Notes from the Home - July 9, 2014

   Richie’s television went on Thursday afternoon and stayed on through Friday morning. Understanding fellow that I am, I did not say anything. Richie was leaving Friday morning for a three-week visit with his son. One night of TV-induced fitful sleep interspersed with periods of no sleep at all was bearable, knowing it would be followed by nearly a month of blissful silence. Unfortunately, blissful silence did not follow.

   Friday night the television droned on and on and was louder than the night before. William was the culprit. He often watches Buddy, Richie’s bulldog, when Richie is away. Ten minutes after midnight, I called the desk to lodge a complaint. Moments later, there was a knock on Richie’s door, and a voice said, “Please turn your TV down. We’ve had a complaint.” If there was a reply, I didn’t hear it, and if the volume was lowered, it wasn’t lowered much. OK, around two o’clock the decibel level did go down, although it remained high enough to be heard in my room. But I was able to sleep for a couple hours, and when I woke up at five-thirty the TV was still on.

   I saw William Saturday and asked him to turn the television off or way down by ten, or before he passed out, whichever came first.  William huffed and puffed in the manner of a spoiled eight-year-old. “I’m not staying in Richie’s room. I leave the TV on for the dog.” “Leave it on all day. I don’t care, but turn it off at night,” I told him. He huffed and puffed a little more and left. He returned quickly to tell me he’d turned off the TV and it would stay off. At least so far, William has been true to his word.

   Sleeping has been a challenge in recent months even without a noisy television next door. It used to be, I was in bed by eight-thirty and up and at ’em, sort of, at four or four-thirty. These days, I’m going to bed later and getting up earlier.

   Falling asleep is never a problem. Staying asleep for seven or eight hours is. I crawl into bed at ten, fall asleep, wake up feeling good, squint to see what time it is and discover midnight is still half an hour away. I lie there and try to drift off again, usually without success. There are many mornings when I get out of bed at two-thirty or three. I don’t accomplish much in the wee hours, and I’m too tired to do much in the unwee hours.

   I woke up at one-thirty this morning and gave up trying to get back to sleep just after four. I should have given up sooner. In the quiet of the night, I was alone with my thoughts, which were not pleasant company.

   There are nights when I lie awake and fill my head with thoughts of movies with plucky, indefatigable heroes. You know, the guy who has a disease or injury that severely limits what he can do. But he keeps on keeping on, smiling in the face of adversity, refusing to give in to his misfortune, finding fulfillment while inspiring others with his limitless determination. Just thinking of those movies often inspires me. However, there are times, and those times are becoming more frequent, when just thinking of feel-good flicks of that ilk inspires me to yell “horse shit!” Last night was one of those times.

   What was my problem last night? I got a new brace for my left foot last week. My left ankle is weak. When I stand or try to take a step or two, it gives way and I end up standing on my right foot and the outside edge of my left foot. The brace is to help keep my left foot flat on the ground. I was hoping it would make it possible to take more than three or four steps. While it hasn’t done that, at least yet, it has made some things better. When the shoe with the brace comes off, the ankle does a better job of keeping the foot in place for a few minutes, making it easier to get in and out of the shower.

   The problem is, the brace consists of two metal bars that are attached to the heel and extend to just below my knee, and several straps to keep the brace in place once I get the shoe on. Getting the shoe on, aye, there is the rub. My left leg is an uncooperative lout, and the foot is no better. It is no easy task guiding my toes and foot around the hardware and into the shoe without knocking it over or shoving the tongue in ahead of my pedal extremity. Saturday morning it took fifteen minutes to get the damn thing on. 

   What’s worse, the new challenges aren’t the only challenges. So many tasks I once did without thinking now require both thought and patience. I was never much good at thought. I do a lot of it, however, in the middle of the night. All too often I think about my waning abilities. What will life be like, I wonder, when I need someone to do all those things I used to do and never even thought about them as I did them. That day is coming. I don't know when, but even if that day is ten years away, it will be too soon for me. And at night I worry about it.

   On the bright side: for the last two weeks my bowels have been operating in a more regular fashion than they have in six or seven years. Maybe, better days are coming. Or maybe it’s all a bunch of crap.

   Memories were failing even as we ate this evening. In the ten minutes between giving her order to Amy and Amy setting her dinner in front of her, Marianne asked, “Did she take my order yet?” at least five times. When the table next to us was served, Leila looked at her plate and then at Burt’s. “You’ve got chicken, and I’ve got beef,” she said. “Did I order beef? I guess I must have.”

