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Slow medicine
In the past two years I have been slowly trying to gain my Mother’s trust. She is 85-years-old, lives alone and is pretty independent, also known as stubborn. Our relationship has been very rocky over my nearly 60 years, even estranged at times. I have put these past transgressions on both of our parts behind me to try to help care for my Mom in her final years even though I live over 800 miles away.
I just finished reading an informative book by Dr. Dennis McCullough, My Mother, Your Mother – Embracing ‘Slow Medicine,’ The Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones. These are some important takeaway quotes from the well-written book:
“Slow Medicine for elders in late life enacts the ancient Tibetan wisdom of ‘making haste slowly,’ that is, focusing on the central issues of human caring with patience and a sense of shared humanity, forgiving one another for what cannot be changed, bending flexibly at times of need, and holding firmly to shared values and loyalties at other times. Slow Medicine is a commitment to understand, to support, to heal, and to care for those weakest among us in a way we would want to be cared for ourselves.”
“Over my many years of medical practice, I have identified five fundamental principles that should guide families, health professionals, caregivers, and other caring people in their efforts to enrich and support an elder’s life to the end.
- We must endeavor to understand our parents and other elders deeply, in all their personal complexity, acknowledging both the losses and the newly revealed strengths that come with aging.
- We must accept the need for interdependence, while at the same time promoting mutual trust.
- We must learn to communicate well and with patience.
- We need to make a covenant for steadfast advocacy.
- We must maintain an attitude of kindness no matter what.
The most important consideration underlying all my assumptions about what constitutes good late-life care is the need for kindness. Although some families and caregivers may actually rise to extended enactments of love (or simply loyalty, decency, respect, and gratitude), kindness is the single most reliable ethical and practical guide to doing this work well.”
In the book’s Epilogue Dr. MCCullough continues, “Slow Medicine is just this caring process of slowing down, being patient, coordinating care, and remaining faithful to the end. Families necessarily bear the greatest responsibility in surmounting difficulties to create this bond of trust and security for their loved ones. Over and over, families must identify and ask for what they and their parents need, seeking links to caring professionals who also want to do the right thing, but are often constrained by organizational, institutional, and cultural health care practices that are not fully serving our elders and us…yet.”
I believe in this practical Slow Medicine approach and I highly recommend My Mother, Your Mother. I have been applying this approach to my Mom’s care, as well as with family communication difficulties. “We must maintain an attitude of kindness no matter what.”
Note: I picked up this book at my local library.
Organ donation – a silver lining
It was 7:42 a.m. on December 5th when I messaged one of my former high school students asking, “What happened? Connor was one of my favorite students. I will never forget him!” Liv wrote back, “Connor actually got into a really serious car accident on Sunday, and was taken to the hospital. Shortly after arriving, he was declared brain dead. Fortunately, however, he was a registered organ donor, so he was able to save the lives of four other people last night, which is really a miracle. We are all heartbroken.”
I read the article about the car accident in the Greeley Tribune but it did not give the name of the driver. I checked the newspaper every day after learning of Connor’s fate to find out if and when services would be held. Thankfully there was a wonderful obituary posted on the funeral home’s website. Services would be held on Monday, December 10th for the 22-year-old. There was no question I would attend because he was one of my favorite students; he always had a smile and always tried to bring one to everyone else. He had a big heart.
I entered St. Mary Catholic Church for Connor’s mass and was ushered up front past hundreds of mourners already seated. There wasn’t an empty seat in this large church. Seated across and only a couple of rows back, I could easily see the family and the pain they were experiencing. They weren’t the only ones with a steady flow of tears.
Throughout the eulogy, delivered by a family member I think, maybe an uncle, but written by Connor’s parents, many of us wept. Matthew told insightful, loving family memories about Connor “doing things his way” from the minute he was born. He also told us Connor was an organ donor as Liv had mentioned in her message, but it was five people in all that he helped. A silver lining!
Since he died from head injuries, Connor’s major organs were intact and healthy. His lungs, heart, kidneys, and liver were successfully transplanted and will live on in others. In his final gesture of “doing things his way” he brought a smile to others. I’m sure these unselfish gifts brought his family some solace after the accident. We all lost a wonderful friend and family member on December 3rd, but the organ recipients gained a future of hope and life.
