymore. At one point it simply became a link to the outside. A security blanket. Now she wouldn’t even know what it was, I don’t think. When we have a scheduled visit, something like a doctor’s appointment or something like that, I call ahead to let the nurses know. Otherwise, our visits are impromptu. I realize I haven’t seen my mom for several days, so I go visit.
Now that she’s got her glasses back, I think we’ll probably do something fun this weekend. I haven’t figured out just what, yet, but we both need to get out and about. See the world, see some people. Take in the sights. Maybe if the weather is nice, we’ll just take a nice long walk at a park. See some orange leaves. Watch some ducks.
We’ll do something fun that will give her something to talk about to the other folks on her floor. She might mix up the words and turn it into something else, but at least she will have gotten out. And although we can’t avoid the elevators entirely, we will brave them together.
As Timothy Hurley said in Hansel and Gretel a boomer fairy tale, “Never run for an elevator. It looks needy.”
My Mother, Her Dementia and Where I Fit 