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excerpt... CHAPTER: As Time Goes By he used to be Somebody A JOURNEY INTO ALZHEIMER'S THROUGH THE EYES OF A CAREGIVER by BEVERLY BIGTREE MURPHY |
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"No one ever told me about the stiffness that might set in as yet another of the late stage symptoms. Something else I got to find out about and learn to deal with on my own. It became impossible to lift his arms to dress him without exerting tremendous strength. I couldn’t lift his head high enough to get my arm under it to hold him without straining. As much as I dreaded getting a hospital bed, the time arrived when it was the only choice to make. At least the hydraulics of the bed could sit him up and lay him flat without my needing an aide to help. I was plunged into depression over the prospect of that metallic, cold, electronic monster invading our lives. It was a symbolic expression of yet another failure for me and further isolation from Tom. And even though the reality of that bed made life easier on me, and Tom, and I now wonder why I fought getting it for so long, it changed what was left of our life together. I always started our nights together in bed moving into the other room if he got active, and nights when the twitches that had taken over his body were less pronounced I stayed the entire evening. There was still something valid about sharing our bed and waking together. Our bed was the last normal thing in our lives that was left to share. The day the hospital bed arrived I stood at the entrance to the bedroom staring at it for the longest time. I found myself pulling the queen sized feather mattress, which was planned for storage, up on top of the hard, plastic covered twin mattress on the hospital bed and standing back to survey it’s placement. The extra width flopped over the bed rails almost covering them. While still unaware of what I was doing I then reached for the queen sized egg crate mattress and placed that on top. I then covered both the mattresses with a beautiful teal green queen sized flannel sheet, threw the queen sized down cover on top, added a throw on the back to cover the metal legs and wires and rails and finally realized what I was doing. I wasn’t just making the bed comfortable for Tom, I was trying to cover it up altogether, as if covering it up with down and foam and draperies made it into something other than what it was.
But like all the other landmarks I faced as Tom continued to deteriorate, I managed to get through that one too. It was just another one of those little deaths reminding me that the main event was still waiting down the pike. The changes never got easier, no matter how hard I scrambled." Gibbs Associates Publisher |