“Connor had a big heart and made the courageous decision to be an organ and tissue donor. He will live on through the lives of the five organ recipients.” –From his obituary
To register to become a donor in Colorado: DonateLifeColorado.org
Legacybox and mom’s “first films”
It was typically a cold, dark winter’s night when my mom would bring out the movie projector to bring us some much-needed entertainment. You see my mom was an amateur filmmaker back in the early 1960’s and my siblings and I were often the stars. We loved watching the old 8mm films of us dancing, being silly and playing games while growing up. It was wonderful entertainment, especially when we also got to eat popcorn while watching.
On my recent visit with my mom, she gave me her precious “first films.” She kept them in a shoe box high up in a kitchen cupboard. Years ago she told us she destroyed them after her divorce with dad in 1996. Last spring, much to my amazement, she told me she still had them. Now, I possessed her film reels. I could not wait to tell my siblings about this incredible gift, but she told me I couldn’t.
Within days, I ordered a Legacybox to digitize the films. I ordered a box to hold all 20 of the films. Mailing and processing of 20 films was expensive but I used the RUSH promotion, for Rush Limbaugh, and saved $200. A few days later I received an empty Legacybox in the mail. My heart rate went up; excited at the prospect of seeing these films again after forty plus years.
First, I sorted the films chronologically as my mom hand wrote in the dates on many of them: “Steve’s 2 year – 1st Year at Toddville,” “Christmas ’67 at Toddville,” “Art Tour ’72,” and “St. Louis Arch ’74.” Others my mom labeled: “First Films,” “Wedding,” “Halloween Party,” and “Bulldozer.”
Next, I applied the Legacybox barcodes to the movie reels. The barcodes used to track the order. The company also sent a return shipping label to place directly on top of the original shipping label on the mailing box. It was an easy process but I was still nervous. Was I really going to mail these precious old films to a company in Tennessee? What if I never saw them again?
With the film reels packed in Ziploc bags and protected by plastic inflatable packaging, on October 29 I took my box of treasures to the UPS store. In return I was giving a Drop-Off Package Receipt. Now, I just had to anxiously wait.
On November 13, I received an email from Legacybox. The original films and their new digitized format had shipped. Again, my heart rate soared.
Today, they arrived. I hurriedly opened the box which contained my mom’s films and the CD’s I ordered. I put the first CD in the player and then watched about three hours of home movies from nearly 60 years ago. There on the television screen in my living room I relived my first birthday, my first steps, family vacations, and Christmases. I also saw film of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, and my father who passed away almost six years ago. Mixed in with family was also video of pigs and flowers as I grew up on Iowa farms.
It was surreal to watch these films again and it will take a while for it all to sink in. The films included everyone in my family except for my mom who actually shot the film. Now, the hard decision. How do I not tell my family I have her “first films?”
Have you used Legacybox? If so, please leave a comment about your experience.
Note: Legacybox currently has a 60% off discount for a limited time. (Author is not receiving compensation from Legacybox for this blog post.)
Forgiveness and a good visit home
It is 825 miles from my house in Loveland, Colorado to my mom’s in Marion, Iowa. I have not seen her for seven years. My last visit ended badly. I stopped in for my scheduled visit before leaving town but she wasn’t home. A friend had taken her gambling. Feeling rejected and abandoned by my mom, I left in tears, vowing to never speak to or see her again.
I finally decided to reach out to my mom in 2016 during the presidential election as she always followed politics and so have I. Pretending to be a pollster, I nervously called and asked her who she was going to vote for in the upcoming election.
She laughed; I had her. We did not speak about my previous visit and we have talked on the phone every month or so since.
In 2017, my mom fell at her home and was hospitalized after a neighbor found her a couple of days later. She doesn’t remember being in the hospital. Rehab followed and then she returned home. Since then she has fallen several times. She gingerly walks with a cane and if she falls she needs help getting up, but she still drives.
Apprehensive about making the drive after what happened last time, I recently visited my mom as I felt I needed to check on her wellbeing. She had isolated herself from most of the family and she had very few friends. Just in case things didn’t work out during my visit, I put together an alternative plan to visit friends.
I knocked on the door of her home. She answered this time, smiling and welcoming. Relief. This scheduled visit would be different.
My mom was guarded but open about her life. She began by describing all the times she had fallen in the past two years. The most recent incident took place about two weeks before my arrival. She had fallen after getting out of bed in the morning and could not get herself back up. There were construction workers working on a shed across the street so she crawled over to the front door, opened it and tapped her cane on the storm door in between their hammering until they heard her. They came over and helped her up.
