It’s been an interesting bunch of months. My Dad had colon cancer surgery about
eighteen months ago. It was a successful
operation.
The mechanic who performed the surgery did a bang-up
job. All the disconnecting of hoses here
and re-attaching of hoses there was done exactly according to the manual found
in my father’s glove box. I have a buddy
who’s a marine mechanic and I’m awed by his ability around a specialized piece
of mechanics too.
Unlike a marine mechanic though, the medical community has
another aspect to their repair work. They
call it algiatry and it’s all about pain medicine and walking up the pain
ladder for managing analgesia.
The white-coated cult has embraced this. It’s become sacrosanct in their rituals to
the point where this actual branch of medicine exists and medication has become
of utmost importance. I guess it’s been
a natural progression. As a species we’ve
been looking for the magic pill almost since the beginning of civilization. Cultures from all over time and place have
enlisted sorcerers, witch doctors or medicine men; all of which utilized
potions in the course of their healing rituals.
Today’s rituals however have morphed into a multi-billion dollar
business with scientifically derived pharmaceuticals designed to mask the
symptoms of myriad ailments that we succumb to.
We are so scientifically acute these days that we even have
pharmaceuticals available for some syndromes or conditions that we’re not even
sure are real.
Typically at this point you would be reaching to grasp your
agape mouth in horror knowing that I’m about to expectorate some wacko left-wing
political rant. You know what I mean, something
about the suspect history or origin of some of the pharmaceutical companies or
their questionable economic and patent ethics or how they won’t reduce the cost
of their lifesaving voodoo to help out in the third world or how they have gone
about coercing the white-coated cult members to act as pushers for them in the
name of ethics, or that our whole western lifestyle has been kidnapped by greed
capitalists, including the pharmaceutical companies and white coat cult, and is
now designed to keep people buying junk and being “sick” and programmed to run
to the medicine man looking for a pill to cure what has taken a lifetime of
abuse to accumulate – but no, I’m just not going to go there.
This is about my Dad dammit.
So they loaded Dad up on medication after the surgery. They had to.
Not only is it the only humane thing to do they’re ethically bound to it
right?
He started having visual and auditory hallucinations
immediately after re-gaining consciousness.
Now as I may have demonstrated already, I ain’t no fan of the allopathic
snake oil salesman. Hell, I won’t even
walk by a med-school if I don’t have to, but it’s as clear to me as the
bubble-packed pharmaceutical cocktails that both my parents ingest daily, that
this state has continued to manifest itself until ultimately it has taken him over
in the form of Alzheimer’s or as they have recently diagnosed, Lewy Body
Dementia.
My mother remains sharp.
She’s always been sharp and has always been keenly aware of her own
needs. I think by definition she's more egocentric than narcissistic but regardless her opinions have always been of utmost importance. Don’t get me wrong; I love her a lot and she
is a great mom and nothing means more to her than her kids. She just happens to have a truckload of
textbook egocentric traits.
If I were an expert in such things I’d be able to tell you
what character traits are important in someone who is ultimately going to end
up the primary caregiver for a person with dementia. I don’t think egocentric tendencies would
be anywhere on the list.
Fifty-three years ago, I gained membership to a small club
of remarkable individuals. I have four
incredible siblings and unlike the horror story that you often hear about
family deterioration as parent’s age, this group has solidified into a
cohesive, contributive and interested team.
My Dad is one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever known. He seems to have no obvious negative traits
whatsoever except for that one tiny aspect that allowed him to be domineered,
hen-pecked, kept under the thumb of, guilted, bossed around and blustered by my
aforementioned Mother.
I don’t remember my father ever having a conflict with
anyone else…ever. Maybe this example
will shed some light on his character. In
1969 his business went bankrupt for $4,000 most probably because his pride
wouldn’t allow him to reach out to anyone for help. It was short sighted and stupid yes but it
was an incredible show of honour. It had
an enormous impact on all of his children, added to an already burgeoning
family constellation and probably made more than a few therapists wealthy (just
from me alone) but so goes the manifestation of one's ignorant pride.
