The chronic malcontent takes a vacation

I took a weekend off and visited Albuquerque, NM, for a reunion with some friends. Traveling was sufficiently stressful to distract me from the miasma of my normal life. I got to think about something other than my mother's diarrhea. Instead, I pondered airports, security lines, screaming babies, irate travelers, hotel pillows, and yummy but indigestible food. All in all, it was great to get away, even though it will take three days to recuperate from the trip. Worth it!

On Sunday, two planes, a train, and a bus later, I walked into my apartment, which smelled like mold and neglected cat. On Sunday, Portland was just starting a far-too-short heat wave. I threw open the windows and reveled in the warm air. My cat lolled on his blue cotton rug, ecstatic at my return, showing me (almost) unconditional affection in exchange for tummy rubs. It doesn't get much better than that.

Today the temperature dropped 30 degrees, compared to yesterday. My feet are freezing. If I close my eyes, I can just barely conjure the feeling of the plush hotel pillows, the smooth sheets, the sound of the pesky fan that intermittently shattered the silence. My vacation memories are receding quickly into the past, muscled aside by the demands of the maternal parental unit.

I visited my mother on Sunday evening. We are developing a ritual. I show up just after dinner (they call it supper at the assisted living place). Mom is either sitting outside in the smoking hut or stretched out on the couch, watching television. On Sunday, she brought me up to date on the state of her bowels.

The blue skies of Albuquerque were fading fast in my mind as I listened to my mother's tale of intestinal woe. We discussed the menu. She couldn't remember what she had eaten for lunch. I asked if she'd eaten anything the night before. She couldn't tell me. I'm pretty sure her late night snacking wasn't helping.

“We won't be able to figure out if certain foods are causing this diarrhea problem if you are eating all this junk,” I said, looking at the cookies and crackers in my mother's cupboards and fridge.

“I know,” she said. She agrees with everything I say these days. Sometimes I see a look on her face that indicates she may be hearing a foreign language coming out of my mouth.

On Monday morning, she called me.

“It was bad today,” she said morosely. I knew what it referred to.

“I'm coming over tonight,” I said. “That's it. No more dairy. No more wheat. No more junk food.”

That evening, I raided my mother's cupboards and fridge. I took everything except two boxes of saltine crackers, which I placed on a shelf high beyond the reach of her skinny bent fingers. I took her Mint Milano cookies. I took her generic cheerios and rice krispies. I took her chocolate muffins. I took the crackers that her friend Tiny had given her, and the lactose-free yogurt. I took the graham crackers. And I took the last bit of her cherry pie that had been sitting on her counter for two weeks.

I packed all the food in two bags and put it in my car.  Then I went to the store and bought gluten-free bread and Cheerios (the real thing), gluten-free wheat-free crackers, some vegan substitute butter, some frozen fruit popsicles (with no high fructose corn syrup), and two bananas. I took it all back to Mom's apartment and unloaded the loot.

We took the Cheerios and bread down to the dining room where residents can use a big refrigerator to store things. Mom already keeps her rice milk there.

The night cook was cleaning up after the evening meal. She saw the box of Cheerios and said, “Don't put that in there. It goes here.”

Finally we got everything stowed. Mom collapsed on the couch, worn out from the walk.

I went home, tossed the pie, and saved the cereal for the birds, squirrels, and rats. I ate the crackers for dinner. I stored the Mint Milanos into my own refrigerator. After one day of eating Mint Milanos, I gathered up all the cookies and muffins, put them in a trash bag, and walked them out to the big garbage can. Thank god I'm not so far gone I will dig in the trash for Mint Milanos. But I confess, it did cross my mind. I'm a little stressed out.

I have this recurring fear that my mother and I will end up in adjoining rooms in some linoleum-floored Medicaid facility far from friends and family, slobbering into bibs, unable to recognize each other. And the food will be parboiled crap, full of gluten and sugar. And I won't be able to protest.

The vertigo scrapes the inside of my head constantly. Tomorrow I am taking Mom to the doctor. I fear I will fail to tell him everything that needs to be said, because I can't remember things anymore. Being a caregiver is hard. A weekend vacation isn't enough. I can't imagine how parents do this everyday for 18 (or more) years. All I can say is, It's a good thing I never had kids.

Getting down and dirty with the Chronic Malcontent

My maternal parental unit has got the squits. Ever since she moved to to the retirement community, she's been plagued with explosive . . . well, gosh, I don't know how else to say it. Diarrhea. There, I said it.

Few things are funnier than the human digestive process, but when it's your scrawny stick of a mother whose 87-year-old sphincter can no longer hold back the surging tide, well, it's not quite as funny anymore. My nose scrunches as I write this.

I visit her every other day, usually right after lunch or dinner. I walk out to the smoking area with her, and walk back inside with her as she hustles to make it to her toilet. Last night we made the trip twice before her stomach would let her settle and enjoy her cigarette.

I make feeble jokes to lighten her mood. She's bored. She wants to go for a ride, but no way am I letting her get in my car. I try to persuade her to consider wearing adult diapers (she isn't against it, she just forgets).

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from Nurse Katy: “Your mother had a fall. She's headed to the hospital in an ambulance right now.” Mom had passed out and ended up on the floor outside her bathroom with her pants around her knees. That is the way she was brought into the emergency room, half-naked with a flowered sheet wrapped around her tiny skeleton.

As stints in the ER go, it wasn't bad. The techs and nurses were patient and kind. By the time Mom had some fluids in her, she was feeling better. She motored to the bathroom three times using a walker, head down, hospital gown flapping in her wake. Three hours later, she walked out under her own steam, wearing little orange skid-proof socks they give people in the ER who have somehow managed to arrive with no shoes. The tech said, “So long, Slugger.”

Since then, we've been doing tests, trying to figure out why the food she eats runs straight through her. Well, when I say we, I mean, she poops in a bucket and the staff at the retirement place send it to a lab, where some poor schmuck (probably a graduate of the healthcare program offered by the barely functional for-profit vocational college I used to work for) pokes around in the poop, looking for the pony (germs). I don't know, I'm guessing.

The lab tests came back negative. No pony.

My brother, who has lately been experiencing some diarrhea of his own, blames it on “a bug” going around. How Mom managed to get the bug when none of her neighbors have is a stretch, but whatever. We all have our theories. My brother's is a bug. I blame the food. After my five-year slow-motion train wreck with Dr. Tony the Naturopath, it is understandable I might see food as both the culprit and the remedy.

The only person who has no theory is my mother.

She can complain of feeling bad, but she can't form a theory or undertake a regimen to address the problem. That mother is gone. In her place is this new mother who lives completely in the moment (or sometimes in the past). Thoughts are heavy things to carry into the future. She prefers to leave them behind. She's like my cat. Whatever is happening right now is her reality. Don't they say we should all try to live more in the moment? Instead of trying to live for a better past or trying to control the future? So Zen. Who knew all you need is dementia!