It seems to be working.
    Mom always makes a bathroom run early in the morning a few hours before she awakens. I'm usually up and here (if I'm not here I'm on my morning walk) when her initial morning-up-and-down occurs and usually have her change her pad before heading back for bed. This morning I am pleased to report that giving her two Detrol yesterday, one in the morning and one in the evening, and only occasionally monitoring her water intake seems to work for both of us. She developed a little noticeable dehydration last night and I had her drink an extra 10 oz. glass of water but other than that I left her alone. She did not have unusual swelling in her feet, legs and belly last night. She did not experience unusual water shedding while she slept. Her dehydration level this morning before heading back for bed was normal. I think we've finally hit on a solution to her hydration problem.
    As I observe old age happening to my mother a myriad of mental videos flick through my mind, miscellaneous tableaux from a jumble of sources:

• The societal habit of some historically earlier societies of allowing the encumbrances of old age to inevitably slip the Ancient One further and further from the community, both socially and physically, until death overtakes the one left behind;
• Images, both recent and past, of older people desperately seeking ways to circumvent the 'ravages' of old age in a variety of ways;
• Images that define how our bodies and minds might evolve to handle the certainty of longer, healthier lives;
• Speculations about what hands-on evolutionary tactics we will consciously devise to, literally, change the face of old age;
• Considerations of our efforts to extend the timeline of life, change our expectations of aging and possibly eradicate death.

    It hasn't been long since I thought that staving off death was a tricky decision when it comes to old age or a variety of chronic illnesses that relentlessly and successively reduce one's quality of life until death is inevitable. I've wondered about the wisdom of 'artificially' handling conditions that would naturally promote death, three of these being loss of appetite, loss of thirst and the tendency of the body to flush fluid much more quickly than when one is younger. It has seemed to me the unquestionable 'wisdom' of Nature that these conditions occur. As I watch my mother continue her life, though, as I work to 'artificially' alleviate condition after condition that commonly plague the old, I am beginning to consider that what we do as a species to postpone old age and death is, in fact, so much a part of our conscious nature that it must be considered a natural act. What, after all, is more natural than evolution, yet evolution has devised extraordinary changes in what we, as a species, consider less sentient, less self-controlled beings. How unnatural would it have been considered for the first water breather that found itself in a situation where it needed to breathe air to live to make internal changes to its lungs in order to handle oxygen out of water? How unnatural would it have seemed that an earthbound creature would find itself needing to take to the air and devise a way to do this? Nature is a litany of unnatural acts taken to survive beyond threatened lives and environments. It could be speculated that human old age, at this time, is a 'natural' condition whose environment is threatened (which it clearly appears to be; we are, as a species, moving inexorably from the honoring of old age to the trivialization of old age to the eradication of old age). We have not reached critical mass, yet, in the move to eradicate old age but we're headed there. The typical mental and physical manifestations of old age are close to being considered 'unnatural' as treatment to spur their reversal and elimination comes closer to actualization.
    We're not there yet, though. Sometimes, I wish we were. I know that, however edifying I find my mother's ancient mental flights and physical trials, she does not find peace with them. She is, by nature, accepting (sometimes too accepting, but only by habit) but she does not talk herself into believing that any of these conditions are preferred. Because she is still [At this age!] wobbling back and forth between approaching her mortality and denying it I have to surmise that accepting one's 'inevitable' decline and mortality is not anymore 'natural' than resenting and fighting it. The old tell us, in order to celebrate their stamina, that being old is not for sissies. In the next breath, they also tell us that being old is hell and anything that promises to alleviate and/or reverse the process is welcome.
    Dylan Thomas observed that no one should "gentle into that good night" and encouraged old age to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." It seems, rather than a radical suggestion, his poem is an observance of our innate desire to continue; to turn one's back on the boatman at the River Styx. As a species we seem to be approaching the possibility of this strategy working; of learning how to keep that boatman from grabbing us by the scruff of the neck as we turn away and fight his hauling us into the boat, fare or not.
    I'm beginning to think, as I continue this adventure with my mother, that acceptance of the debilities of old age is no longer 'natural' for us. Perhaps it never has been. At the very least I know that the old themselves are rarely accepting of their condition or their status in society, even as many of them reluctantly give in and "put on a happy face" in an attempt to prolong the sociality of their former 'ages'.
    Evolution, whether or not apparently conscious, is always about expanding options and gaining a stronger, longer foothold on life, whether it be on an individual or community (i.e., species) level. In the case of the cockroach or the mushroom that was discovered a few years ago to be one organism rather than a community of like organisms and, thus, the largest organism we have yet discovered, both individual and community are favored. I am beginning to think that the only thing that is 'natural' about old age is to extend life by attacking the processes of breakdown associated with old age. I know that eventually, because she is old now and not 50 or 100 years in the future, my mother will lose that battle; that, regardless of the technical term used to define what snatches her from physical life, it will be Old Age that finally raises its standard over her battleground. In the meantime I will continue to take every opportunity on her behalf to keep her flag at full flying mast because I know that's what life wants and, being alive, that's what she wants. It's only natural.
- posted by gail rae @ 10:14   email...this post