I am very tired, tonight...
...but I wanted to post some significant events of the last few days.
    Yesterday, although I allowed Mom to rise late, I had a purpose. I decided the previous evening to begin in earnest my plan of getting her out at least once a day, as she is again showing signs of wanting to spend all day and all night in bed. So, I did, with much protest from her. I also bugged her about drinking fluids all day long. As we made our way through Pet Smart and Costco (both brief visits, the entire trip with oxygen, and me relenting at Costco and letting her sit out my search for our last of three items), I managed her cart handling (to which she tends not to pay attention) like a kindly drill sergeant. She wanted me to walk before her and she'd follow but I told her that when I walk ahead of her she doesn't watch her cart and where she's going, she watches me and slams into both things and people, so we'd walk together. We had one more place to go after Costco, the local grocery to pick up a few items. She was clearly tired though, and hungry, wanting the burger and onion rings I mentioned (I wasn't actually able to get her out until very late in the day...she balked the entire day away), so I allowed her to sit the trip out in the car, went for ice, was gone maybe 10 minutes.
    When I returned to the car she'd had a shitting accident. I wasn't surprised. On our way home I was low key about it. As I drove, though, internally my frustration level rose to a heretofore unreached peak. By the time we arrived home I was no longer a kindly drill sergeant, I was somewhat closer to the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. I decided I'd had it. I needed her cooperation to get her going and I wasn't going to take no for an answer.
    I hit her with my best shot. After I'd cleaned her and unloaded the car I directed her to the dining room table and ordered her to sit. The following is a paraphrased version of what I told her, no holds barred.
    "Look," I began. "I'm angry about this shitting accident, today. There was no excuse for it. It was, again, a result of your insistence on not moving, not even sitting upright, insisting on going to bed, insisting on walking away from full bathtubs, insisting on doing absolutely nothing to improve your life. I've had it. I am no longer sympathetic to your lethargy. I'm not interested in cleaning up any more of your shitting accidents unless they are absolutely necessary, and this one was absolutely unnecessary. There was no dietary reason for it. There is no disease that can be blamed for it. It was strictly a result of your lethargy. I'm not going to allow this anymore. From now on, until you've figured out what's good for you, I'm going to determine that. You think you're stubborn. Well, lady, let me tell you, when I get frustrated and angry I'm hell on wheels and you can set your watch by that. I'm not going to be sympathetic anymore. I don't care how stubborn you can be, I'm not going to let you crawl back into bed anymore. I'm not going to allow you to wallow in boredom. I'm not going to let you refuse to do everything that you need to do. I've had it up to here (indicating a level, with my hand, high over my head), so much so that I've been thinking over the last few days that maybe I need to put you in a nursing home. But, you know, that would only be good for me, not for you, so that's not going to happen. I can guarantee you though, from this day forward, if you have any ideas about wasting the rest of your life in bed and shortening it like that, you're going to wish you were in a nursing home. I've finally realized that you don't need sympathetic kindness, you need someone to kick your ass and I just pulled my boots on and I'm ready. When I say 'jump', from now on you had better jump or I'm going to kick you into a jump until it gets to the place where you want to jump on you're own. At this point you are perfectly capable of turning toward life, you're just being lazy now and I'm not going to let that continue. It's bad for you, it's bad for me, and it's stopping right here, right now. I'm tired of hounding you to drink water. I'm tired of losing those stupid battles we have over whether you're even going to stay up for the day. I'm tired of all this shit and I'm going to see to it that I pull both of us out of this mire or we're both going to die of my trying. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
    She had been staring at me the whole time rather than looking down or out the window as she usually does when I 'lecture' her. "Yes," she said, not meekly but with some surprise.
    "Do you understand that I don't care anymore whether you want to do what I tell you needs to be done? I'm going to see to it that you do it anyway and I'm going to expect you to start taking up the slack and becoming more active in the quality of your life?"
    "Yes." That was a firm, although still surprised, yes.
    "Do you understand that you're perfectly capable now of doing this and that I've had enough experience with you and your body in this last year to know when you are capable and when you're legitimately not?"
    "Yes." A clear, firm "yes", as though she was beginning to resolve some things within herself.
    "Do you remember how I always say when I'm trying to get you moving that I'm not asking you train for the marathon?"
    "Yes."
    "Well, guess what. I've changed my mind. Marathon training begins right now, and the marathon is your life. Do you get that?"
    "Yes."
    Today we started training for the marathon. It went well. I let her sleep in until almost 11:00 because she stayed up very late last night, as did I. Once she was up I kept her going all day. She bathed. I told her she's going to bathe everyday from now on. She tried to get out of going along on the errands we ran. I told her she didn't have a choice. She tried to take her oxygen off once during the trip. Instead of gently reminding her to put it back on I scolded her; not harshly but enough so that she didn't take it off the rest of the trip. I wasn't unreasonably hard on her. At one point, at the grocery, she needed to rest and I let her sit while I went searching for soy sauce. I forced her to become involved in the decisions we made about what version of Monopoly to buy (we decided we needed another game last night), what vegetables to use in dinner tonight, whether to get soy and make teriyaki sauce from scratch or to buy commercially prepared teriyaki (we decided on the former). I only had to remind her to "remain alert" once with the carts she pushed. From that point on she was alert. She didn't feel the need for a nap today but, frankly, I didn't give her a chance to think about a nap. I gave her a water bottle to carry in the car because she mouth breathes when she's on oxygen and it dries her out and I'll be damned if she didn't drink out of it on her own without being reminded. I depended on her to be as alert as she could be, and she was.
    At one point when we were discussing plans for the rest of the week and she started in on her childish, incessant "Why's" to try to get me to delete a few of the activities from our list I said, "Do you remember the conversation we had last night?"
    Her eyebrows arched and her vision focused. "Yes," she said.
    "Well then, you know the answer to that question. Don't ask me again."
    Amazingly, without me constantly bugging her to drink water, stay up, do this, do that, she was well hydrated this evening, had a hearty appetite, was lively and animated all day, looked good tonight. When she finally decided to go to bed she was genuinely tired, not bored.
    Maybe, just maybe, I'm finally figuring out how to handle this woman in her Ancient One years, this woman whom I love at least as much as I love myself. Maybe this time we're really on our way out of the morass of the last few years.
- posted by gail rae @ 01:03   email...this post