Heroes and heroines

Heroes and heroines come in many shapes and sizes. For some people  they are firefighters, emergency doctors and de-miners. For others, astronauts, pilots and explorers.  For me it has to be the people who care for and tend to the elderly, especially those with dementia. It takes a special type of person to do this. As much as I try, I’m not that type of person. The weeks I spent with mum (24-7) before the arrival of my brother and cousin over the recent Xmas holiday dispelled any illusions I might have had about that. Part-time caring I can do. Full time is another thing entirely.

I first started evaluating carers when, after having fallen out of the loft and breaking my leg and ankle in many places, I was trapped for 3 months (instead of the planned two days) at my mum’s house in Bothwell because I could not fly anywhere until my plaster came off- luckily I was freelance at the time and could work from wherever I happened to be. Then, mum had one carer in every morning to monitor her pill intake, to wash her, and to make sure breakfast had been eaten. The quality of carers varied considerably. Some came in, asked if she had done this that and the next thing, to which she replied in the affirmative – invariably lying – and then went away again. There was no checking of pills beyond prompting. Her shower, she had to get three times a week. Again some carers accepted her statement of having had a wash earlier as fact, until I hobbled through on crutches and pointed out she was making it up. She hated showers and would avoid them like the plague. With some carers she just refused to have one. Others, though, through manner and attitude, managed to get her undressed, into the shower, washed, dried and dressed before she had really noticed. Quite a remarkable feat!   With breakfast, again they asked and again she said, ‘yes I’ve had it” which she had because I had made it in a rather wobbly manner. There was no evidence from the fridge prior to my arrival that there was anything like breakfast food in the house though. Some cared; some couldn’t give a shit.

I got the number of carers coming in increased during my stay as it became quickly obvious just how badly she could actually cope during my lengthy enforced stay in her house. She also fell over and broke her arm when out walking and therefore needed more help.  I was of limited use to anyone on crutches. When I left Bothwell she was up to 4 carers a day and had had regular food for three months. Unfortunately not much more than a year later she was found unconscious in the lounge by the psychiatric nurse who just happened to be visiting and was hospitalized.  She has not lived independently since.

Thankfully since coming to Sri Lanka, mum has had two gems of carers. Without them, I could not go to work or function in any way normally. The first, Shamalee, is wonderful. She has an extremely calm, placid, happy nature which works well with mum. She can cope with anything which is just as well as she has had to deal with some shitty situations. She went off to have her second baby early September. She worked on the Friday, was admitted to hospital on the Saturday morning and had the baby within an hour. She doesn’t waste time. The baby is now about 4 months old. Mum loves the baby but that is another blog.

Ajantha came to cover for Shamalee when was on maternity leave.  I first got to know Ajantha when I was working in the Emirates. She worked as a nanny for one of my friend's. She was there during my seven years in Al Ain and Sharjah. Now she is back at home in Sri Lanka. She is the mother of my caretaker down south - the man who looks after my house and dogs. Again she has a very calm, placid, cheerful personality and can cope with pretty much anything. As well as covering for Shamalee in Colombo, Ajantha mum-sits down south when I need to go out.  Both are 100% reliable and trustworthy. Equally important though, they can manage mum.

Both now play a mean game of rummy, know Sound of Music off by heart, are a dab hand at cheese sandwiches and lentil soup, are jigsaw experts and can hum along to Andre Rieu’s Vienesse waltzes. They understand the importance of ‘the bag’ and the necessity to know where it is at all time.  They know that the table in the lounge must always be aligned with the lines on the floor. They can cope with mum’s negativity and leave her to it till she snaps out of it.

Both of them make my life possible.

Calendars

“Isn’t it busy for a Tuesday?” “Why are there so many people shopping on a Sunday?” “It’s very quiet for a Monday morning.”. All these comments trip of the tongue frequently. They have one thing in common when spoken by my mum – the day is invariably wrong!

Calendars, diaries, days of the week, times of the day, all these things used to be very important to my mum. Calendars and diaries were always up to date. The beginning of the year saw the ritual transferring of important information from one year to the next – birthday, anniversaries, holidays. She never forgot a birthday. The walls of the lounge at Christmas were covered in Xmas cards – partly because she had a class of 30 primary kids and parents of every child gave her a card and partly because she sent and received lots of cards. Birthdays and Christmases were days to celebrate – even if one year I found an IOU 50p from Santa in my Christmas stocking.

These days of course birthdays, anniversaries, holidays all fly past with minimum awareness and very little sense of occasion. I do my best to get her to sign cards and give her cards that people send to her, but she doesn’t quite get it. Christmas was a bit of a non-starter really although there were certain elements of it that she enjoyed. She liked watching me decorate the Xmas tree; she liked opening the cards even if she couldn’t always remember the names on them; she enjoyed eating her Christmas dinner; and she enjoyed talking to family on Christmas day although she can’t quite get the hang of holding an iphone. (My brother has just bought her a traditional phone handle that I can now plug into the iphone so she knows which end is which. Haven’t tried it yet.)

What she really liked though was the Jacquie Lawson advent calendar. For those of you who are not Jacquie Lawson aficionados, this is an e-card website which I love because of the classic animated dog cards (it also does other subjects). There is a special advent calendar every year. Mum loved it. I don’t think she quite got what it was mind you. But she did enjoy the different, some interactive some not, scenes of Christmas. Every day in the run up to Christmas we could click on the snowy village icon and enter the village. Then we had to find the date icon which flickered on the scene (bit difficult for mum as it was quite small) and then click on that and watch what happened. The scene she loved was trains against a snowy backdrop.  You could build (and rebuild) your own train, and then watch as it snaked its way along the tracks across the winter scene three times getting smaller and smaller the further away it went. Then when you went back to the village scene, you could spot the train you had just built running across the back of the scene. The sitting room scene you could also tailor to your wishes. We had fun designing our own Christmas stockings to hang from the fireplace and decorating (and redecorating) the Christmas tree. What she also loved was the jigsaw of the scene which you could do at 3 levels of difficulty. By the time we actually got to Christmas day, my time for each level was lightning fast.  She couldn’t actually manipulate the pieces, but she could advise on which pieces went where.  So the advent calendar was a definite hit!

My sister-in-law also has recently developed the habit of producing family calendars from photographs and sending them to us all. She started this a few years ago and they are usually based on holiday photographs, although last year’s had some really old pictures of the family included. I think the first one began in January but the later ones never quite start at the beginning of the year. This year’s starts in February. The pictures this year combine their family visit to Sri Lanka in August last year and my brother’s 50^th in the UK which involved the whole family getting together. Great collection of photographs – some good ones of my mum as well. Lots at the Fortress and lots at my house in Unawatuna. Includes my whole family, my caretaker’s family and the dogs. We’ve already been through it together and spotted various people, dogs and places.  It’s arranged weekly so the plan is to have a look at the calendar every week with mum and talk about the people and places and take it from there. It certainly provides a good jumping off point.  

She may not know what day of the week it is, but she can still appreciate photos of family and if they are on a calendar they are visible the whole year round.

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