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I like to
hear from you, whether it is to say "Hi!", |
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© Jean Donahue 2001 Part 5 |
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The next day Eric and Chandra brought their little darling over to see us. Mom and Dad both enjoyed seeing their 1 month old great granddaughter. Of course, so did I. She was precious. I called the home health care agency we the previous fall and made arrangements for help again. They did an evaluation and started help within a couple days. I expected the good service I had received before, but it was a different nurse and it didn't work out that way. Dad had a physical therapist and occupational therapist as well as nurse and aids. This was the first time my old neighbor, Mary, helped. I called around and changed agencies. The next agency had a physical therapist that was able to help Dad improve a lot. He could get around and walk much better. However, Dad had a stroke, and was in the hospital about 5-6 days. The third day he was in the hospital the doctor had a catheter put in. A catheter is painful for a man. I asked around and found that the only reason they did that was because it was easier for the nurses and it cost the hospital less money. Dad didn't know where he was and he kept pulling on it, so they tied him down. J.D., my nephew, came over and was a great help. I was ready to take Dad out of that hospital without the doctor’s permission. J.D. called a doctor he had that was good and he did an evaluation. That doctor said there was no reason for Dad to have a catheter. Dad’s doctor did finally admit that he usually put one in someone like Dad because it saved the nurses a lot of work and the hospital money. They took it out and hooked the bed up with something that would ring if Dad tried to get out of bed. This worked quite well but the nurses did have to make sure Dad went to the bathroom, etc. The day before Dad was discharged I took Mom into the gift shop as we left the hospital. They had some socks that Dad liked, the ones with grippers on the bottom so that you wouldn't slip when you walk without shoes, and I wanted to make sure I bought several pairs. Mom started getting upset. She didn't know where she was and didn't know why she should be there. She started saying she had to get out of there, that I couldn’t keep her there and various other things that didn’t sound good, so I hurriedly paid for the socks and left before someone got the idea that I was mistreating her. The next day I took Dad home. It seemed like it had been a month instead of a few days. I finally had Dad home where I could take care of him the way he should be taken care of. No one would mistreat him again, at least if I had anything to do with it. Between the experiences I had in Texas and here I hoped I would never have to put Mom or Dad in the hospital again. While I was at home I needed to find something to do so I decided to ask relatives for recipes to make a cookbook for our family. I spent a lot of time, telephone calls and letters on that book, but I finally finished it and mailed it out to the family. Dad enjoyed watching that project. One morning I was sitting on the couch that made into a bed feeding Mom and at the same time reading the newspaper. Mom was at a stage of Alzheimer's where she talked all the time, but it didn't have any meaning. That morning she started getting louder than usual, so Hobbes jumped up on the bed and started pawing the newspaper. As soon as I put the paper down and paid attention to Mom he jumped down on the floor again and was content. Margret, Dad's niece, worked as an aid with one of the agencies and came over to help a couple of times. She did it more because we were relatives. She lived about an hour away and she wanted to help her family. She did a terrific job and was very good with people with Alzheimer's. Toward the end of summer Dad asked why we didn't go to Canada. Was it because we didn't have any money left. I told him that wasn't the problem. He had a stroke and that kept us from going to Canada. Whenever he had strokes he didn't remember them. When his mind started working better he would then ask why we didn't do this or that or what happened. Donella and Dick came over to build a ramp to the front door of the house. They got it about half done, but it was taking a lot longer than they expected and they had to leave. Eric and Chandra were coming the next day and they finished it. I took care of Tori while they worked on it. It was a very strong, stable ramp. Neither Mom nor Dad could do much at that time, but Dad could carry on a conversation and Mom could joke like a little child. Dad was always very close to Eric and both Mom and Dad enjoyed seeing Eric, Chandra and Tori. One day after going to a Senior Meal at Park Fair Mom got a little more confused than normal. Mom and Dad were both in the back seat of my car and Mom started pounding on the window, looking at people in other cars and yelling, "Help. Help. Let me out of here." Thank God for childproof locks. I wasn’t sure I would be able to take Mom to the meal again and told Dad we had to really be careful because we didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. We took good care of Mom and we had plenty of help but other people might get concerned if they saw her do that again. After that he spent more time talking to her when we were in the car. Dad improved quite a lot was able to walk without his cane most of the time. In fact he improved so much that I started to think about going to Texas again. I hadn't cancelled the reservation because I hoped Dad would improve.
