aged care

Tournament of minds

/ Margaret / Leave a comment

We have always been a family of card players.  From the earliest days of my life, I was taught to play all manner of card games, and our evenings were often full of laughter and tantrums depending on the outcome for the particular player.  Being the youngest, I never learned to play 500, unlike my elder siblings as it is a game for four people.  This still burns to this day.  “Suffering Tomcats” when the hand was not good or “it’s not a concert” if we started to sing, and “a fast game is a good game” when someone deliberated too long over which card to discard.

Some might say we are a competitive lot – it’s genetic, as we get it from Dear Old Dad. A running joke in the family is that when playing a particular card game, Dad would always read the scores out when he was winning; silent when not.  So many happy memories of card games  litter our conversations about the ‘good old days’.  Victories and losses, points scored are remembered.

One of the games we played was, and is,  cribbage – either two, three or four players.  It is a fast paced game, combining skill and luck.  It requires a pack of cards, a cribbage board, pegs to score, a good sense of humour , an ability to add up to 15 and 31, and a competitive spirit.

After Mum died and I started spending a lot of time with dad, we somehow started playing cribbage every day – it has become our ‘thing’ and we both look forward to our games.  Dad more than me usually as he wins more games than me, the crafty old fox.  In April 2011, I started keeping score – of who won, and the winning margin. I am now on to my second book.

We have had some hilarious times – a game consists of 121 points and the biggest winning margin belongs to me at 65 (two streets for those familiar with the game).  Man, that was sweet!  There have been games which have been so close the lead kept changing and the final score was one or two; games where one of us just didn’t get the ‘turn up’ to enhance our hands and games where we had hands with no points at all.

As of today, we have played a total of 1773 games of two-handed cribbage.  There have been many three-handed and four handed games when other members of the family have been with us, but I have only kept the scores for our games.  Of those 1773 games, Dad has won 919 to my 854, winning 65 games more than me.  Which technically is not a lot over more than seven years.  His total point score is 14993 to my 14510, giving a winning margin of 483, an average of only 7.4 per game.  Just 12 months ago, the average was 9.5 so he is either losing his touch or I am getting better at it.  It is definitely not the former.

We have played cribbage at his house, usually with Oscar, Prince of Cats for company, and using his father’s triangular cribbage board, until a lovely wooden board from his brother in Wales arrived.

dad and oscar

We have played at my house with a second-rate board, but pegs from a velvet pouch.  We have played in Townsville, Roma, Springsure, Woodgate on the deck at the beach house, and Sydney.  We have played in restaurants, cafes and in hospitals.

Dad in hospital

 

Neither of us has scored the perfect score of 29, but have each, once in that 7.5 years, scored the next best thing of 28 – great excitement.

cribbage

Dad once asked me if I thought we would ever stop playing and I said “only when one of us dies’, which sometimes I think may well be me, at the rate he is going.

Here’s to the next 1000 games. May I win most of them.  And get ‘one for his hat’ more often than not.

jack

Father’s Day again

/ Margaret / Leave a comment

Father’s Day has come and gone again.  My Dear Old Dad has been a father for 61 years now. It would have been 63 but for the death of his and mum’s first child.

For Dad right now, and me, every day is Father’s Day!  Sometimes it’s also a bit like Groundhog Day, but the actual Father’s day is special.  Being a Sunday, the best gift he can have is to have me join him at church, followed by morning tea with his friends there.  He joined us for dinner so we could also celebrate Father’s day with my husband and children.

I am conscious that at my age, I have many friends who are now without their fathers, or who do not have a good relationship with their father, and Father’s Day must be difficult.  and I will be one of those people one day, which while inevitable, makes me feel very sad.  I can’t imagine a world without him in it.

Father’s Day makes me ponder what it is to be a father.  My favourite quote is from someone tragically named Wade Boggs, who, it seems to me was destined for a job as a plumber, but was in fact a famous baseball player.  He once said “Anyone can be a father, but it takes a special person to be a Dad”.  And my Dad is a special person.

