Ups and Downs
    Tonight I did laundry a little earlier than usual. Typically, to save on our electricity bill and keep from putting the a/c under too much pressure, I wait until after 2200 in the summer. Although my mother is typically a night person, for the last year or so she's been in bed by that time. It's only been recently that she's begun to return to her old habits. Tonight, because it's been a long and tiring day and I was hoping to crawl into bed a bit earlier than usual, I started the laundry at 2030. Mom was still up.
    I brought the first load of drying out and dumped it on the living room floor for folding, as usual. My mother moved out of her rocking chair, as if by rote, and started toward the load of clothes, intending to settle herself on the carpet to help me fold them. This is how we used to do it, when she was sleeping less and later.
    A cautionary video fast forwarded through my mind. "Mom," I said, "I don't think that's a good idea."
    She knew what I meant. "Why not?" she asked. "I do this all the time!"
    "You haven't done it in about a year, Mom, and, truth is, I don't think I can lift you up off the ground, or support you as well as the edges of the bathtub so you can lift yourself up."
    She shot me a look of thorough disgust and said with staunch confidence, "You won't have to help me up."
    "Can you guarantee that, Mom? It's been about a year since you've done that and you're not as strong as you were, then. If you can't get up, and I can't get you up, are you willing to pay for a visit from the paramedics?"
    It's always a little disturbing to see reality hit her. She didn't look crestfallen, but I saw her wince as she made an internal adjustment that she clearly hadn't expected to have to make. "No. I see what you mean."
    "Mom," I suggested, "you can stand, like I'm doing, and help me fold clothes. I'll put them on the couch."
    She surveyed the load of clothes. It was a big load. The first always is. "No," she said, "I wouldn't be comfortable standing that long."
    She's right. She wouldn't. I know this. She's still a little unsteady, although she's getting better, and the one situation that would be worse than trying to help her lift her sitting self off the floor would be if I had to try to lift her horizontal, injured self off the floor, which, of course, I wouldn't do. I'd call the paramedics.
    I know she was disappointed. I like to have her help as often as possible, so she continues to feel that she is a contributing member of the household in the way she is used to contributing. So many of the chores I do around here are clearly out of her league, now, so, when she wants to help, I always try to find a way. I also know that a shrunken, bent woman weighing 148 with most of that weight carried in her belly and not enough muscle strength to help lift herself up is beyond my physical abilities, at the moment.
    After she had settled back in her chair, I had finished the clothes and begun to read a book and she was focused on TV, I considered that there are a few other ways I could have handled the situation so that she could have helped without getting out of her chair. I'll remember them next time. In the meantime, I'm feeling a bit sad that I was too tired to come up with these simple alternatives on the spot. I know that the next time she's up when I'm doing laundry, I'll activate one of these alternatives. I'll also remind her of tonight, apologize for my mental exhaustion and my inability to think of alternatives and everything will work out okay. I wonder, though, if somewhere in the back of her mind my actions with her tonight will silently eat away at her sense of her value in life. I hope not. Normally, throughout her life, she has been sensible and alert about situations such as this. She is an Ancient One, now, though, and I'm never sure, anymore, how she'll perceive incidents like this. Sometimes, I look forward to the possibility that her memory will let go of the details of her daily life. I'm hoping that tonight's laundry will be one of those details it will chose to lose.
    In the meantime, I've vowed to restart a weight training regimen I'd been practicing last year that I stopped when I injured my shoulder and never continued. I'll look into nurses techniques for moving patients, as well, something I'd intended to do when I started weight training. Seems like the time has come to make good on those intentions.
- posted by gail rae @ 01:08   email...this post