The Latest on Maureen, if You Were Wondering. Or not.
It’s been getting deep and heavy around here with all the discussion of specific word meanings and the precise extent of racism in the US, those posts and comments that require me to re-read more than counts as entertainment. I thought I’d lighten things up with a progress report on my dear sister, Maureen.
When we left her she was enjoying bi-weekly games of Bingo and calling me multiple times a day. She now wins at Bingo consistently, most recently a pair of drawer sachets and an air freshener, and she still calls me many times a day. I try to divert her to other siblings, just to share the fun, but she really seems to prefer me. I usually answer the phone. for one thing.
Her home’s latest quarantine has been lifted and this week I have resumed visiting. The day of my second visit this week I got a COVID vaccination as an old person who does “compassionate care” visits in a nursing home. I feel like I should be more excited about that.
This is what I am excited about. Maureen’s physical therapy has resumed, though only three times a week, and yesterday she took eight steps two times! Yes this passes for excitement in my life. I was half expecting that at the age of 55 she might never walk again for no good reason.
Three weeks ago she had a dental appointment. She wanted me to accompany her for some reason though she was transported there in her wheelchair and I met her at the office and waited in the waiting room. I happened to go into the exam room as she was moving from the dentist’s chair back to the wheelchair. At the home there is a machine that lifts her from one seat to another. At the dentist’s she has to “stand and pivot” between seats. I witnessed her do that, actually stand on her feet, pivot about 90 degrees and take three steps backwards to meet the wheelchair.
The stand and pivot I knew she could do, sometimes she had to at the home but taking steps surprised me. The therapists had said that Physical Therapy might resume “after the holidays” if someone noticed some progress in something or other. I jumped on those three steps. Immediately started trying to reach someone, anyone at the therapy office and eventually I talked to the lead therapist. I told her about the steps and managed to get in some information about changes they might make in their approach. They’ve made all of them, Maureen is cooperating and yesterday she took eight steps two times! I’m telling you, I can hardly stand the excitement.
Already, I’m daring to hope she’ll be soon walking better than she was before she was hospitalized. With a walker, with a cane, I don’t care, just ambulate, girl, ambulate!
Myriad
01/30/2021 @ 10:02 pm
Great news…sounds like such a depressing scene, but improvement & hope in view makes a difference…like the smell of spring (we’re having a premature melt[down]). Bless you for being such a good sister. I fear I’d be like the other siblings.
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 3:11 pm
Jealous of the melt. We’re just cold and grey and cold. Even the snow misses us usually.
koshersalaami
01/30/2021 @ 10:13 pm
That’s excellent. And it is absolutely a big deal.
ArtWStone
01/31/2021 @ 10:57 am
Just like limbo, it all depends on where you set the bar.
Good for you that you can feel benefit from Maureen’s small steps.
jpHart
01/31/2021 @ 12:31 pm
days until 21st June 2021
140
13hours 7minutes 49seconds
soon someday toward June, dressed up across the room
you enter, smiling joyous Maureen palms way out upright almost dancing
you’ll embrace hugging those flowers …evermore day by day…
dove and bluebird swoon glide fly wow sister strength so sturdy
bountiful fearless as our longest day
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 3:12 pm
I just hope!
Alan Milner
01/31/2021 @ 1:35 pm
I was floored when I noticed the ad that Google Ads served up for this post: for me, it was an ad for USED 2019 van with a power ramp. They read the article, saw the word wheelchair…but here’s the thing: Finding a USED 2019 accessibility vehicle can only mean two things….one good, and one bad. The good one is that someone recovered their mobility.
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 3:09 pm
I don’t see ads here (sorry – though I have turned off the adblocker for it) but I’m going with the positive. Her group home is looking to buy a wheelchair van (one of her roommates has had a stroke since Maureen’s been in the nursing home) Did it give a location?
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 8:27 pm
Funny, I thought I had commented earlier that we could start a deep and deeply tedious discussion of familial duty and self-righteousness but it doesn’t seem to be here. Oh well, sometimes I aim for “cancel post” rather than “post comment.” Maybe that happened.
So maybe this all can lead to a deep and deeply tedious discussion of familial duty and self-righteousness except not right now. It would take a longer post about my mother and me and the origins of myself as Maureen’s legal guardian (I swear I typed that before) and I’m not up for that level of tedium tonight.
Suffice to say, I can’t see leaving a family member on her own when she doesn’t have the capacity – or even the legal authority – to deal with the world on her own. Luckily, Maureen is in a group home with very good and conscientious company and for now she’s in a nursing home that really is doing a good job by her though the physical plant is somewhat dreary.
I guess I would like the others to show more concern for her but it’s not possible in the nursing home. She’s limited to 2 visitors total 2 times a week each because of COVID restrictions and her house coordinator is the other one. Besides, this way I get to be the boss, I don’t have conflicts with the others about how things should be done for her. My therapist tells me I’m in the leadership role in my family now, something I find bizarre because I’ve always been the distant observer.