We didn’t realise it at the time, but we grew up in a very forward thinking environment. Workplace flexibility and working from home are buzz words in the workplaces of today, but with a parish priest for a father, our Dad had his office at home.  He worked from home (although was often out of course), but of the many childhood memories I have, sometimes having afternoon tea with Mum and Dad after school, or having Dad pick us up from school, are highlights.

Of course having a father at home meant that our mother didn’t ever have to say “wait until your father gets home”, and I knew I was in trouble when I was summoned to Dad’s study.  The worst punishment was being told by Dad that he was disappointed in me.  I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Going away for weekends was something we did not do, with church services on Sundays. But when we went on holidays, Dad was really on holidays.  We grew up with no mobile phones or internet, so our holidays involved visiting with cousins, going to the beach, and once, what seemed like an interminable caravan holiday (scarred me for life).  But holidays always  included cards, board games, and french cricket.  And lots of laughter.

Now that Dad is 95, who knows how many Father’s Days we have left.  So we must treasure every moment, even when it is upsetting or stressful, caring for him.  I have to remind myself that no matter how hard it is for me (and my sister) from time to time, it must be so much harder for him, becoming frail and dependent.  I think Dad would agree with Euripides (Greek poet, not a plumber nor a baseball player) that:

“To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter”

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The Nervous Nineties

/ Margaret / 2 Comments

Cricket lovers will understand this expression. The nervousness of a batsman or batswoman making it to ninety runs, hoping to score a century, not out. The anxiety of hitting the ball and getting singles. 91. 92. 93 etc. Each one more difficult and nerve-wracking than the last.   I imagine this is what it must be like in your nineties, although some whose health is not the best may not wish to reach their century.

When Dad was heading for 90, he resisted plans for a 90th birthday party on the basis that he might not still be here.  This is a recurring theme, so convinced is he that his life span is all but over, all indications to the contrary.  But a party was had and it was a wonderful celebration at our home on our patio and under a marquee – high tea, with proper bone china cups (tea always tastes better from bone china), mum’s collection of tea spoons, with an endless supply of cake, sandwiches, and scones. Most importantly, many family members and friends were present for the celebration.

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It’s not often my dad is lost for words, but on this occasion he was, no doubt emotional that mum was not there to celebrate with him, but also to see so many people there that day, celebrating with him and wishing him well.

That was 5 years ago, and this year, like then, Dad, even six weeks beforehand, resisted any celebration of his 95th, on the basis that he might not be here. This year’s birthday was a much simpler affair – a morning tea after church, dinner with us at home, and then dinner out a few nights later on his actual birthday.

 

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Dinner at the Golf Club 8 August 2017

He still has the same gorgeous smile, and enjoys the many bottles of scotch he receives as gifts. That sounds worse than it is. He enjoys one glass of scotch late in the afternoon and his birthday and Christmas presents of scotch last him for months!  There are very few novel gifts one can purchase someone who has everything he needs.

Imagine what someone of his age has seen:

Living through the depression
Transport moving from bicycle to car – and now the news talks of driverless cars!
Plane flight going from a luxury to everyday
Man landing on the moon – and passenger space travel a real possibility
A World War and the horror of that war, and its aftermath
Television as entertainment in addition to the ‘wireless’
Computers and mobile phones (no phones attached to the wall now!)
The abdication of King Edward VIII, the coronation and death of King George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth – he may well see Prince Charles become King
The fall of the Berlin Wall
Twenty-three Australian Prime Ministers (four of those in the last 10 years alone!)
Twenty Queensland Premiers

I can’t work out how many elections in which he has exercised his democratic right to vote.

So much change and development has occurred in his lifetime, and with the pace of change accelerating, he is sure to see much more change in years to come.

The one thing that has not changed is his vocation and he recently celebrated 65 years ordination to the priesthood.

So here he is in his 96th year – will he crack the ton and get his letter from the Queen?  Or perhaps it will be King Charles? Time will tell, but every run he adds to his score will be celebrated.

Time does not heal all wounds

/ Margaret / 1 Comment

C.S. Lewis once said that “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear”.  Sixty three years ago today, my parents’ first baby was born and died.  Her name was Ann.

