Posted 8-26-19
After Friday’s gem (sigh) about playground equipment, I got to thinkin’…there was much more on our playground and neighboring park than I originally remembered. Therefore, you would be short-changed if you didn’t get “the rest of the story“. Never wanting you to be short of my drivel, here it goes:
The Teeter Totters– There was a battery of teeter totters at our park growing up. These, again, are pretty much a relic of the past because “someone could get hurt”. If you are unfamiliar with the teeter totter, you are either under 20 years old or you have lived in a Soviet Bloc nation your whole life. A teeter totter, or see-saw if you will, is an example of a simple machine/lever. It works like a sitting version of balance scale. I know this because it typically took more than one first-grader on the other side to level me out (a fact that I exploited because I could trick two at once by jumping off and leaving them to have a gravity-induced rear thump.) I also played balance beam on said teeter totters, which kind of made me like a chubby parkour master ahead of my time!
Memory unit patients are not the only ones who teeter totter through life, but it is made extreme for them and their caretakers by their condition. One of the hardest parts for us in helping mom is the ups and downs! You never really know what you will see when you go through the keypadded door of her memory unit. Take a look through the early posts of my little cornbread table. Some days she was great, others she might be partially naked or have lost her teeth, and others she may have a huge knot on her head where she had fallen. Things are better these days, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you think if it. She doesn’t fall, she isn’t sad outwardly…but she is also not particularly verbal and no longer does the things that spark joy (piano, drawing, reading, etc…). Up and down we go, where we stop, God only knows…
Tetherball– I was a tetherball master growing up. For a pretty rotund kid, not particularly good at other sports, the tetherball let me be Michael Jordan, Lou Brock and Hulk Hogan all at once, if only for a recess. If you are unfamiliar with the “sport”, the name says it all: a ball was tethered with rope on a pole and the first one to hit the ball hard and high enough to avoid the volley of the enemy on the other side of the pole and wrap the ball all the way until it could wrap no longer was the winner. There were rivals, though. Here is actual footage of me practicing for a future tetherball match against one of these rivals. Of the rivals, and there were many, Tracy was my most talented and feared foe. She was elegant and strong, with a Jordanesque vertical leap… and she was a girl. A super cute girl. This presented an unfair advantage that she didn’t need since she was already as good as I was… or better. She was really only the second crush I had ever had. (Time reference: somewhere between my first crush and my next crush, Daisy Duke from Dukes of Hazzard). Fortunately for me, my desire to be tetherball ninja overrode my desire to pursue my love interest, so I always tried my hardest to defeat her…with very mixed results.
Patients with this stinkin’ disease are also tethered. They are tethered to their cognitive limitations and, like in the game, get worse then better then worse until they finally lose (like most who played against me or Tracy). When the rope is longer (early in the illness), the tetherball’s movement seems slower and can move freely in elevation, sometimes exceeding the opponent’s reach and sometimes not. Mom had mostly good days the first 8 years she had dementia, with exceptions. The ball is high some days and low others. However, as the disease winds down to mid- to late-stage, if you will, it levels out (not as many highs and lows)…and the pace (of damage) seems to speed up. Oh, there are rallies…some days are better and a revolution or two of slack is let out…then the rally ends and the end appears closer again. There, however, is no one game that is exactly the same, whether in tetherball or dementiaball. Some lose fast, some slow. Sometimes, if you are particularly unfortunate, your opponent wraps the rope around the steel bolt on top which seemed to accelerate your loss. Sigh…tetherball, even against Tracy, was much more fun than dementiaball. 🙁
Four Square– We had a four square game marked out at the edge of the basketball court. As good as I was with tetherball, I was fairly bad at four square. This game required more speed and agility than I had. When God was passing out attributes in our creation, I chose monkey-length arms, clown feet with talon toes, and a large head over these attributes. (I am not sure, theologically, that that was actually how it plays out…but I digress). The biggest hindrance to me mastering four square is I am a rule follower at heart. I have had days and weeks and months where I was not as good in that area, but, by and large, I follow rules. The kids that were best cheated skillfully and often. Instead of underhandedly hitting the ball into your square, they semi-grabbed and spun the ball into your square, causing the ball to violently leave before you can volley elsewhere.
