Posts tagged ‘Growing old’

As a PCA (Personal Care Assistant) I work with many different people. I don’t have a specific set schedule but I fill in for regular pcas when they can’t make one of their scheduled days. In the process I come in contact with people that have a lot of physical and mental issues. Sometimes they have problems coming to terms with what is happening to them.

I am not a psychologist. I can only listen to them and perhaps offer an opinion if they ask. For example, I have one client who seems to have been hit with a lot of things at once. Instead of being able to work on one problem at a time he is overwhelmed with trying to come up with solutions for all of them.

• These are some of his current issues:Just this past Christmas he needed an operation on his lower back because his spinal cord was being constricted by cartilage. Ever since he has been wheelchair bound. He is able to move himself around his apartment but if he goes outside he needs someone else to push him. This is very different from when, as a carpenter, he would be up and down ladders all day building houses.

• His brother died last year. This was the last of his siblings. Something like this can really emphasize your mortality.

• He and his wife have spent the last of their money. Now they are living on her social security check. This means that they have had to move from a decent 2 room apartment to a smaller 2 room subsidized apartment. This has the affect of making him feel like a failure at taking care of his wife.

• More and more medicine has been prescribed for him lately. Now he is suffering from side effects. For example, some of them can cause short term memory loss. And now we find that he will repeat a question over and over again because he has forgotten that he has asked it already. Now certainly this can be the start of Alzheimer’s but when several meds suggest this as a side effect, it is something to look at. But for him it is just another sign of losing his independence. He has to rely on people to take care of him.

• He still owns a car but since the fall he has not been able to drive it. It just sits in the driveway. His pcas all do his shopping for him now. If his wife needs to go on an errand she will call their neighbor. They are also paying too much in car insurance. His decision after a lot of soul searching and talking to his wife is to sell the car. She told me that when they discussed it she cried and perhaps he did too. The man has been driving since he was 10 years old on his father’s farm. That’s 75 years. Yet another sign of lost independence.

• And most recently he complained about pain and swelling in his knee. It appears that he has “water on the knee”. He doesn’t remember falling or bruising it so the cause is a mystery. I was contracted to take him to a doctor. It wasn’t as bad as everyone had thought and the decision was to put him on physical therapy for a couple of weeks. This was more evidence of him getting old and his body failing.

With everything hitting him at once like this he has become very unhappy. I can’t say that he is suffering from depression. That will be something that a doctor would have to determine but I know he dreads ending up in a nursing home. If that happens, he says, he will get into bed, turn his face to the wall, and wait for the end.

I have heard a lot of people say things like:

“Come on, he is in his 80′s now. He should expect these things to be happening.”

“He is lucky to even be alive at this age.”

“He should just slow down and accept any help that is offered.”

“You know if I was his age I’d love to be going into assisted living.”

But I’ll tell you a secret. These people will say this now but when they actually get that age they will be resistant to the change as well. Why? Because they will find that they are losing their independence. They won’t have any control anymore over the things that they do or how they spend their money. Or worst of all, keeping their bodies from falling apart.

This is where my client is at. He has gone from being a strong robust independent man to an invalid. His wife is also in her 80s and she has been declining so she cannot help him very much. This means that he has to rely on strangers to take care of him. He has been having a very difficult time coming to terms with all of this.

When I am with him we get to laugh a lot. To him I am “the kid” even though I’m in my 50s. I do as much as I have to to get him where he needs to be but otherwise I let him do as much as he can himself. And I listen to his stories. He’s got a lot of them.

When I am his age I hope I have lots of stories to tell my son who is 9 now. Max has been trying to make sure I stay healthy.

He gets me working out constantly: “Max, how many times do you think I can run around the track??”

He is after me to lose weight: “Come on Max, I’m not that heavy!!”

But you know what, I can see myself in 30 years being in the same place my client is. I see it as part of my job to help him transition from unhappiness to acceptance and perhaps be able to take a more active interest in life again.

I have been working on my mother’s house.  Today’s job was “the boys” room; “the boys” are my brother and me, when we were growing up.  There is a lot of work to be done.  My mother has decided that she is getting older.  She is in her 80s and wants to make sure the house is ready to sell once she is gone.

But really, she has a good 10-15 years left; her mom died when she was 98.  The real reason is that she would like to move in with my sister who she has been taking care of on weekends for a number of years now.  She drives an hour each way and then moves my sister to and from her wheelchair, into the bathroom, in and out of bed, and feeds and dresses her.   Mom has a lot of energy but she worries about my sister during the week.  Even though sis has personal care attendants, mom would still like to know everything is okay.

I’m not in a rush to get her out; she has been here a long time.  The woman I bought my house from had lived there for 50 years.  Her husband had died the year before and the children decided that she couldn’t manage it alone.  I found out later that she was very unhappy after she moved; she misses the house badly.

Similarly the woman in the house next door lived there 54 years.  I got to know her a bit before she left; or really, her children moved her too for the same reason.  Her husband died at Christmas, they had her out by the end of the following summer.  And she has been unhappy ever since too.

