The Hospice PT called this morning...
...to discuss setting up an exercise program for Mom. She'll be showing up sometime next Monday afternoon; she assures me she will call in the morning to scope out our day. I was very clear about Mom's hours. I also had to ask twice for a fairly good pinpoint on time.
    When I spoke to her I was under the impression (which I invented, I must admit) that someone besides me would be conducting the therapy sessions. Turns out I will, after the PT evaluates Mom's native movement abilities and shows us some exercises. I expect that we will discover that, at one time or another, we've done all of them. We may still be doing some of them. It's going to be interesting because, as is common, my mother will work her little heart out for others but not for me. I mentioned this to the PT when she informed me that I'd be responsible for conducting the exercises. We'll see how that works. I expect Mom's Exercise Trajectory when Being Led by Me will be typical of in the past: While she remembers that she's been assigned these exercises by someone else, we'll do fine. As she forgets that these are third party recommendations and begins to disbelieve my reminders of this her effort at the exercises will lag. I'm not disturbed by this, just citing observation to the purpose of prediction.
    Mom and I had a pointed discussion last night about how she needs to make sure that she performs as well as possible in movement at any particular moment. The conversation came up because during a couple of transfers she flatly refused to back fully up to one chair or another before sitting, thus ending up caddy-wampus in positions so uncomfortable for her that I found it necessary to reach behind her, grab her by the waistband of her pants and reset her. Mom was clearly tired last night; it had been an exciting day; but she was not so tired as not to be able to move with a bit more exactness than she displayed. I could tell, too, that her attitude was, "I'm tired, tonight...so I'll let Gail do it."
    It's not uncommon for me to let this attitude go, especially in the evening, but I was tired, too, physically as well as in otherwise, so I addressed it. "Mom, let me explain something. I need you to always operate to the best of your abilities at any particular time," I said. "I need this because there are times, like tonight, when I'm tired, too, and when I risk back injury when I take up slack for you that isn't necessary. If you were to hurt your back, as you did a few years ago [five this month, to be exact], well, we just carry on. If I hurt my back, though, that endangers my ability to take care of you. I don't mind picking up the slack when you clearly can't, even when I'm tired. I do mind it, though, when you just don't feel like it but are able. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
    She looked sheepish, an excellent indication that I'd caught her "in the act". "Oh, yes," she said. "I understand." Her expression turned to one of worry. "Is your back hurting?"
    "No. I'm being careful, and I've got a strong, uninjured back. But, you know, I want to keep it strong. It's the 'backbone'," I joked, "of our ability to remain together."
    She got the joke and gave me one of her ironic, comically obligatory grins, signally that she thought it was a bad pun.
    I laughed.
    Anyway, this seemed to do the trick. When she is tired she has this habit of saying, "I am!!!" when she's not. Last night she didn't say, "I am!!!" once, after our discussion. And, when I asked, she did.
    Sometimes I think that this is the most valuable relationship asset that we've earned over our many years of being together as we are now: Neither of us is afraid to be our self; neither of us is intimidated by correcting the other or, for that matter, taking correction. We also allow the other episodes of not "being nice" when we don't feel particularly nice. Sometimes, when episodes like the above happen that involve me lecturing her or, for that matter, her lecturing me (and, believe me, I come by my ability to lecture honestly) I find myself later reflecting that not only can I not imagine the stress involved in caregiver relationships about which I've heard wherein the caregiver and/or the recipient simply haven't been together long enough to be completely comfortable with each other, I don't want to imagine these kinds of relationships. I'll bet that, at least once a day, I thank the gods that my mother asked me into her life as an elder early, so that we had plenty of time to adjust to one another and, well, learn how to read and allow one another. When it comes to caregiving relationships, I think, time is the key to a successful relationship. If you can't or don't allow enough time for mutual observation and adjustment, everything is much harder and mistakes, I think, are more likely.

    Still a lag on migrating this site to the new domain. Yesterday was a slow, tired day so I didn't get nearly enough accomplished. I'm hoping to migrate this site this weekend but I still have a couple of search set ups to do on a couple more site sections. Not that they take very long...I'm just still dragging a little. As well, I realized, while setting up site search engines, that there is a rather long duty I need to perform that will throw all of the archive links to the Dailies Archive, links from here to there, out of whack. I started that chore, which promises to be a looooong chore, yesterday, in order to figure out an efficient MO for it. The modus having been determined, though, I've stopped so that I can put my computer energy toward migrating this section as quickly as possible. And, still, I'm not much in the mood for computer stuff, again, today. So, give me a few more days. The links that are out of whack all exist, at the moment, in Archive Two, June through July of 2004, in case you're wandering backward and click into some of them.
    Hmmm...think I'll do some reading, even though I should probably be doing something else.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 11:43   email  this post