Handicapped Inaccessible Again

From July 2013

I told in my previous post about my sister and her foot injury that required the use of a wheelchair. 

She is now allowed to walk, but not more than about 50 feet. She has to work her way up to normal walking.

So I took her out to run (roll?) a few errands. She could get out of the car and take the necessary couple of steps to get into the wheelchair. Then I pushed her wherever she wanted to go.

I was surprised at one office building that was very unfriendly to the wheelchair. She had to reach out and hold the door open while I pushed her through. That was bad enough but getting over the high threshold was very difficult. If she had been frail, it would have been almost impossible without another person to help.

What sort of building is so inhospitable to wheelchairs, you may ask? 

It was, wait for it…, a medical building. 

As I said, we still have a long, bumpy road before we attain full access.

Just when I thought I knew a lot about caregiving, I was humbled. Again.

From July 2013

I took care of my parents for twenty-some years and helped here and there with other family members. My dad had nasty arthritis in his knees so in his last few years when we were out and about, I pushed him in a wheelchair to spare him some pain. Clearly, I know a lot about caregiving, I even handled someone in a wheelchair. Not really. We were lucky. At the time Chicago had curbs at each intersection. We'd get to a curb, Dad would hop out of the wheelchair, I'd push it into the street, he'd step off the curb and into the chair. Reversed the process at the other side of the street. As I said, we were lucky because Dad COULD walk. Not far, not comfortably, but that was still light years ahead of anyone who cannot stand at all.

Fast-forward 13 years. My sister injures her foot and has to be in a wheelchair. Bad, but not THAT big of a deal to get around because now Chicago has extensive wheelchair access. No problem with curbs because sidewalks have small ramps at every crosswalk in our neighborhood.

Pushing her wheelchair from the car to the 4th of July picnic WAS easy when it came to crossing the streets. But every crack in the sidewalk (both the normal expansion breaks installed every 8-10 feet and the unintended fractures) and every tiny hole or depression in the street jerked the wheelchair. Fortunately, my sister was strong and had the use of one foot so she was in no danger of being thrown from the chair.  We finally made it to the park and then had to cross what appeared to be a vast prairie but was just a mown grass barrier between us and a shady spot next to our neighbors.

Still, it was rough going over that lawn and if my sister had been frail, I don't think we would have made it; at least not without a lot of help.

Interesting to me was that a few days later we went to a suburban park and could get to the softball field across prairie, er, grass OR on a series of small paved paths that wound throughout the park. Wheelchair access led to almost every field, play lot, pavilion, and flowerbed. These paths had neither cracks nor holes that jarred the chair.

I humbly learned that although wheelchair access is getting better, we still have a long, bumpy road before we truly attain full access.

Link between Not Brushing Teeth and Dementia

The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society reports that an unexpected benefit of good oral health may be the reduced likelihood of developing dementia.  More than 5,000 people participated in the study which was conducted from 1992 to 2010. Those who brushed less than daily had a 65% increased risk of developing dementia.

More information is available here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2012.04064.x/abstract

Men Caregivers

I was the caregiver for both my mom and my dad. Many people seem to think that most caregivers are women. Since I've been writing about caregiving, I've been speaking with many caregivers -- and I've met more men who are caregivers than women.

Some of the men have taken care of their wives. More of the men, however, were, or are, caregivers for their mothers, fathers, or both. I don't have any statistics, just my own observations. Many of these men sacrificed a great deal to care for parents. A surprising number -- at least it surprises me -- never married and never had children primarily because of their caregiving responsibilities. A Chicago Tribune article from Valentine's Day 2012 explored the topic of men caregivers:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-14/news/ct-met-caregiver-valentine-20120214_1_male-caregivers-family-caregiver-alliance-alzheimer-s-association

Still Alice the Novel

Still Alice by Lisa Genova is a novel written from the point of view of a 50-year-old woman who is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. It is well written and gives what I feel is an insightful look into the thought process as a mind is ravaged by dementia. However, Alice is such an unlikeable person that I cannot have any compassion for her. It's as if a robot's memory chip corrodes. Although, if Alice were a more sympathetic character, perhaps the story would be too hard to bear. I recommend the book, just don't expect to feel like shedding a tear over Alice.