My siblings and myself will do anything for my father to
help him through this. We hate to see
him entering into this thing but we are rallying to his aid. This is made all the more difficult when the
primary caregiver is having a difficult time seeing through the trees. We need to keep reminding ourselves that
she’s dealing with this stuff for the first time too and I’m sure we will
eventually negotiate things to the point where we’re all on the same page.
Patience is an issue of mine lately. Actually, patience has always been an issue
of mine and it’s waning ever more these days, especially in regard to my
tolerance for certain (and by certain I mean – most) aspects of modern-day humanity.
Take for instance my ability to listen to people of relative
privilege, piss and moan about the banal difficulties of life in this place
we’ve somehow congregated in. The way I
figure it, unless you’re living on the streets or a member of the working poor
then here in Canada, you’re living a life of relative privilege. If we’re going to be forced into living
within this archaic man-created system of artificial political boundaries, gathered
into some kind of patriotic tribal existence then living in this particular
tribe is a pretty good gig.
It’s really been an eye opener discovering how many social services
are available to help us through this ordeal with my Dad. Bearing in mind of course, that my parents
live in a different segregated grouping than I do. I’m basing this opinion on the services they
are eligible to receive. The smaller segregated
division where I live is called Quebec.
Their smaller segregated division is called Ontario. Apparently the services for my particular
tribe are vastly different than theirs.
This may sound strange to some people, especially those that
come from other segregated patriotic groupings far away from here and have more experience
with people that spend most of their time, everyday, trying to find enough food
to keep on living - but a number of people of relative privilege in the smaller
patriotically divided area that I live in is trying to secede from the larger
artificially divided area. Oh and in
order to attempt to do this they’re spending millions and millions and millions
of dollars. I know, I know…it’s hard to
understand why they would do this when people here and from away are in dire
need of this money that they’re spending on this perplexing issue, just so that
they can try and deal with their eating enough to stay alive issue.
I’ve never really understood all of this as it’s always
appeared as though there is enough of these things called dollars to make sure
everyone has enough to eat. But there
certainly seems to be something going on that impedes this from happening.
Opps, distracted again, what…er…um...
Oh yeah, social services and all that. I’m the power-of-attorney and power-of-care
alternate after my Mother so I’ve taken on a bit of a lead in this
process. This has included developing a
relationship with Community and Primary Health Care (CPHC) in Brockville and
the Coordinator of my Father’s case, Maria.
Wow, you talk about a reaffirmation in humanity. This individual is a joy to be associated
with. She knows what she’s doing makes a
difference and she gets to see it in real-time everyday and I think this must
be what drives her to be so freakin good at doing it.
It seems that the primary mandate these days when dealing
with the elderly is keeping people at home for as long as possible. Beyond the obvious economic benefit of doing
this as a society, it keeps people where they are comfortable and best capable
of continuing to be functional humans.
No longer is there this idea that as an elderly person you just reach a
point where it becomes your time to jump into the queue to wait for whatever the
next dimension holds for us. This
progressive thinking started in the artificially divided area called The
Netherlands. Notice how most of the
really progressive social thinking comes from here or that other amalgam of
artificially divided areas called Scandinavia.
If we’re going to stick with this capitalism thing, I would like to just
go ahead and nominate The Netherlands and Scandinavia as joint-CEO of the
world.
Okay, I’m going to try and finish
this excessively rambling post with some sort of serious point. My Dad needs to be stimulated as much as
possible these days to ward off the demons in his mind. The best way for him to be stimulated is to
be active. To just get out and do stuff. He’s never been a social guy so this is
really difficult. So we push him to be
social and he pushes back because he’s shy and we push because it helps him
stay sharp. It’s really unrealistic for
us to expect him to become social at this late station but we we’re not going
to give him any option. We kinda like
having him around.
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