I can’t imagine that kind of grief.  My mother was younger then than my own daughter is now.  She must have been filled with fear each and every day of each pregnancy and though each hour of labour before delivering each of her three subsequent babies. As I’ve written before my mother never spoke of this event, and grieved silently in all the years that followed.  Dad said that sometimes she just stayed in the bedroom all day – that she remembered the detail vividly.  I often wonder how Mum coped with so many people no doubt telling her that the death of her baby was ‘God’s will’.  She must have wanted to scream, but instead kept that grief bottled up.

When Mum died, it was like a cork stopper came out of a bottle and Dad was able to talk about that horrific events of that day and beyond.  And all the years that followed.

Part of caring for an elderly parent is more about caring about them – and that means caring is sometimes doing nothing but sitting and listening and giving a long hug, even if you’ve heard the story before.

Thinking a lot about both my mum and my dad today.

Dad at springsure

Things I Do For Dad

/ Margaret / 1 Comment

There is a certain predictability about some of our days, which I like.  Dad goes to church Wednesdays and Sundays.  He likes to go shopping Tuesdays and Fridays –  it’s important to have fresh bananas every few days.  Once a month he goes to the library to change his library books.   The washing is done on Mondays.  Not Tuesdays, nor Wednesdays. He likes routine. As do I.

These days, I have some help from time to time with some of these activities – for example I have found a local Uber driver who does a lot of the driving to and from church, although when he can’t do this, I step in – either doing the driving myself or booking an Uber.  Dad has only given up driving behind the wheel; he still likes to drive from the passenger seat so it can be a little tedious at times.  I also have some help from a wonderful lady from Five Good Friends for a few hours each week.

There are lots of other things I do for Dad to make his life a little easier, such as:

  • Cook all his meals
  • Collect him for dinner at our house once a week
  • Prepare meals ahead of time if I am going to be away (not so often any more!)
  • Go to a shop in the next suburb to purchase the special cheese he likes and his molasses in a squeeze bottle
  • Change the dressing on his ulcer every two days, including cleaning the wound and moisturising
  • Make appointments for him
  • Take him to the doctor, dentist and other specialists
  • Do his buttons up in winter when his fingers struggle with the cold weather
  • Rub cream on his back when his skin gets dry
  • Order things he needs on-line
  • Take him shopping
  • Play cribbage every day (and lose on average 2-1 because he is frustratingly lucky – and clever)
  • Look phone numbers and other information up for him on my phone (‘that’s not just a phone is it dear?‘)
  • Listen patiently while he discusses Oscar’s eating habits, in specific detail
  • Look for Oscar when Dad thinks he has gone missing (he is always asleep somewhere, ignoring us)
  • Take Oscar to the vet and to his holiday accommodation when Dad goes away
  • Help him cut up Oscar’s chicken breast meat into precise sized pieces and put 25 pieces into individual freezer bags, ready for his evening meals
  • Deal with rodents, geckos and birds in the house (thanks Oscar)
  • Clean up the occasional Oscar vomit (see above), which is always on the carpet never on the tiles or timber floors (cats are awesome)
  • Advocate for him with doctors, government and service providers
  • Negotiate with the Insurers when they increase his insurance 30% every year
  • Take him clothes shopping (which includes helping him get changed)
  • Clean out the refrigerator
  • Put the bins out on Sunday nights (my husband and sons help with this too)
  • Fix Foxtel (his fingers sometimes accidentally change the AV source)
  • Source typewriter ribbon for him
  • Replace the correction tape in his typewriter (I need to look this up on Youtube every single time!)
  • Organise the mowing man and tradespeople
  • Take his ironing  home to be done (not by me!)
  • Make him a ginger cake or orange cake so he has an afternoon tea snack with his cup of tea
  • Act as digital carrier pigeon for correspondence with his brother in the UK
  • Post his letters
  • Take him to visit friends on occasion
  • Put his hearing aids in when I remember (so I don’t have to repeat myself three times)
  • Make lots and lots of phone calls and put together colour coded spread sheets should I get the chance to go away

Most importantly, be ready with a hug when he is feeling down.