Because I’ve been doing the work at my mother’s house it has given me a chance to think about it.  Do they miss their homes?  Or is it all the memories they have of being there?  They have a lot of memories built up over 50 years.

I know because each time I work on part of the house it brings them up for me.  Today I was working on my bedroom.  The rug is all frayed and may have to come out.  I’m not surprised, it was installed 40 years ago and even though it still looks good it is falling apart.  The pad underneath is mostly dust.  But I have a lot of memories in here, reading and playing with friends.  During the 1960s I had black light posters, black lights, and grave stone rubbings all around the room when I was in my dark period.  Would this be called “Goth” now?

Each time I do some work in the den I remember how my dad and I converted the garage into it.  It happened when I was about 13 and the big memory I have is knocking a hole in the back wall when my dad was at work.  I knew that was about the spot he wanted to put in a sliding glass door.  I had never measured and planned; I just got moving.  When he got home he was a little shocked but he set about fixing my shoddy workmanship.  He cleared the hole, sized it to the door, and patched the rest.

We also…  I could keep going and talk about everything we did in the basement and the porch we added on the other side of the house, etc, etc but this is about my mother.  She has a lot of memories, 50 years of them, just like the other women.  She watched her kids grow up here, one daughter got married here, her husband died here.  The way I look at it, her mother lived in her last home for almost 40 years.  The difference is that she lived with her son and his family; my mom is alone and the house is big.

I don’t want to be like the kids who moved their mothers out.  I want her to stay as long as she wants.  Would she miss the house?  Absolutely.  Does she have a lot of memories?  Positively.  As far as I’m concerned she will leave when she is ready and I’ll support her decision whatever it is.

So I continue to work on her home…

Hey parents, you know the drill. It is the end of the school year. Time for the field trips. How many of your kids are going to spend a day at an amusement park with their classmates?

Last Monday my son Max’s van picked him up as usual and took him to school. The kids were there long enough to check in and then the whole school went off to Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire. My wife and I met them at the park; hooray for me, we are chaperones today. I’ll get to ride on some rides!

It started out with a nice surprise. Because all these kids have disabilities they got special wrist bands that allowed them to jump the lines. The purpose of this is to help these kids who have zero tolerance when it comes to being patient. With the bands they go in the exit, get a choice of seats and then are allowed to ride twice before moving on to the next ride.

There are 7 kids in Max’s class; my wife and I took him and his buddy Bobby with us, the rest went with the two teachers. As we walked through the park they set their sights on a ride called “The Corkscrew”. It is one of those new wave roller coasters. It is not very long but it is very fast; and you can guess by its name that one section spirals like a corkscrew so there are moments when you are whipped upside down and side to side. I haven’t had the urge to try this one yet.

The boys, not understanding the wrist bands, got in line first. They moved up the ramp and inside the waiting area too quickly for us to stop them. Are you kidding Max was too excited; this was the first time he was tall enough to go on this ride. Once inside we lost track of them and we had to wait for what seemed like a half an hour (it was probably only ten minutes) before they were on the car and finished the ride. Now we were able to explain the use of the bands and sent them through the exit for their second ride. When they came out they were in heaven; best ride they had ever been on! (Actually it was only the first today.)

This time Max and Bobby had a difference of opinion on which would be the next ride. Max went in one direction and his friend disappeared. We were frantic for several minutes before we found him in line for a ride which was around the corner and down the block. We had to speak to him severely because he just couldn’t understand the problem; so he disappeared, so what? And we told him “so what”. He was our responsibility and if he couldn’t stick with us he would have to go back with the rest of the class.

Once that was out of the way they settled on their next ride. You’ll notice a pattern during the day; even though they are only 8 years old there would be no kiddie rides for them, they wanted the biggest and scariest ones. “The Boston Tea Party” was next. It was based on “The Log Flume” which we got later. It was a long log that sat at least 10 people and worked like a roller coaster. It travels up a high ramp before circling around and dropping down a very steep chute into a “river” of water. Everyone got soaked, the riders and even the spectators. When the boys came out they were sopping wet and because we didn’t have towels they had to air dry.

They continued to ride the crazy rides and because I was a chaperone I had to watch and make sure they were okay. This meant no riding! I was itching to get on the rides and feeling frustrated just walking around the park. The worst part of it was when they chose to ride “The Yankee Cannonball”. This is one of those large old wooden rollercoasters and it is fun. No it doesn’t have any track that goes upside down but it is at least 4 times longer than “The Corkscrew” and it has several peaks and valleys. It is enough to give you a lot of jolts…and it is my favorite ride in the park. I got to watch them ride it twice!

At one thirty Bobby and his class go back to school but Max stayed with us. This was what I was waiting for; Max won’t ride by himself he has to drag his dear old dad along with him. (Read BIG smile on my face!) What does he want to ride first? It is his dad’s favorite “The Yankee Cannonball”. It was more bone jarring than I had remembered. I found that I had to brace myself slightly off the seat as we shot down into the valleys, otherwise I would get tossed around like a rag doll. And my boy was sitting along beside me as I rode!

