I visited my grandparents in Hopland yesterday. My 92 yr old Grandfather is probably "circling the drain", and my 92 yr old Grandmother does everything for him. He can barely move, he can't eat much, he can't take a shit or pee on his own. It's depressing, to say the least. Last night he insisted on sleeping in the living room, so Grandma couldn't hear him when he was yelling "AUDREY" at midnight, and at 6am. Both times I had to wake my Grandma, the first so that she could help him pee, and the second because he had to poop. The second time, they called me in because Grandpa couldn't get out of the chair without help to make it to the bathroom, so I needed to help lift him. Fortunately, he has his own pee bottle, so when he has to pee it's easier.
It's a tough situation for many reasons. Lots of those reasons go back very far in time, probably to even before I was born. I have two sets of aunt/uncle and two cousins (one with a wife and stepkids) who live on the property (about 1400 acres or so), and Grandpa has managed to alienate all of them. This means that people don't like to come and hang out in my grandparents' house, which means that a lot of the burden of care falls of grandma. Watching my 95 lb grandma pull up my grandpa's pants, attempt to sort out his medications, and spring to action every time he hollers "Aaaaauudreey" is a site to behold.
I wish that I could be less squeamish, and I wish that I could help more. It's very hard being in the house though. Grandpa can't hear what I'm saying, he yells at Grandma all of the time, and basically he looks like death. He sits in the living room with FoxNews blasting all day long. The volume is so loud that you can't even have a conversation with another person in the room. Mostly Grandma and I hang out in the kitchen, and she fills me in on her life, and the lives of everyone else on the ranch. I never stay long - it's hard, and I always feel so bad when I leave. Not to mention that everyone always gives me grief about not staying long enough. All of this serves to feed my feelings of inadequacy as a good family member. I leave feeling sad and selfish.
I knot that this situation is pretty typical. Western medicine + geriatric care + society's attitude towards old people doesn't seem to work for anyone. Why do we extend lives when lives are no longer worth living? The amount of money and time and energy spent on adding a few more breaths to someone's life...I just don't know if it's worth it. But how can you just not do anything if you can prescribe more pills and do more surgery to remove cancer? If there is something, anything that can be done to address the myriad failures in a human body, are we obligated to act? Death is programmed into life. After we have passed reproductive age, cells and the organs they belong to stop regenerating. Shit just starts to go wrong; repair mechanisms don't work or are slowed, our reproductive organs senesce. All sorts of fun is had.
Anyway, it gets me thinking about my attitude towards death and aging: I'm terrified. The fact that I have MS and can look at people in wheelchairs that have MS is terrifying. The thought of being slowed physically and not being able to do what I want to do is horrifying. Of course, that sort of thing probably won't happen to me, but it might. No one likes to be confronted with their own inevitable mortality and decay. Bad times for sure.
I'd like to talk to some people who've dealt a little more closely with dead or dying people. My only experience with someone dying is seeing my sister in the funeral home, and she was already dead. I'm not particularly sad about losing my grandfather...he's kind of an old bastard, and grandma would probably be a lot better off when he goes, but I'm sad about the situation in general. I get so overwhelmed that I try to avoid it altogether. I'm even afraid to touch my grandfather, because he looks so bad. His skin is paper thin, he's super skinny, he has scars from a recent staph infection, his kidneys are failing so his ankles are super swollen... Some people can just get in there and do what needs to be done. Apparently I'm not one of those people. It's almost like I can ignore the fact that I am "sick" and getting older if I'm not around sick and elderly people. I don't know.
I'm sure I'll write more positive posts soon, but this is on my mind.
2 comments:
While in the Vasona Creek Stroke and Rehabilitation Center, my stroke victim roomate, John, had trouble performing daily tasks. Sometimes his wife was patient and other times she could barely deal with it. His stroke transformed him from a man into an infant overnight.
I remember his daughter, a beautiful woman. She showed great patience for her father while she was there. She could not be as attentive as his wife but she gave what she could while she was there...sometimes supporting her father and sometimes listening to her mother.
Always have hope:
http://www.getoutdoors.com/goblog/index.php?/archives/3155-6-Summits-Down,-1-To-Go-For-Woman-With-MS.html
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