 

 

 

 

Atticus Finch and Me

/ Margaret / Leave a comment

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it:

Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird

Who doesn’t love To Kill a Mockingbird?  Both the novel and the movie.  I can remember the first time I read it, and it is still a favourite movie. The first time I re-read the book it was even better, as I could picture the characters – Gregory Peck was the perfect Atticus Finch.

My father was and is not a lawyer, but he is very much like Atticus Finch.  He has strong values to which he is faithful, has been and continues to be a good father, was and still is a leader in his community.  He is someone to whom others looked up, and always looked for, and saw, the best in others.  He and my mother lived a life of service to others, and the worst punishment as a child was to be told by my father that he was disappointed.

He is still, at 94, a man to admire.  I wrote a post recently titled Just Keep Swimming, my code for the need to keep going when times are tough.  Little did I know how important the words were.

I had a bad day last Sunday.  I wasn’t well, was tired, and something happened that made me upset, for no rational reason.  Dad needed something at the shops, and I had been to the shops that morning, taken him to church, was taking him somewhere else that afternoon, and I was generally a bit ‘over it’ that day.  I cried.  Ugly cried. I railed against the injustice of it all; the exhaustion. I guess I needed a cry – salty tears are a good cure for some ills – as I felt better not long after.  A phone call with my sister of course helped.  Figuratively speaking I gave myself an uppercut and decided to get on with it.

I realised that regardless of how difficult the situation was for me ( and let’s face it, it was only a momentary feeling, and one that I had had before, and knew it would pass), it must be so much harder for Dad – losing his independence, coping with so much change in a short space of time, facing the fact of the frailties of old age, and dealing with a bossy daughter who seemed hell-bent on changing his routines.

That realisation made me think of Atticus Finch and his advice to his children – to look at things from another’s point of view to understand what they are going through.  This had a calming influence on me  – perhaps it was not just the wise words, but the fact that I imagined Gregory Peck speaking them.

Change is difficult – coupled with old age it must be frightening.  And if Dad can do his best in those circumstances, then so can I.

I do hope Scout and Jem took care of Atticus in his old age.  I like to think they did.

atticus-finch

It Takes a Village

/ Margaret / 1 Comment

It takes a village to raise a child – African proverb

It also takes a village to care for the elderly – Me

The old African proverb is absolutely true – the concept of a village has changed somewhat over the years and can now include people overseas via FaceTime rather than the people next door.

The proverb now needs to be applied to the elderly in our communities.  My Dear Old Dad lives on his own. He needs a village and he has one and it includes:

Me – chef, chauffeur, nurse, pincushion when he’s frustrated, shopper, postmistress, cribbage player, Oscar vomit cleaner, general organiser of his life, carrier pigeon for letters to his brother via email.

My husband – patient listener, conversationalist, light bulb changer, dinner companion, occasional chauffeur, hacker of plants and weeds, forgiver of how much money it costs us to look after him, occasional provider of free legal advice

Oscar – spoiled cat, companion, listener, sharer of his thoughts.

My sister – host when Dad goes to visit or when I am away.  See the reference to ‘Me’ above for when he visits and replace cribbage with scrabble. Also frequent visitor and sharer of photos of Dad’s great-granddaughter.  Also emotional scaffolding for me when required (often).  Is much more patient than me.

My brother-in-law – companion when Dad is visiting, willing cribbage player, chauffeur, also frequent visitor and dinner companion.

My brother – frequent visitor, scotch and red wine drinking companion, cribbage player and participator in theological discussions. Fish and Chip carrier

My children – bin putter-outers, mail collectors, Oscar carers when Dad away, patient repeaters of everything they say because he is a bit hard of hearing and they keep forgetting

My sister’s friends – caring people who take an interest and listen to him, also occasional scrabble players

Neighbours – keeping an eye out, bringing the bins in.