We were going to a senior meal one day and I took Mom out to the car, telling Dad to sit there on the couch until I got back. I came back in and Dad wasn't there. I walked back through the house and found him on the floor in the bedroom. He was all right but said that he wanted his cowboy hat and went to get it. He didn't take his cane, lost his balance and fell. It took us 15-20 minutes to get him up off the floor because he was so stiff that he couldn't bend like a normal person. We finally got him up, out to the car and to the meal. When we moved Mom from the couch that was made into a bed to a hospital bed she got one bed sore on her back within a few days. I had never seen one before and was horrified at how bad it was. I had Hammer Medical Supply deliver one of those foam pads they use in hospitals and I put that under her sheet. They used this "skin" type of dressing and antibiotic ointment on it and I had her lay on her sides more. It finally did heal. I learned all I could about bed sores and made sure that it didn't happen again. The mattress they use on hospital beds are a little hard and have plastic over them. There was no way for her skin to breath. The last 2 years we were in Granger some friends stopped in to see my parents. Usually it was with the delivery of meals on wheels type of thing. They were volunteers that picked up the food from the nursing home and delivered the meals to people in Granger that needed them. Chuck was one of Dad's students when Dad was Superintendent here in Granger and he made a special point to come in and talk to Dad every time. The volunteers were people that had known Dad since 1947 when we moved to Granger. Some were younger than my parents and their kids were in his school, and some were the kids in his school. Most of them had retired by now. In the fall Dad had pneumonia. The agency had an x-ray unit brought to the house to see how bad Dad was. Moving him was a problem since he was so sick and they didn't want to if they didn't have to. They said they could even bring oxygen to the house, IV's if they needed to, etc. I was sure glad I didn't have to argue with them about putting him in the hospital. I didn't want to have to bring up that subject if I didn't need to. They seemed to understand that he needed to stay home. I did tell them that when he was in the hospital he thought he was dying. When he was young people went to the hospital to die. They didn't even have babies in the hospital back then. Dr. Check prescribed a new antibiotic that worked miracles. Dad took it by mouth and within 24 hours he was much better. Later the nurse said that if he wouldn’t have improved within 24 hours she would have insisted that he be admitted to the hospital.
I finally realized I couldn't use normal pajamas for Dad. He is too stiff and it was going to hurt something if we kept putting him in his pajamas the normal way. I cut the backs out of the tops, leaving the collar attached. Then we could easily put the collar over his head, and his arms into the arms from the front. I just stopped putting his pajama bottoms on him as he always wore Depends and was covered with blankets. No one could tell he wasn’t completely dressed when they visited him. Dad had a bad case of pneumonia about 3 times that winter. The medicine Dr. Check prescribed cleared it up very fast. In 24 hours he always improved considerably. By this time Mom laid down all the time. She couldn't stand up any longer so we would pick her up, pivot her around and sit her in the wheel chair or commode. Dad was in bed most of the time but did get up in his wheel chair and commode when he could. We picked him up and pivoted him around the same way we did Mom. We exercised his legs and arms but he wasn't strong enough to stand or walk. All the time we were home Donella tried to come over about once a month. She was married and wasn't free to be here all the time. I tried to make sure everyone was updated on what was happening. Most of the help was very good but some were very bad in many ways. I had things stolen, people that didn't want to do anything, and people that would have hurt Mom and Dad if I would have been gone. When Mom or Dad said the water was too hot I stopped the aids and checked it myself. They would check the heat of the water with their gloves on and it was hotter than they thought. I checked this out myself. When I put on gloves the water felt much colder than when I took the gloves off. Some tried to roughly pull my parents up by one arm, and many other things. One time an aid was washing Dad when his back broke. This aid tried his best to do a good job and he was very upset about it. Dad had to lay on his back for several weeks, through Christmas, then had to be careful. Physical therapy helped afterwards. I had given my Christmas tree and decorations to my kids, so we were without a tree. The first part of that December I went to a Des Moines K-Mart and bought a Christmas Tree and all the decorations. This was the first time since they retired 26 years earlier that Mom and Dad would spend a Christmas here and I wanted them to enjoy it as much as possible. Mom and Dad were both sleeping in the living room