I began the previous post at 2312 MST, 7/11/03,
(the same as PDT, at the moment, because Arizona, where we reside, does not observe Daylight Savings Time). It is now 0014, July 12th. About halfway through the David Letterman interview with the departing Enviro-Czar I decided to check Mom's feet, see if the swelling had gone down. It had been about an hour and a half since I'd given her the furosemide. Evening before last the quarter pill didn't work sufficiently fast. This evening it did and, as well, Mom drank some water and finished her coffee without me reminding to her. Good sign.
    I can feel her bone tiredness when it's afflicting her. Earlier this evening, as I rubbed her feet, I gave both her and myself a lecture about making mistakes on which days to let her remain prone and which days to get her moving. I think, now, that today a mistake was made and I scolded myself and explained, sternly, to her how it is that me giving in to her bone tiredness this morning (I very reluctantly canceled her hair appointment at her second request, although, truth be told, I knew when I awoke her this morning that it was going to be one of those days) led to the "unnatural" swelling this evening.
    When I checked on the egress of her foot swelling I settled down next to her with cups of Lemon Zinger tea for both of us and broached, again, the subject of using the wheel chair. She admitted to me that "...using the wheelchair makes me feel..." she paused for moments, looking for the right word, and I didn't supply it, as I sometimes do when her brain is sluggish, "...like I need it." Her face looked like she was a child again, being made to swallow cod liver oil.
    I understand this. I knew she was going to say this. So I approached her from the perspective that it is (and, it is) entirely possible that she will progress, when her anemia has been successfully addressed, to the place where she will once again put the wheel chair aside. "But," I reminded her, "it was a gift. From [MCF's father (who died in January of this year)]. He knew how you feel about wheel chairs. He knew how you feel about using a wheel chair. He used to feel this way, too. But if you use the wheel chair when you're weak to get out and stay in touch with the world you so love to watch (and, I said, and meant, this fondly; it is this affection for life that keeps her alive), it will motivate you to want to get out more because it'll be so easy. You already know this. It even makes a dynamite walker/shopping basket. And, believe me, when your anemia is cured you will want to spend more time up and out. Consider it a gift, Mom. It will actually help you get stronger faster because it will make it easy, when you're weaker, to get out and the more you get out, the stronger you'll become and the more you'll want to get out."
    She could blearily see some sense to this.
    "Mom," I said, "I'm going to repeat this wisdom to both of us over and over and over. I know there will come a time when what is now considered a dangerous condition that can be reversed will be an inevitable condition that must be managed. But, we're not at that point, yet, with anything but your diabetes, and that management has been wise and has not decreased the quality of your life [It has increased it immeasurably, but I'm not sure she remembers this so I don't mention it, anymore; that is one fascinating fact about the forgetting of the old: they are innately suspicious of that which they have forgotten; almost as though forgetting has erased the "item" and its influence from their lives.], nor has it put a cramp in your style. Let's trust that this will apply to your anemia, too."
    I will, of course, if I think it's necessary in the near or far future, need to remind her of everything we said and, in a way, vowed, to our conjoined efforts on behalf of her life. I confessed this to her and she nodded, acknowledging that, yes, I am one of her more pedantic daughters (although not the only one), and will no doubt remind her. Ad morpheum.
    Then, she talked me into a bargain. Sly woman. Since, she postulated, her body was doing all these strange things right now, and was pretty much beyond our management until we discovered a cause, wouldn't this be a good time, before the colonoscopy, to cash in that See's gift certificate?
    That she was even considering the possibility that the colonoscopy might prove to be therapeutic pleased me. So did her wiliness. I laughed. And sighed. Yes, I said, it would. But, I'm not going to do it without you. You have to go, too. And, you have to go with the wheel chair. You've done it before, recently, at Target, I reminded her, and Walgreens, and you really enjoyed yourself.
    "I know," she agreed, in a way that let me know she was choosing to not remember this. "Okay. I'll go."
    "You'll have to," I confirmed. "No go, no candy. That's it."
    "You're a cruel task master," she teased, in her most melodramatic presentation, all the while smiling like someone who knows they are well appreciated, well cared for, and well loved.
    Good. I like sending her off to bed feeling this way, feisty and grateful for the opportunity to have her feistiness appreciated.
    Time for me to turn in. Colonoscopy lowdown (pun not intended, but appropriate) tomorrow.
- posted by gail rae @ 00:44   email...this post