She always gives me plenty to think about, if always on a very practical level.
koshersalaami
01/31/2021 @ 8:47 pm
I haven’t had to deal with a parent or sibling like that, just a child, and in that case the child was completely my responsibility. I’ve watched my mother deal with her mother like that though. She’s an only child so there was no one to divide anything with.
Bitey
01/31/2021 @ 9:29 pm
I was born very late in my generation. I think I am 29th of 31 first cousins. Also, my parents were relatively old when I was born. I can recall looking around at family gatherings when I was young and thinking, I will see most of these people die.
The funerals began when I was about 3 years old. So, I have a fairly informed memory of attending family funerals from the age of a toddler up into adulthood. At 3 I was barely aware of why everyone was assembled. At 7 I recall the deep sadness of what seemed like the entire city when my grandmother passed. I experienced the sadness through my parents generation and some older cousins. I remember feeling it, but not crying. As a teenager, I did not cry at my dad’s funeral, but that was the worst day of my life to that point. Shock was more like the feeling because I thought my dad was Superman. He never showed fear or pain to me during his demise with cancer. He also said that he would get well. It took his actual death for me to absorb that he was mortal. I saw his last breath. When Mom died…there just aren’t words. I have one memory to help show how completely disorienting that experience was. I recall taking a drinking glass and standing in front of a tap at a sink. I wanted a glass of water because I was thirsty. It took me minutes to figure out how to turn on the tap to fill the glass. This was in my own house. Everything I tried to do took that much contemplation. It was exhausting. I would do anything, for anyone, to make sure that I never feel that way, or that anyone else ever has to feel that way again. By the way, that feeling lasted 4 days.
As horrible as that sounds, that has basically removed me from caring for family members. I’d rather have them here and to care for them. Absolutely. But, the difficulties that others have had doing so…That just hasn’t been how my life played out.
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 10:02 pm
I have read somewhere that if you want someone to feel deeply attached or committed to you, don’t do things for them, get them to do for you. I found that to be true first when I had a dog live to be 18. She required a great deal of care in the last few years and I found my commitment to her growing by the day. I was very ready for her death but I cried more than for any human death I’ve experienced.
With Maureen it’s been similar. I am more devoted and committed to her for having had this hospital and nursing home experience, I’m sure. I know I was less committed before. It’s hard to compare with the other sibs because I was more committed to start with. Going through the three weeks on the ventilator, never sure she was going to live through it, that was traumatic.
kosher, I can’t even begin to imagine the depth of your experience with Jonah. This experience with Maureen gives me a hairsbreadth of that experience and I just can’t imagine.
koshersalaami
01/31/2021 @ 11:56 pm
Jonah was an entirely different experience. He was home. I had help for when I was on the road working because there were always college students training to be teachers who wanted experience for special ed. That was most but not all of our help. Jonah was great for that because though he took a lot of physical care he was intellectually fine and so gratifying to work with. They’d take him clothing shopping and he’d give honest opinions.
It was physically a lot because there was basically no self-sufficiency. It was a lot of work but up until we adopted our daughter when Jonah was seven, that was my parenting experience.
Jonna Connelly
01/31/2021 @ 10:06 pm
Bitey, that’s an interesting way of looking at family. I think I am the 4th of 37 first cousins. For what it’s worth.
Jonna Connelly
02/05/2021 @ 5:23 pm
She walked with a walker today and no support. She was wearing a belt that the therapist held on to in case she fell but didn’t support her.
Yesterday she only had occupational therapy but that genius saint of a therapist got her to pull herself to her feet from the wheelchair using the hallway handrail.
Politics be damned, I’m so relieved I can’t stand it.
koshersalaami
02/06/2021 @ 2:00 am
Mazel Tov
jpHart
02/05/2021 @ 11:54 pm
…sunshine on my shoulders…
…0 happy days…
Jonna Connelly
02/06/2021 @ 10:13 am
Thanks, k & jp
JP Hart
01/01/2022 @ 5:03 pm
WHAT?
That I should start another book dedicated to Randy Van Warmer?
JP Hart
01/01/2022 @ 6:51 pm
Looky here Luke sure hurts. Just when new-crew here at Afterthought, LLC almost perfected our deepfakes of Kim Hunter, Janet Cole and Stella Kowalski … we’d fast forwarded the blessed eulogistic flat screen reams it seems wide-eyed anticipating an epic nod to Lawrence Ferlinghetti … mutually assured destruction … oy.eah we retreated to the sauna keeping the steam in abeyance as through the plate-glass we really wondered at that slideshow: Virunga National Park. FLECK⁉ An era of ambiguous ::SIGHs:: and SIGNS finally opting to shuttle our handbasket of new smoke alarm batteries to Habitat for Humanity … We popped our green bottle of faux champagne — pawned our Buster Keaton puppet — at last on the road y’all & chorused:
Another You
JP Hart
01/04/2023 @ 3:34 pm
Jonna Connelly,
Kindly favor us with word about Maureen {…} like what’s up, please?
Like such a winter’s day, no?
Blessings!