as well as me. Dad was in his hospital bed, Mom in her hospital bed, and I slept on the couch that was made into a bed. I decided that since they were both living back in their childhood, I wanted the tree to be decorated like they decorated Christmas trees at that time. All I knew was how the trees were when I was small, but Mom always said they used that size bulbs as long as she could remember until they invented the little lights. In two hours I drove to Des Moines, bought an artificial tree, balls, lights, then drove back to Granger. A couple days later I drove to the place Theresa worked and bought an angel for the top. Theresa came out and helped me assemble and decorate the tree. I wasn't too far off on the amounts to buy. I only had 3-4 extra boxes of balls and a couple extra strands of lights. It could have been worse. However, I used so many that you could hardly see the tree. Since Dad was in bed and couldn't move because of his back, he enjoyed looking up at the angel. I bought a blood pressure machine to monitor blood pressures, but Mom wouldn't let us check hers. I bought a stethoscope, and anything else we needed to monitor Mom and Dad's health. My parents had used electric blankets for many years. Their bodies were old, their circulation was poor and they were cold all the time. I had to really watch that they didn't get cold. They went through several electric blankets. I did make sure they weren't too hot, though. Those electric blankets made their lives more comfortable. After we were in Granger permanently, Dad needed to be able to walk and exercise. He couldn't go outside because the weather kept making it impossible. I moved furniture in the living room around, and the table over, and made a straight path from the front of the house to the back. That worked quite well.
We kept trying to give Mom a doll because she like was a little girl and sometimes it helped people with Alzheimer's. She kept throwing it on the floor and finally Hobbes decided to take care of it for her. Hobbes lays on it, plays with it and generally does all the things he should to take care of it for her. Shortly after Mom was admitted to Hospice Dad had a skin biopsy on his leg and then the cancer taken off. At the same time Eric, Chandra and Tori came to visit again. They stayed with Theresa and Larry, Jr. and visited their Dad and us from there.
On Thursday, June 25 Eric and Chandra came out for one last visit before they left to go back to Kingsport, Tennessee. Mom started having trouble breathing shortly before they arrived but she enjoyed watching Tori, who was around a year and a half old at the time. Mom had trouble breathing for several hours so I called Mary and then Thelma. Mom had trouble breathing like this before but only for short periods of time. Mary is a friend that helped with Mom and Dad and Thelma is a nurse and friend that had volunteered for Hospice. Thelma checked Mom then went back home. She came over several times that day. One of the times she asked Mom is she wouldn't like to go home to be with the Lord. Mom looked at her and said very passionately, "Oh yes. I sure would." I called Donella a few times, but she didn’t think she needed to rush over since she had been here a few days earlier. I was standing talking to Tori when Chandra said my name, then looked over at Mom. Mom was trying to get to me so I went over to her and sat down beside her bed. I held her hand for a while and she relaxed. Eric and Chandra were about to leave when Mom stopped breathing. We were all in shock. After 90 years, longer than we were alive, she wasn’t alive any longer. I told Dad and got him out of bed into his wheel chair to see her before they took her away. Dad couldn't sit up very long as it tired him out so much. Eric was working in a funeral home in Tennessee at the time and took over and made the calls for me. I was so glad he was there. Eric called Theresa, the funeral home, my sisters and anyone else that needed called. Theresa was working and immediately left to come out. Larry, Jr., Theresa's husband, couldn't come out because of his job. The funeral home had trouble getting someone to come out from Dallas County. They needed the coroner or someone that could do that job and they couldn't find anyone. We talked to them again, and again, but they couldn't get anyone out here. It took about 3-4 hours before someone came out. I got Dad up several times to look at Mom. The funeral home kept apologizing, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. Finally the funeral director came out to wait. He and Eric talked "shop", and Theresa and Chandra talked. No one was extremely upset, but you could tell Dad was facing the finality of it. He had known for years that this would happen, but facing the finality of it was a different situation. They finally came out to pick Mom up. As they took Mom outside Pop said that Grandma had "lived a good, long life - and that she was a good woman." Dad wanted cremation and we only had 48 hours for anyone to get here to view her. After a while everyone left and Dad was asleep. It was best. I couldn't sleep very well for 2-3 nights. Facing death was quite a shock to my system.
