Dotty Parker

eyelashes

BrilliantEditor and I spent yesterday looking after a woman with Alzheimers. She was really easy to care for. Mostly I made her food and helped her to the bathroom. Pretty easy. She just sits and watches tv.

At first I thought maybe she was bored, but later that day, when I handed her a napking and she said, "Now, what do I do with this?" and I said, "Wipe your face and hands," I figured maybe sitting there was what she wanted to do.

This lady, we'll call her Momma, knew what food she liked, but not when to use the bathroom. She didn't know the names of the people she lived with. She called them The Man, The Lady, and The Pretty Girl. But she knew the names of the dogs. She knew how many kids she has, but couldn't identify them. She seemed always semi-surprised to see me. When I went to the other room to get some work done, I'd come back in and she would look at me as if, "I expected to see someone come in here sometime, but I don't think I expected it to be you."

I was going to write about this yesterday, but on the way home, I discovered that I could feel my eyelashes touching. Each time I blinked, and I recognized each time blinking occurred, I could feel my top eyelashes touching my bottom eyelashes. I felt so tired. Generally when I feel that tired, I shuffle off to bed. This time, though, it wasn't possible. I had no bed to shuffle off to.

BrilliantEditor was a real trouper. He came to the house and stayed with her alone while I went to teach a class. I knew he was getting a little wigged out when he called to ask if I was on my way yet. I was just started to get on my way so he had to wait an hour. He made her lunch, though. He's a sweetie.

Spending time with people who are getting pretty old makes me think about dying--like if I really want to. Maybe I'll start working in the lab again and try to make some kind of miracle potion that I'll share only with people I've liked for a year or more (fewer mistakes that way. Who wants an ass around for eternity?). The miracle potion, much like the magic of the philosopher's stone, would give eternal life for as long as the person took it.

But then I'd have to face whether or not I was qualified to make that decision any more. If I started taking the potion in my sixties, would my brain stay sharp and alert? If I started taking the potion in my eighties, when some of my reasoning had started to slip and my body had started to revolt against me, would I stay in slippage like that forever? And if I was staying like that forever, would there come a time when I would no longer want to be that way? Would I just stop taking my magic potion?

Or what if I got Alzheimers disease. If I forgot to take my potion for a day, would my disease progress further? If I forgot semi-regularly, would I just keep aging slowly? And with Alzheimers I wouldn't know, would I? No, I would not.

So it brings me, and with this kind of brilliant, insightful, and rigorous reasoning I'm sure it brings you too, to the question of, "What if I do get Alzheimers? What would I want to do?"

Yes, indeed, what if I do get Alzheimers?

a clever plan

I'm voting "no" on the whole Alzheimers thing. I'm not sure what I would want to have done with me if I did get it. Would I want my family to take care of me in their home? Should I go to a place where nurses watch me and take care of me? I could go with PTAMom's answer: "Give me a poison pill, if I don't have my faculties and can't take care of myself."

My brothers are appalled by her wish. Perhaps they should be. But my father and I, we joke about the fiendish plan. But the plan is elusive. How to do we it without getting caught? Is there any possible way? That, my friends, is a mystery.

But to have a plan is, in itself, a good plan. We need something quite clever. Dr.Dad should be in the CIA or FBI or mafia or something. Then we'd know what to do.

So I can pretty much reveale that I don't really want to live my life not knowing when to pee or what to do with a napkin, I've decided that it doesn't actually matter. It won't be my decision anymore. When I get to be that age, I'll have decided and made some kind of arrangement, perhaps, or perhaps I won't have. But it will be out of my hands, anyway.

I'm going to hope that whenever senility becomes manifest, I'll be very strange, indeed, whatever state I'm in. When demensia kicks in, maybe I'll always think I'm in Disneyworld. That would be weird and kind of funny. I'd shout, "Goddammit, Pluto. Get your ass over here! I'm sick of waiting for you. It's time for the Haunted Mansion, for Chrissake." Then I'd lean over to my caretaker and say, "He's only a dog, what the hell does he know. But I've been teaching him to garden. And look at the place! It's beautiful here."

Oh yeah. That could be good. I might even try to adopt those "It's a Small World" people.

Posted by dotty at August 29, 2003 12:49 PM