Al Goes to the Hospital

   Al called at six-thirty Tuesday morning. He said he was dizzy, his heart was beating very, very fast, he was having trouble catching his breath, and his hip “hurt like hell.” He said he had called the desk and a nurse’s aide was on her way to see him. I told him to try and relax.

   A half hour later, the phone rang again. “Tom, Al here, I need you to come up, right away.” It was not a request. It was an order, given in true lieutenant-colonel fashion, by a man who is used to having his orders obeyed. You can get the man out of the uniform, but you can’t get the uniform out of the man.

   Al was sitting upright in his recliner when I arrived. “My head feels like it’s full of something,” he said. “When I got up this morning, I was so dizzy I didn’t think I’d be able to make it to the bathroom. My heart is fibrillating all over the place,” which he illustrated by making fluttering motions with right hand and waving it all over the place. “Something’s going on; I can’t figure out what it is. That girl they sent up here didn’t know how to take my blood pressure. And my hip hurts like hell.”

   “Are they sending another aide up?”

   “They said they would.”

   “Well, just relax. She’ll be here soon.”

   Al lowered the recliner, laid back, closed his eyes and took a deep breath or two. Then he opened his eyes, looked around, and said, “I’ve got to get rid of all this shit.” I urged him to relax, and he did for thirty seconds or so. “That god damned pill girl. She couldn’t even take my blood pressure. I should have just called 911, myself.”

   “It will be OK, Al. Take it easy. Someone will be here in a minute.”

   A few seconds of relaxation, replete with deep breaths and shut eyes, and then the fulminating resumed. “I don’t know why I bother with doctors. They never tell me anything.”

   “Easy, Al. It’s going to be all right.”

   “Damn it, I don’t why I just didn’t call 911. That’s what I should have done.” And with that, Al got up, found his keys and handed them to me, along with a recently filled prescription for hydrocodone. “Here, I probably won’t be coming back. I’m ready to go, anyway.”

   A tap on the door announced Pat’s arrival. She took Al’s blood pressure – 154 over 97 – and his heart rate – 127. “These are kind of high. Do you think we ought to call 911?”

   “Oh, I don’t know. Are they all that bad?”

   “Al, all you’ve been saying for the last fifteen minutes is that you should have called 911 in the first place,” I said.

   “Yeah, maybe you should call them, Pat.”

The EMTs arrived twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Al filled with castigation, vilification and vituperation, interspersed with short periods of faux relaxation. When they got there, the EMTs parked the gurney in the hall and asked Al if wanted to be carried to it or if he would walk. Al opted to walk out. He got up slowly, took a minute to get properly balanced, and started toward the door. He stopped at the small table on which he has an array of candy – bite-sized Mounds, Reese’s Cups, Dove chocolates, and caramels. Al grabbed a caramel, asked the EMTs if they wanted some and told Pat and me to help ourselves.

   I stopped by the desk at noon to ask Shirley if there was any news about Al. She said there wasn’t. And there wasn’t any when I stopped and asked on my way to dinner. At ten-fifteen, I was in bed reading myself to sleep when Penelope called.

   “I’ve got Al,” she said. “And we’re going to need his keys. We’ll be outside your door in a couple minutes.”

   I told her to take her time. I no longer spring quickly from my bed, or anything else for that matter. By the time I got my BVD-clad body out of the sack and draped a shirt over it for sake of decency, Al was at my door, smiling and looking chipper. I asked him if he was all right.

   “They said they didn’t find anything,” he said. “They did an MRI of my brain. My brain wasn’t the problem. Fibrillation was my problem. They X-rayed my hip and said it looks good. These doctors don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

   Wednesday morning, I went up to check on Al and to return his hydrocodone. He spent ten minutes telling me he’d had it with doctors. “I’m not going to go see them. The hell with them. I’m ready to leave all this.” He was equally forthright in his determination to get rid of his car “before I kill somebody.” He went on to talk about his experiences the day before, which led back to the subject of doctors. “I’ve got a couple appointments – one Thursday and one Friday. I guess I’ll drive to them.”

   Exactly what ails him remains a mystery. But Al has derived a great enjoyment from sharing his adventures in the emergency room with anyone who will listen. I don’t know if Al made it to his doctor appointments, but he has driven over to Publix several times.

Notes from the Home - June 16, 2014

   Of the Seven Deadly Sins none is deadlier than Sloth for the would-be scribbler. The writer immersed in Pride can fill reams and reams with accounts of his wondrous accomplishments; one of which is perhaps marginally factual, the rest all poppycock and balderdash. But true or not, it’s grist for the inordinately proud writer’s mill. Gluttony is another Deadly Sin with potential. The porcine wordsmith can go through gallons of ink providing the details of his various repasts. If there weren’t any epicurean delights, he can still share the misery of eating too much, too fast. Lust is by far the best sin to be lost in for two or three weeks. The details of a romp in the hay or two can fill a lengthy tome.