Donella and I met with the minister on Friday and made the arrangements for the memorial service on Saturday morning. Doreen and Joe flew in from Florida and the rest of the family lived here in Iowa. We took Dad to the funeral home, then to the service. It was extremely difficult since someone had to physically pick him up (arms around his waist, face to face) and put him in the car, then get him out each time. It took 2-3 men. I printed Mom's picture off from the computer for the service and made the memorial cards to give people. Dad thought a picture that Mom had drawn many years ago was her house when she was little, so I scanned it and put on the memorial card. After the service we brought Dad back to the house and everyone left because he was so exhausted. Dad hadn't slept well since Mom died.
Monday Eric and Chandra came out again to say good-bye. "Pop," Eric said, "we have to leave in a little bit, but I'm going to buy some Coke to take with us first. I'll be right back." As Eric walked away from Dad's bed the telephone rang. It was a worried friend saying the radio had just reported a tornado in Granger. I looked out the window and there was a large, dark, foreboding, churning area headed straight toward us. Compared to the rest of the sunny sky it looked extremely dark and dangerous, but it was too big to be a tornado. There could be a tornado inside it, though. I've heard of that happening in storms. I told Eric he should pull the car around to the back yard instead of getting the pop, but he didn't want to do that. As soon as he was at Casey's the storm hit. It is only about 1 block from here. I looked out the window and saw the neighbors chairs flying through the air, horizontally. Dad's bed was next to a window in the living room so Chandra and I moved Dad's hospital bed to the kitchen as much as possible. We didn't want a window to break and scatter glass all over him. There was no way we could take him to the basement. He wasn't strong enough to stand on his feet and we weren't strong enough to carry him down the steps. We'd have to take our chances on the main floor. When he was finally situated the phone rang. That's unbelievable that the phone is still working. The electricity is off, the wind is loud with lots of dirt in it, you can't even see a foot away as you look out the window, chunks of things keep hitting the house all over, and hitting the windows. I wondered why our windows didn't break. The telephone cables must be underground. There was no other way the phone could still have worked. It was Eric telling me he was at Casey's and that they were all in a back room away from the window. That storm seemed to stay forever. I thought a tornado came and went fast. I wondered what kind of a storm it was. Finally, the air started getting lighter outside, things weren't hitting the house as bad, and the sound wasn't as loud. I still couldn't see across the street, though. I hoped everyone was okay. I hoped Eric was okay. When we could see outside, I was completely amazed that we were still alive. Most of the trees were down in the street. Eric called to say he was alright, and that he would be here shortly. A little later the neighbors started cautiously coming out of their houses. After we rolled Dad back into the living room I opened the door to see if I could go out the front door. Chandra didn't want to go outside. I understood that. She was scared and had a little girl to take care of. She could also take care of Dad. As I climbed over the tree limbs I yelled at my neighbor, Lynn, and asked him if he knew how to get Dad's bed to lay down. There was no electricity and I didn't think Dad could handle sitting up very much longer. He was exhausted. Mom's dying and the funeral wore him out. He was 93 years old, and he couldn't sleep after she died until after her funeral. They were married 68 years. That's a long time to be married - then to know you'll never see her again. Lynn came inside and did something so Dad was laying down, then he did something else so I could raise and lower the bed when the electricity came on again. I wondered how long it would take to get the electricity back on. As he left Eric rushed into the house, his face was red and he was breathing hard. He relaxed when he saw we were all okay. As Eric sat down we heard a tractor coming down the street pushing the trees to the side. Again, I climbed over tree limbs to ask them why they're doing that so soon. I hoped they could tell me how things were in the rest of Granger. They explain they needed to make a path for emergency vehicles