I'm biased, of course, by my own experiences. I lived with my mother as she struggled with senile dementia. Unlike the rapid decline of Alzheimer's, it was a long process spanning 20 years. Mom's experience was completely unlike Alice's. Mom was surrounded by loved ones, had little awareness of what was happening to her, and experienced very little fear. As the ability to deal with the mundane world was taken away from her, Mom seemed to become a more authentic human being.

The Alice of Still Alice is a neuro [psychology professor] something or other, I find myself not caring, at Harvard, and her husband is a scientist and professor at Harvard who has to deal with lab research.

The story begins with Alice editing a peer-reviewed article. She hears her husband racing around the house and she cannot concentrate. She knows he has misplaced something and so sits back in her chair and waits for the inevitable call. How helpful of your, Alice. He does call her because he cannot find his glasses and he is late. Possibly. Alice's alarm clock shows it's about 7:30 but she believes it to be about 10 minutes fast. The clock downstairs by her husband indicates 8 AM. She strolls into the kitchen and immediately spots the glasses and notes that it is only 6:52 according to the microwave.

So two presumably intelligent people have no idea what time it is nor how to set clocks, electronic or otherwise, to the correct time?

Rather than handing hubby the glasses, she stands there with them in her hand until he notices her, and she manages to insert a snide comment. She muses that she and her husband have not been close for quite a long time -- she dashes around the country lecturing and he has irregular hours caused by responsibilities such as checking lab experiments in the night.

The purpose, apparently, of both being employed by Harvard had been so they could work closely together and "commute" by walking together. In the beginning of their marriage, walking together arm in arm. Now they are different schedules.

As the husband, who probably has a name, dashes off, he asks Alice not to argue with their youngest daughter.

As for the peer reviewed article, she does not have time to deal with it so merely stuffs it in an envelope and mails it off, implying, if not lying, that she had reviewed it. So much for professionalism. Well, she had to. She's a very busy Important Person, you know.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Alice and her husband have three children, a doctor, a lawyer, and the baby of the family. The "baby" was, Alice admits, ignored by her busy parents primarily because she was smarter than her two older siblings were and thus needed no guidance. This baby, now a young woman, chose to pursue acting rather than a college degree. Alice refuses to accept the choice because the only reason one could possibly decide not to go to college is to spite Alice and her husband and rebel against their lifestyle.

Alice tends to be all over the place with advice. The youngest daughter is warned that she is running out of time to make a proper life for herself. The older daughter is told not to try to become pregnant with her husband because, at 28, she has all the time in the world.

Alice is also an annoying lecturer. She loves it because no matter how challenging the audiences are, she has never forgotten one fact, nor groped for the proper word. She can recite the author, journal, and year of countless articles in her field. Goody for her. Too bad she doesn't bother to use that  ability to, oh, I don't know, review articles. I've never met such a person -- the more brilliant, the more forgetful, in my world.

Then begin the symptoms of the memory loss to come:  during a lecture, she forgets a word. And never having had to deal with such a problem, she is ill equipped to handle it now. 

Her memory worsens, and she seems compelled to make poor choices. As she cooks Christmas dinner with her family around her, calling her for help, she decides to test her ability to remember words she has randomly selected from the dictionary. Since she is rarely with her family, one might think she would take the opportunity to enjoy them. But alas, it is not to be.

During a frantic moment in the kitchen, Alice cannot remember one of her words -- and gracefully handles it by yelling at her loved ones. Not confiding in them about her doctors' visits and her concerns -- just snapping at them. Perhaps they are not loved ones at all.

Alice doesn't appear to have any sort of emotional life. Does she realize that when Alzheimer's ravages her once brilliant mind, she will have nothing?