Memory Illusions, pt 1

My father's now in a nursing home. For now they're rehabbing and evaluating him. We don't know how he can gain a permanent bed.

He never knows where he is. His deteriorating mind has made him a refugee. He can't even recognize his home of fifty years. When he was there he would frequently ask when we were going home. Before my siblings and I realized he needed twenty-four hour supervision, he would call my us late at night and ask if he could get a ride home.

For his being in a nursing home, his disorientation is probably a mixed blessing.

Now he can't even use a phone and doesn't know the difference between the phone and the channel changer. I would dial for him, but he still couldn't use it. A helper pointed out he was holding the receiver against his jaw and not his ear. Then he'd complain he wasn't hearing the person.

Oddly enough, at home he was in danger of forgetting he couldn't walk, ignoring his painful legs, getting up and wandering late at night, and then having a serious fall. That's why I had to sleep over. I stopped him two weeks ago trying to go upstairs with his walker, thinking his bed was there. Yes, he got out of his current bed, set-up on the first floor, and was going to look for his "real" bed on the second. Earlier that night, he could barely stand up. I had to support him.

As he went back to bed, his knee crackled, the joint being bone-on-bone. He asked me "Did you hear that?" I answered, "Yes, that's why going upstairs was a bad idea." A lesson he was bound to forget the next day.

I hope that his experience of this is like a series of dreams, where pain is dulled and unremembered in the next episode, and every bad experience is quickly dissolved in the peace of sleep.

Ravages of Time

The day has come. My Dad couldn't even stand up this morning. He's in the hospital now. My sister said it best today. “I don't believe that a man who used to intimidate me with his intelligence now can't figure out how to turn around and sit in a chair.” Getting him into bed was like trying to give a non-pilot in cockpit instructions on landing a plane. I never notice how complex the operation is until you tell someone how to do it from scratch, and then have him do the opposite of what you say, because he's confused.

In a way, the timing is great. I'm injured and can't take care of him as I should, after I stumbled while carrying a box of groceries (I shop at Aldi, can you tell?). Something in the back of my leg went "Snap!" Though I didn't fall, I tore my hamstring. It's not too bad. Yet. I learned years ago that the initial hamstring injury might not be too bad, unless I re-injure and aggravate it. You'd be surprised how much routine movement is dependent on the hamstring muscles. I definitely can't ride the bus, not with those steep steps and motion changes. I have to be careful getting in or out of the car, walking stairs, carrying a weight, getting up from a chair, walking too fast, walking over uneven terrain. Any time I'm not paying attention, I can tear it worse, and even minor ones take weeks to heal.

I'll visit Dad tomorrow. He's being admitted. I'm not sure how long he'll be in.  He might be transferred to a rehab or nursing home. How the family will pay for that, I don't really know.

Writing during the Apocalypse

I have written 2,000 words in a day before. I'd love to say that I can do that every day, that I'm such a productive writer, the next Stephen King. Some writers are able to write 2,000 words and know they can take it to an editor. Despite my desire, I'm not that kind of writer. Not yet. Maybe I will someday be a writer like that, because by the time King was being published, he'd probably written three million words. I'm about halfway there.

Otherwise, the pulp market is dead. Publishers and agents now are very selective. Instead I have to outline, and it's finally beginning to payoff. I've been progressing about a chapter a day on the novel, but I have to do about the same thing on a few short stories. 

In between time, I'm taking care of my father a few nights a week. He has Lewy Body Dementia, which is what Robin Williams was diagnosed with before his suicide. It's not Alzheimer's, but it's just as bad. He's losing his coordination, his ability to walk. He hallucinates some bizarre things. Like when he was watching the Republican Convention he thought it was taking place in the living room. Another example, he sometimes thinks he's in somebody else's house and asks when we're going home. He generally remembers who everybody is, with some exceptions, i.e thinks my sister is also his deceased wife, which is creepy. His long-term memory is basically intact.

There's one thing you don't hear much about taking care of dementia patients, and that is you never know when they're going to lose another essential simple ability. Such as my father can't get into bed without detailed instructions. When the helper tells him to side-step, shows him how to do it, he steps backward. Or I tell him to turn, and he turns the walker but doesn't turn his feet. Or lately, I tell him to step with his right foot, I tap his right leg, and he moves his left foot. He's unable to tell me which leg is being tapped. He's also gotten to the point where he needs the wheelchair to walk from his chair twenty feet to his bed.

Now that people can grow much older Alzheimer's and other dementia are devastating the population. We have this wondrous medical science that can keep our bodies alive while our minds decay and die. It's a zombie apocalypse with very mellow zombies. It's still a horror story.

More of the same, but a little different.

I've been busy over the last six months, which is why you haven't see very many blog entries. My father has dementia, and other profound ailments that have rendered him unable to walk. My siblings and I cared for my Dad, me staying overnight with him a few nights a week. Also, I'm available for any other times when my siblings can't cover it.

    Dad cannot be left alone now. These days he can't even shift himself in bed, I have to move him. He's literally helpless as a baby. The dementia makes him hallucinate, and sometimes forgets he can't walk. I know that sounds weird, but if one of us doesn't watch him, he's liable to walk up the steps to go to bed and instead have a terrible fall. His mind simply ignores or blocks the pain, even though his one knee is bone on bone. With his heart, doctors have ruled out any knee replacement surgery.

    I became disillusioned with my novel and changed my whole approach to writing. Now I outline everything. (Yes, this too.) An outline is necessary to corral my imagination. Description being important in fiction, as everybody knows, my problem is writing descriptions that become plot points. Then I feel obligated to describe it every scene thereafter. That's turning description into a set piece, then turning the set piece into a plot point. Or you could think of it as taking a wrecking ball to the book. As a result, my novel went in many directions and becomes unwieldy. The one draft was over 600 pages, the second was on a pace to reach 800 before I quit. I proved I'm not a lazy writer, but I've said that before. It wasn't that I was too lazy to outline, either. I couldn't make an outline work prior to this. Yet, after writing every day for years, outlining has been very easy.

    I am going to get book done, along with all the short stories I have in the pipeline. Maybe I became discouraged for a while, I admit, but I've come through it and I'm ready to turn pro.