Dementia seems to follow rules, or at least trends, but it really doesn’t. It lurks and waits until the right time, then spins the ball into oblivion. Early-stage dementia is sometimes uneventful as the disease works on less outwardly-obvious areas of your cognitive function. Then it hits a brain area with vengeance and the disease becomes much more apparent. It cheats by harming the patient in ways that doesn’t make it obvious that it was to blame. Memory problems can cause problems having sound judgement that could lead to crooks stealing money from someone who would have known better just a few years before. In later stage patients, dementia hurts the patient’s ability to chew and swallow food correctly. Many patients get aspiration pneumonia in this way. Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but it is like the miracle a mosquito uses to feast on us. They have a little topical fluid they use to prevent you from noticing their needle poke. Dementia sneaks up on you and does harm before we even get diagnosed and it cheats by making it hard to detect in the first place. (There are no simple blood tests or brain scans that prove its existence in a patient as of today although many are in the works. Cognitive testing and eliminating other possibilities..,then ultimately an autopsy are the primary diagnosis tools today.) If you have any doubt, please talk to your doctor. Here is a little tip article that will help you decide.
The Odd Ball Funnel Contraption– This device, like the linked video shows, is fairly lame. You and your posse throw some balls into the funnel, then fight for them when they come out of one of its exit holes. This is fun for about 5 seconds. This equipment is probably more fun as a big nest to sneak around and climb into…until Mrs. Cowherd sees you and blows her whistle at you.
Dementia, on the other hand, sucks all the time. No fun. Not even 5 seconds. It is all whistle, no fun. Not even a nest option. Moving on……
The Wellness Walk Path– Our field trip park had a really long, paved path with planned exercises and corresponding props for doing them at specified station locations. Walk 20 feet and encounter a bench on which you can do sit-ups. The next station may have chin-ups pole. If you completed every station, you were sure to get in a great workout.
In the dementia park, life itself is one big exercise path. My mom paced relentlessly the first couple months being at her memory unit. As mentioned a jillion times, seniors with this ailment seek normalcy, familiarity and comfort and it is hard during the early- to mid-stages to find it. Mom also developed sundowners, a set of problems that lead to sleeping at odd times and pacing around at night. Mom and the Sweet 17, perhaps in an effort to find something to do of substance, also want to keep busy. They fight for the opportunity to clean, fold towels and bibs, and the like. Some struggle with staying in their wheelchair and relentlessly get up, then have their chair alarm go off and sit down….then forget and try it all again. Dozens of times. Many, many articles chronicle such. There are real exercise classes for these damsels in distress and stricken warriors, but their challenging daily routine seems to be some decent exercise…until it all stops and they finally sit out the final stages (where mom is now).
The Caboose– The last “ride” of the recess/park field trip experience is/was the beloved caboose. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, somebody donated a really slick caboose to keep at the park. People back then were perhaps slightly respectful of property back then, but only slightly. Kids could climb around on and in the caboose and had a really good time. Then people discovered that this rolling hotel room made a nice place for lovin’ and smoking pot, so the city, wisely, fenced it in. The same folks who took advantage of the old caboose before apparently, strengthened by the wellness trail, scaled the fence with their friends and/or significant other and resumed activities until the city had to remove the caboose.
In dementia park, hidey holes abound. The Sweet 17 wander room-to-room 24/7/366, hiding stuff and removing hidden stuff often in the same visit. As mentioned before, most everything is community property at the memory unit as it was when my stepdad was caring for mom at home. Marijuana isn’t an issue in the memory unit although the incessant need to push CBD oil on me as the cure for every disease and ouchie known to man has made me even more not a fan of things made of the dope plant. (Sorry for the mini-rant). There may very well be uses for symptom relief for this line of drugs…and if it was my only good option for mom, I would have considered anything, but it is not.
The best equipment of all, however, whether you are in recess or in a dementia unit, is your hands and perhaps some imagination. Holding hands with a fellow visitor, that is. Sorry for continuing this long-standing part of the articles, but if you can, swing by and find yourself a Sweet 17. Hug them, hear their stories, and love them unconditionally. They need you and you need them. There is no better feeling than helping someone who has nobody else who can help…and you are more skilled and ready than you think.
Update: Mom was super tired again today. Her sleep hasn’t been great because of sores and getting flipped like a flapjack to avoid sores. She keeps a smile on her face, though, and is and will always be mom. Heck, in heaven someday maybe there will be sings or a tetherball pole?
#EndALZ