I listened intently to her stories. Then frustrated I asked, “Didn’t one of your daughters send you an alarm system a year ago which would alert a neighbor if you could not get up?” She answered, “Yes, you did.” I asked her where the alarm was and she said a neighbor had taken it home, but she didn’t think it would work. I also told her she was lucky to live in a safe Iowa town. This situation leaves her vulnerable to theft or sexual assault.
During our visits over that weekend we talked, reworked her overloaded extension cords, packed up some of her belongings she wanted me to have, moved some items to make it safer for her to walk around, cleaned up her house plants by removing dead leaves, and set up that alarm system I sent her last year. It did work over at the neighbor’s house. Halleluia! She also drove me around the little farming community of Whittier where I lived until the second grade.
On my last day with her, I brought Angry Orchard Hard Cider. I wanted to toast her 85th birthday which occurred in August. She only drank half a bottle because she said it made her feel a bit woozy.
As I drove away that last evening, she smiled and waved from the driveway. Surprised by my overwhelming emotion, I waved back through tears. Not tears of rejection and abandonment, but sweet tears of joy and love for the good visit home. The precious time I spent with my mom and forgiveness.
Becoming a modern-day lumberjack
When I purchased my rustic cabin in Glen Haven in the fall of 2017, I also purchased a small forest of about 30 trees, mostly pines. One tree, a huge douglas fir, had actually fallen down in a spring storm earlier that year. I purchased an electric chainsaw and removed the limbs (delimbing) a few months ago. In August, my son-in-law rented a 20″ chainsaw and he began bucking (cutting in optimal lengths) the 50′ trunk. He cut two eight foot lengths I can debark and hopefully use as columns in the cabin rebuild. He also cut three four-foot lengths we could load in the Jeep and take to the local saw mill. The rest, he cut into 12-15″ lengths for firewood next year. I am becoming a modern-day lumberjack.
At the end of August, I purchased an axe and a draw knife from Amazon and a four pound wedge at an antique store to aid in splitting the firewood and scraping the future wood columns. The metal wedge made splitting the wood fairly easy for me to do and helped me build up my biceps! An added bonus.
While the work was slow, the rewards were tremendous. On our way home, my son-in-law and I took two of the four-foot length logs to the Mountain Home Wood Products sawmill in Drake. We asked them to cut the two logs into 1″ lumber, leaving the live edge. A couple of days later I picked up my new load of rough sawn lumber and took it home. Only $25.90 for beautiful douglas fir live edge lumber! The wood was still very wet and will require a few months of drying.
The lumber is now stickered under my pool table. I have a fan lightly blowing at least 10-12 hours a day to keep the air moving. The intoxicating aroma throughout the house the first night was almost too much to bear. But now, after a few days, the smell is not as strong. The fan helps a lot too.
I hope to use the live edge lumber for open shelving in the future cabin’s kitchen and on the kitchen island. I can sure get into this modern-day lumberjacking!
Who will be your caregiver if and when you need one?
This is a question I think about from time to time. I have one married daughter. Her mother-in-law (mom of three) and I are both divorced, so we will be aging alone in our homes. Our siblings do not live in our state. Health care and financial support are already issues for both of us. When I read the following article I couldn’t help but think of those of us who are solo seniors…
As Baby Boomers Move Into Old Age, Who Will Care For Us?
by Jody Gastfriend, Forbes.com
August 10, 2018
“My high school buddies and I recently got together and reminisced about old times. “Can you believe we’re 60?” we howled. “That used to seem really old!” Many of us are still caring for parents who have crossed the 90-year-old threshold. As we joked about our aging bodies—the creaky knees and achy joints—we mused about another topic too. Who will care for us as we grow old? Will our adult children with their busy lives assume the role of caregiver? And will the childless among us rely on nieces, nephews, friends or neighbors to step in?
When it comes to the growing demand for caregiving, the numbers just don’t add up. The United States, like many industrialized countries, is looking down the barrel of a looming care gap. As my fellow Baby Boomers move headlong into old age — we are now retiring at a rate of about 10,000 per day — there may not be enough caregivers to go around. The potential pool of family caregivers, whose stories I tell in my book, My Parent’s Keeper, will not sustain the growing demand for care. An estimated 117 million Americans will need assistance of some kind by 2020, yet the number of unpaid caregivers is expected to reach only 45 million. The caregiver support ratio, the number of potential family caregivers relative to the number of older Americans, is projected to decline sharply by mid-century.
Where have all the caregivers gone?” Read more