   The writer wallowing in Sloth, however, has little to say. “I sat around all day thinking I ought to write something, but I finally said, ‘the hell with it,’” isn’t much of an essay, despite the economy of words. All of which explains why the last entry appeared on May 20. I am, however, feeling less slothful now and will forge ahead. Or not.

   A woman pushing a walker moved to the side to let me go by in the long, up-hill hallway. “I wish I had that,” she said, eyeing the wheelchair. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. The hallway with its grade was not designed with septua-, octo-, or nonagenarians in mind. Much of what is now Covenant Woods was once condominiums. Perhaps the people responsible for designing the hall didn’t envision a bunch of old farts going up the hill to fetch their mail or have dinner. I admire the folks who struggle successfully day after day to make it to the top.

   But I don’t like people telling me they wish they had my wheelchair. Every time it happens I have stifle the urge to say, “And I wish my legs worked as well as yours.” That would be an appropriate response to some of the people who envy my wheelchair. The ones whose tone suggests that I am a fast-talking malingerer who convinced the doctor to prescribe something I don’t need and the insurance company to pay for it.

   More often these days the anger, the frustration, comes from the knowledge that MS is a degenerative disease. And I’m degenerating. Other than a few steps here and there, I don’t walk any more. When I arrived at Covenant Woods, with the aid of a walker, I could make it to the bathroom on foot and go out on my porch. Now my pedestrian activity is limited to a few steps a few times a day. Three steps out, three steps back; that sort of thing. Otherwise, I can do everything I could do when I came down here two years ago. Doing those things, however, is becoming more and more difficult.

   There are days when something as simple as getting dressed is a dicey affair. For the most part it can be done sitting down. But, sooner or later, a man must pull up my pants – the authorities at Covenant Woods insist we must. To do it, I must stand up, which isn’t a problem. Keeping my balance is.

   When pulling up my pants I stand between the bed and wheelchair. If I feel unsteady, I grab the chair to steady myself. To do that, I must let go of the pants, which then drop to my ankles and I have to start again. On a typical morning, I start again three or four times. The frustration is preferable to having someone dress me. I don’t like to think about that. But one of these days I suppose I will have to.

   Once I get my pants on, the day is filled with other tasks that are no longer as easy as they once were. Russ took me to a shoe store Sunday and then to their place for the Father’s Day lunch Karen was preparing. I had to transfer from the manual wheelchair to the car, or from the car to the wheelchair six times. Until last fall, the tough part was getting my left leg to go where it was supposed to go. Once it was there, the right leg did what it had to do in the manner which it had been doing it for over three score years. Now, the right leg is nearly as intransigent as the left. Russ doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he worries that one of these days I’m going to fall and he’ll have to pick me up off the Target parking lot. Some day he will, and I’m not looking forward to it. There is a lot these days that I’m not looking forward to.

   The men of Covenant Woods were invited to join Roger, the general manager, at Carrabba’s Wednesday for dinner. Five of us took him up on the offer. The original invitation was for dinner at Hooters, but Jim’s objection, on the grounds that the food is better at Carrabba’s, was sustained, and the plans changed at the last minute. It was just as well.

   Thursday morning, while Wes, the new driver, was getting me off the bus, William, the town drunk, came by and said, “You didn’t go to Hooters last night.” I thanked him for the update. Wes said, “Hey, William, your name was on the list. Why didn’t you go?” William told Wes he’d signed up to go to Hooters.

   I have no objection to curvaceous, scantily clad young ladies flaunting their hooters. But, William at Hooters would have been one boob too many.

   I’m not sure if Ron has stopped taking his medication, or started taking it. The usually quiet man of few words is suddenly loud, opinionated, and given to coarse language. At dinner one evening, he asked me if I was going to go to the Town Hall meeting. I said I wasn’t planning to, but I hoped he’d come back from the meeting with all the gossip. He smiled and said he would. The next day, however, he announced, “I’m not telling you what happens at the meeting. If you want to know what goes on, you’ll have to get your lazy ass up there.”

   The next morning, Ron was sitting in the lobby talking to Irene. Pat came by and showed Irene a pair of shoes she’d just bought. Ron took one look at the shoes and announced, “Those are the ugliest damn shoes I’ve ever seen in my whole damn life.”

And Now a Word About Me: A Limerick

The old coot who thought he could write

Was really not terribly bright.

The man couldn’t spell

Or punctuate well,

And he wasn’t a bit contrite.