Posted 12/5/22
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Phil 4:4-9
One of the things I am passionate about learning about has been mental health. Much to my dismay, it is a VERY challenging topic. There are a lot of moving parts to the brain and to emotion, behavior, and the rest. Most of the same challenges as dementia, mind you. In fact, there is a physical component to mental health which, to me, makes it a closer tangent with dementia than the Alzheimer’s Association and the dementia community, in general, like to discuss, for some reason. Obviously Dementia is a terminal disease. It is in a different area of the medical textbook…but minus that, there are a lot of areas of overlap. One, for instance, is a tremendous number of folks with dementia have extreme anxiety and other behavioral health symptoms (paranoia, restlessness, etc…). Mom had mental health concerns, even before dementia’s “standard symptoms” began. She was depressed and had significant anxiety, for two… Once she hit mid-stage and really struggled she, like MANY, spent some time in a geriatric behavioral health facility working through medicine options to help. One big problem, whether we talk about mental health or dementia is a word that is almost cliche but is critical nevertheless: Stigma. Here are two posts that I have alluded to it among the many: Link and probably more relevantly this one: LINK although there are other examples…
Behavioral health doctors also like to ask the diagnostic question “What is the first thing you think of when I say “(some word)”? They seem to be able to better understand an issue from such. Why do I bring this up? Because I like to make the long way around to the real topic sometimes. 🙂 There are things to see that we miss…
Saturday late afternoon my son hopped out of bed and let out a yelp, and called my wife in. Somehow he had gashed his foot on the bed frame, not unlike what I did to spill blood 100 different ways growing up . I fell off bikes, stepped on needles, got glass in my feet, and stumped the ends of my toes off (many times) among other wounds. One particularly challenging one was I was riding my bike to a friends in just socks (no shoes) and my bike had the serrated edge grips. My foot, unsurprisingly, slipped off and the knife edge whacked my Achilles tendon very had, especially so since my foot had slipped off and hit the ground first. I one-legged it home to mom and she, a veteran of 1,000 gross things from my and my siblings’ wounds and from growing up on a farm, would typically take it completely in stride. She was the master of empathy, sympathy, and still getting the problem fixed all at once. She was really good at such (as was my dad). But I got really hurt this time and she was the First Thing I Thought Of…with the blood a flowin’. When I arrived home, even she gagged on this injury. My sock was stuck inside my leg…and it was bleeding quite badly.
This event was the first thing I thought of when my son got hurt…
And.
It.
Set.
Me.
Back.
I am usually pretty darn good at emergencies. I deal with them systematically and diligently. But when it is my kiddos, whether they are 2 or 20, I slip back into “I need to call Mom mode.” She is who you call when it really hits the fan, injury-wise. And now dementia took that away too…
I have been quite fortunate in my life. Aside from a few grandparents and aunts/uncles, whom I loved very, very much mind you…I have had very little loss in my first 51 years. Pre-grieving the loss of my mom has been very hard. But we are where we are…
My bride sent me to get supplies since urgent care was closed and a many hour wait at the emergency room seemed impractical. I, of course, tried to get the right things but I got something different than was expected. End of story: she made do. She cleaned it well and taped it together and it will be fine. It was a clean slice and he will be good as new very soon… She did great, as always. 🙂
But it, for a minute, hurt my heart not only for my wonderful son whom I hate seeing hurt, but for mom… She would have love to have helped…
Stinking disease. It needs to go.
#EndALZ
Update: Technology failed us this morning and I had to go early to visit my mom in the morning instead of my customary evening. I tried to call my step-dad, but his phone was in airplane mode and he is unaware what that means. So I checked on him after mom to be sure he was ok. Mom was ok…stayed with her about 30 minutes. Her eyes are still struggling to keep moist enough. But she seemed about the same. I couldn’t connect in any sense because she was next to a window ready to eat and I couldn’t fit in to get at eye level…but it was nice to see here nevertheless. She has a new table mate that asked me 20 times to be taken to the bathroom. The nurses were aware and had many times. But it added to the angst hearing the request over and over and over… Flashbacks to mom a couple of years ago. 🙁 Poor lady 🙁 Stupid disease.
Side note about my injury: a couple of weeks later, with my Achilles still stitched together and wrapped, I did exactly the same thing again and worse. Mom gagged and said “I got nothin'” and took me to the hospital. The doctor, peeved, butterfly bandaged it together and said he couldn’t fix it. I crutched for 3 weeks with my toe pointed down until it healed and I look like FrankenAnkle to this day.