✕
☰

Nearest Doorknob

by

Wednesday’s red blouse and black jacket hang from the bathroom door’s inside knob. Thursday’s teal sweater and scarf hang from the bathroom door’s outside knob. My lavender jacket never made it into the front closet; it is still on that doorknob. Wednesday’s beige canvas tote bag and Thursday’s Monet’s Water Lilies tote bag remain suspended on my office doorknob.

A quick scan of our house’s doorknobs hints that last Wednesday and Thursday still haunt my mind and challenge my energy level. My mother’s unexpected hospitalization and my father’s nursing home care plan meeting made for two emotionally and physically draining back-to-back 12-hour days that reverberate into this week. Today, four days later, sheer determination to move on, to have a life (what is it I do, again?) hangs my clothes properly in closets or tosses them in the dirty clothes basket. Deciding what to do with the contents of the two tote bags will be more difficult.

In one bag, a skinny note pad contains notes I scribbled in my mother’s internist’s office, where we went last Wednesday so that he could clear her for knee replacement surgery in two weeks. There my mother reported to him that she’d had heart-attack-type symptoms that very morning. With that game changer, we were on our way to the hospital. But not before the doctor had patiently explained cardiac vs. coronary, leg swelling, and unstable angina. The doctor’s and my mother’s pronunciation of the cardiologist’s name left me wondering how to spell it, so I got that and his phone number and wrote that down, too—just in case.

Now what do I do with these notes? I’m thinking I need to organize and update the file folder I began several years ago with contact names and numbers for my parents—and it may be time to keep this folder in my car, not in my desk at home. The medical explanations I’ll compose into an e-mail to my siblings, file the e-mail in my Mom and Dad folder online, and pitch the little scrap of paper. Okay, on to the next note pad …

A little wider note pad has my note to self to go to my mother’s house and bring back a medication the hospital’s pharmacy does not carry, her shawl, and her dental floss; the cardiologist’s case for searching for a blockage and time of Thursday morning’s angiogram; and Mom’s questions I will need to ask nursing home staff at Dad’s Alzheimer’s care plan meeting Thursday afternoon. In this tote bag, I also find an extra photocopy the nurse took of my mother’s list of medications.

Same basic decision on these notes: Share the cardiologist’s info with sibs and keep the meds list with me for future hospital visits when my dear, brave mother might not be able to give this information herself. I hope that day never comes, but with recurring heart attack symptoms now in the picture …

A full-sized sheet of paper holds Mom’s and my questions for the nursing home staff—and their answers about Dad’s condition. The back holds the hospital nurse’s detailed discharge instructions for my mother. When she can shower next, how often to vary positions, when to start doubling one medication, what time of day to take another … and if a hard, black bruise shows up, call the cardiologist, but if she feels pain in her calf, call the internist. It’s too much—even now, this list overwhelms me. My mother is mentally sharp; I hope she remembers all this advice, and from our phone conversations since Thursday’s homecoming, she seems to have. She probably conscientiously read all the papers in the thick yellow discharge folder, just as she had read all the knee-replacement-prep papers.

What’s the best destiny for this paper? In today’s phone call to Mom, I’ll review the discharge advice, just in case. And although I relayed the report on Dad to my out-of-state siblings when I called them Thursday to report on Mom’s angiogram, I think I’ll put it down in an e-mail, too, and pitch the paper.

Last but not least, I fish the hospital’s Visitor Guide from my tote bag. Wait, two Visitor Guides, one leftover from Mom’s hospital stay last month for a different issue. (Sigh.) These definitely go in the wastebasket; with all the eldercare health scares of recent years, I’ve memorized that hospital’s map and cafeteria hours.

After an intense event such as hospitalization, the processes of re-entry into normal life and assimilation of new information and new circumstances remind me of corporate experiences like coming back from a marketing conference with 3-inch 3-ring binders heavy with workshop notes or like leaving a management meeting with new directives. You have to figure out changes, new routines, new approaches, and often you don’t have energy left for such thought. For me, eldercare has been like a side job whose hours increase as my parents hobble toward their mid-90s. Those of you whose parents live with you have a full-time job (perhaps in addition to a paying full-time job). Whether part or full-time, the job entails figuring out what to do with the stuff hanging on the nearest doorknob.

I haven’t even talked about emotional stresses hanging on my heart’s doorknob after last Wednesday and Thursday. Just a few examples …

Amid disappointment, helplessness, and grief last week were also moments of joy and laughter. My one local sister’s presence Thursday was an absolute godsend. Strong emotions linger, but without my sister to share the load and encouragement and the prayers of friends, my doorknobs would still be burdened with last week’s detritus.

Back to topbutton