When it was over the attendant leaned over and asked Max if he wanted to continue. Can you guess the answer? After the second time I felt like I had just gotten off one of those astronaut centrifuges. I had to check to make sure my hair wasn’t standing on end. Shucks, it wasn’t…where’s the next ride.

Max chose “The Log Flume”. This is a smaller version of “The Boston Tea Party”; our “log” has 2 seats which will take 4 people but it was just the 2 of us today. With Max up in front and me behind him in the first seat we floated down a river and went up and down some small hills. It gave us the impression we were on a nice relaxing kiddie ride but watch out! It had a ramp just like the other one but in this case at the top there was a photographer taking pictures. When we reached him I had a change of heart, “I want to get off!” He smiled, “too late” he said as we sailed off the edge. It was a blast and I had had no intention of getting off!

When it was finally time to go home we hopped on the Ferris Wheel which was next to the exit. As we got to the top Max turned to me and told me a secret, he is afraid of heights. This was a surprise, I hadn’t realized any of this stuff bothered him. He bit his nails while we went around and around. I tried taking his mind off it by pointing at the tops of the trees which were below us. “Oh wait I can see our car in the parking lot, see that tiny thing over there?”

In the end nothing I said calmed him…I can’t understand why. When we got off he was more than ready to say goodbye to the park. But one thing we have found is that all of this excitement tends to rev him up and it is several hours before he calms down enough to stop ricocheting off the walls. He did go to sleep early that night which was great for us since my wife and I were exhausted.

And oh by the way, I bet you thought I was talking about Max or Bobby when I named this post “The Daredevil”. Nope, it was about this 53 year old guy with multiple sclerosis who really feels like he is 8 years old again when he is with his son.

I recently came across this quote by BullsandBeavers on Twitter:

“We don’t stop hiking because we grow old; we grow old because we stop hiking”.

As I thought about this it dawned on me that there are several people in my family I have observed that follow this statement. I won’t include on this list the ones who have died young like my Dad who died of cancer just shy of his 60th birthday.

My Dad’s mom stopped “hiking” in her 60s. She lived in a motor home in Florida for several years but instead of enjoying the weather and the people she watched television. When she was in her 70s she moved to Massachusetts. She lived in an assisted living place by herself and rarely saw her neighbors. Just like in Florida she mostly just watched television. She also would just stare out of the window and as time went on she starting seeing things. She believed that there were people running across the roof of the building across the street trying to find a way to get at her. She suffered a couple of mild strokes and alzheimer’s; and she died at 77.

My mother’s mother on the other hand never intended to stop “hiking”. When she was in her 80s and living in Massachusetts she would spend one month a year in Hawaii, another month in Florida, and a third on Cape Cod. She did this every year until she was 90 when she stopped the Hawaii trips. Then two years later she fell and broke her hip. She also started losing her eyesight due to macular degeneration. This ended the Florida trips. When she was 95 she stopped going to Cape Cod. It was at this time that it became apparent that she was suffering from alzheimer’s. The “hiking” was over. She died when she was 98.

My father-in-law is in his 80s. He rarely goes outside. Like my father’s mom he just watches television. His lethargy has progressed to the point that in the afternoons he watches it from his bed. Reminds me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the grandparents all just lie in bed and the family waits on them hand and foot. I don’t know when he stopped “hiking”.

Even though my mother is the same age as he is she still “hikes”. I mean she goes dancing several times a week. She still mows and rakes her own lawn. She goes on several trips a year, usually cruises. And she takes care of my disabled sister. Like her mother she has no plans on slowing down; she is having too much fun.

Interestingly enough the ones that are still out enjoying life are young. Many people believe they are 15 to 20 years younger than they really are. Conversely the ones that have given up look very old.

You can see it elsewhere as well. Benjamin Franklin was 84 when he died. This was at a time when people generally didn’t live passed their 50s. Both Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were 93 when they died. None stopped “hiking” though Reagan struggled with Alzheimer’s the last ten years of his life.

Many folks will read this and say “it’s all in the genes”. I believe there are many factors and genes are just one of them. Wayne Dyer in his new book says that genes are just an excuse and they can be overcome. Another factor is how you treat aging. Is it just a part of life or is it a time of death? The ones that consider it the former continue to do the things that they love. They also continue to take care of themselves; they don’t give up. If it is a time to wait for death then the “hiking” stops; there is no point in enjoying anything anymore.

I like that my mom is still going strong. I want to emulate her. I don’t want to spend my time lying in bed waiting for life to end. My son is 46 years younger than I am. That means that I will at least be in my 70s when he gets married. You know what? I plan on having fun with his babies and watching them grow. And perhaps like my mother I’ll be at my grandchildren’s weddings. I’m going to be “hiking” forever. How about you?