My uncle  – Dad’s brother who lives in Wales who has visited regularly over the last few years, companion, pen pal, sharer of thoughts, provider of scotch for Dad and champagne for me (favourite uncle)

My cousins – occasional visitors, lunch companions, and provider of meals

Outside helpers – cleaners, gardener, ironing lady, handymen

Church friends – sharers of his faith, occasional chauffeurs, providers of stamps for his philately hobby, telephone correspondents, and one cribbage player

His GP – not my favourite part of the village to be honest, but DOD has complete faith in him and is a regular visitor to the medical practice

Other specialists – at 94, things are starting to not work as well as they should so we visit quite a few medical specialists, most of whom are very kind and caring

This is a big villagefor one person!!  But it’s necessary to enable DOD to stay in his own home.  He is eligible for a government funded care package – however my experience with My Aged Care has not been happy and I don’t want to leave his care at home in the hands of government agencies when they have proven that they are incapable of responding in a timely way to requests for assistance (more on that in another post)

As Honore de Balzac once said:

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies

There are now private businesses which can provide home based care, and I am sure I will be using their services in the not too distant future.  I honestly believe that the best care the elderly can have is where there is an emotional attachment between the carer and the person for whom care is provided.  Will that work if people are paid to be carers?

Time will tell.

A Company Cat

/ Margaret / 2 Comments

What greater gift than the love of a cat? – Charles Dickens

Disclosure:  I am a cat person.  Some might refer to me as a crazy cat lady.  So be it. I have always had at least one cat in my life and the stories around the acquisition of cats in my life since being married are quite hilarious, to me anyway if not my husband.  In summary – ” My wife wanted to get a cat. I didn’t so we compromised and got a cat.”

About a year before my mother died, my daughter and I were in the process of colluding to get a kitten.  Not just any kitten but a kitten whose mother was a Ragdoll and father a Birman.  Possibly the most beautiful cats I had ever seen.  The deal was done; but the breeder had one more kitten left to sell, so I convinced my parents (who were also cat people but were without one since retirement) to let me buy him for them.  I was prepared for all objections.

So two little kittens came home with us for 24 hours before Mum and Dad took possession of one the following day. Or rather the kitten took possession of them and their hearts.  Their names are George (ours) and Oscar.

What a good decision that turned out to be (in many ways).  Oscar soon became the light of their lives, and whenever I called or called in, I would get a blow-by-blow description of what Oscar had been up to.  He was like a new child, and treated as such.  A spoiled child.

When Mum died, Oscar became even more important – he was Dad’s sole companion.  It is now well recognised the impact pets have on humans, but particularly the elderly.  Decreased blood pressure, decreased depression and stress, increased communication and motivation.  Personally I’m not sure it has that much to do with the pets themselves, but the company and activity they provide.  I have seen nursing homes with chooks who become very attached to the residents.  Then there is the nursing home with a resident cat who seems to know when someone is about to die and settles on their bed.  Not so keen on the Grim Cat Reaper to be honest.

But back to Oscar.  I now get even more detail about Oscar and his day – what time he went to bed, what time he demanded food in the middle of the night, how much he ate for breakfast, how many lizards he ate and then threw up, and his preference for organic chicken breast rather than regular chicken breast.

It became abundantly clear exactly how much Oscar means to Dad in the early hours of one morning.  I had a call at 4am – Oscar was very distressed and panting heavily. My first thought was snake bite so I threw on a dressing gown, grabbed the cat basket, drove to Dad’s place, caught Oscar and off we went to the 24 hour vet (or Vee Eee Tee, as we refer to them in the pets’ hearing), which was a 25 minute drive away, silently praying to every deity that he keep breathing.

The vet found a large engorged tick on Oscar’s back and he had to stay in for 24 hours for treatment and observation, as the poison could still cause more damage.  Dad reached out to hold the vet’s hand and said ‘please don’t let him die; since my wife died, he’s all I’ve got’.

So I’m standing there, bare feet, pyjamas and gown, holding the car keys, feeling like the third wheel, but feeling a bit weepy at hearing this vulnerability from Dear Old Dad.  But I get it – Oscar had become someone Dad could look after and talk to. I saw him once a day, whereas Oscar was the permanent resident and listener to Dad’s stories, and sharer of his thoughts.

We drove home just as the sun was coming up and shared a cup of tea before I returned to my own home.  His farewell hug was a little bit tighter, and his ‘thank you’ a little bit more intense that morning.

Oscar resumed normal programming shortly after losing one of his nine lives.

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