to get through, if they were needed. There was a woman in a basement with a house on top of her and they knew of two gas leaks in town. They were doing what was necessary to clear a path and some people are working to free the woman. All the houses around us had broken windows and a lot of car windows were broken. Eric lost one window in his car. I'm sure glad Dad built this house. He insisted on building strong and solid houses, not like the ones they build today. All I needed to do was replace two boards under the overhang of the roof. Eric and Chandra decided to stay a couple more days to help clean up the mess. I had a lot of trees in the yard and he needed to replace those boards. Eric called his Dad, and his Dad had some trees down in his yard, also, and his Dad's health was such that he couldn't do any of it. My neighbor had a battery operated radio tuned to a local station. They explain that the storm that hit Granger was a mesocyclone, which is like a very large tornado. This one was 5-8 miles wide and had little tornadoes inside it. The next day I called Social Security and IPERS to make sure they stopped the checks coming to Mom. That was sure a long process. I was on hold forever, and had to hang up a couple of times to take care of Dad. When I finally got through to the Social Security office they told me they would have to call me another time to do a phone interview. They made an "appointment" with me 3-4 weeks later to ask me questions, like where Mom died, etc. I could have easily told them the specifics then but they had all this red tape they had to go through. When they finally called they asked a few questions then told me they would send a check for $250.00 to cover the death benefit. I decided that perhaps the government should re-evaluate their priorities. Cremation is the cheapest way to go, but it sure costs a lot more than $250.00. About a week after Mom died Dad had another stroke. After that he didn't remember that Mom had died. For several months he asked where Mom was. I explained that she died, that he had a stroke afterwards and that's why he didn't remember it. I told him that he was there with her and that she died a peaceful death. It would upset him but I couldn't lie to him. He was smart enough to figure it out and it was better if I told him. He finally quit asking. One time a new nurse came to help with Dad. The agency said she was very good and I needed to go to the store, so I left. By this time I had learned that you stay with someone until you feel secure that they will take good care of your parents, but I desperately needed to go to the store. I went to the store, but when I walked in the back door the nurse was laughing at Dad and he was mad. I said something about her not laughing again and she said in an extremely soft voice that she had told him three times. I told her he couldn't hear her, but left it at that. Dad looked like a little kid whose parent had come to protect him. I watched her wash Dad then when she left I called the agency and told them I didn't want her here again. Dad had a major stroke about six months after Mom died. He didn't improve after that stroke but just kept going downhill. On October 28 Hospice admitted Dad. The nurse, social worker, and aids were extremely good and supportive. Taking care of my parents had cost so much that I had run out of extra money. All we had was Dad's Social Security and IPERS that came every month. I applied for a house loan to be able to continue taking care of Dad. Of course, I didn't tell Dad. He didn't need to worry about it. He had worked all his life and saved, he took care of me and spent a lot of money on me and I needed to do something for him without worrying him. On Sunday, May 9 Dad had trouble eating and drinking. This had happened before and I didn't think much of it. As I sat there I thought how good it would be for him if he would just die. About 10:00 that night he suddenly started having trouble breathing. I called Thelma and she came right over. About 20 minutes later he died. Then I called Donella, Doreen, Theresa and Eric. I tried to call Mary, but she was working so I left a message. Donella didn't feel like she needed to see him, and no one else did either. I was relieved when they didn't want to see him because he had gone down so much that he didn't look like himself any more. I went to the funeral home the next day, then they did the cremation. On the 22nd we had a memorial service for him. |
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I like to
hear from you, whether it is to say "Hi!", |
