An Early Morning Surprise

At unexpected times, I like turning up at the nursing home where Dad is a resident. It’s nice to see how he’s being treated when no one knows that someone is coming. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I want to know that Dad is being treated as well when we’re not there as he is when we are there. Newspapers have so many horror stories about the elderly being mistreated that I don’t want to take chances with our father’s treatment at the hands of others when he can no longer tell me about possible abuses. So, no one ever knows when I’ll turn up. They do know, however, that I can turn up at the oddest of hours. I’ve even been known to arrive in the middle of the night to check on how Dad is doing. It doesn’t hurt to keep the staff on their toes. My sister and I play a game of “good cop/bad cop”. I think you know where I fit into the game. It’s not a role I like, but I handle it for my father’s sake.

I visited Dad this morning at 7:30 a.m. When I peeked into his room, he was lying there with his eyes open, just staring into the darkened room as though he was thinking about something important. I’m not sure what was on his mind, but I didn’t startle him. I said hello and he very pleasantly responded. Dad was wide-awake, without any trace of drug fuzziness to his demeanour at all. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Dad this alert and responsive, I thought. Perhaps I should visit him in the early mornings more often. Everyone in the home tells me Dad sleeps in until fairly late in the mornings. I wonder if they actually look in on him in his room. Perhaps because he’s so very quiet they don’t realise he’s awake.

We talked for a few minutes, and then I opened up the drapes in his room to let in the beautiful morning sunshine. I told him the day and date as well as let him know that it was a lovely summer day for Sneak-a-Peek at the Stampede. We both said “Yahoo” to celebrate the Stampede and laughed. We sang a couple of songs: “I Say Little Dickie Bird” being one of the songs his Dad used to sing to him when my Dad was young and “Good Morning to You” being one of the songs my Dad used to sing to me when I was young. We laughed a lot. We then moved into “Daisy, Daisy” and a few others, but I don’t remember them all. For some reason, we wound up repeating a few tongue twisters, too. All rather odd, because those are not easy things for anyone to say, yet Dad was speaking them clearly. I wondered if he was practicing his speaking for some reason. I wondered if he did this type of mental exercise every morning in some sort of personal effort to retain information or retrain his brain to think. Even though he’s never told me he knows what’s wrong with him, and I’ve avoided telling him straight out that he has Alzheimer’s Disease, I know Dad knows what’s wrong. He just doesn’t want it named. He doesn’t want the label. He’s so very far advanced in the disease that it amazes me he even tries to fight it still. I thought he’d given up a long time ago, so the thought he was going through these mental exercises fascinated me.

I brought Dad some apple juice to freshen up his mouth. He had a problem at first with swallowing. He held the juice in his mouth and wouldn’t let it go down his throat. I had to cue him by placing my hand on his throat and telling him to take a big gulp. Finally the juice went down. After the first swallow, the rest of the juice went down well. He talked with me about a lot of things. I’m not totally sure I understood everything he was saying, but it was nice to hear Dad trying to communicate again. Most times when I see him now, he’s quiet. Probably because he knows he doesn’t make much sense to other people anymore. He used to become terribly frustrated and upset. Then he sort of gave up -- he’d throw his hands up in the air as if to say, what’s the point? Once upon a time, I could find some way of figuring out what Dad was trying to say, but I’ve had a tough time following him at all if he’s tried to speak in the last while. We discussed what he used to sell for the company he sold for for 35 years. I told him there is a new type of laundry detergent out now called “Cold Water Tide”. He just laughed and shook his head. I could almost hear his thoughts: “another marketing gimmick,” I said. He looked at me with laughter in his eyes. Yes, I’d read his mind right on! We were both pleased!

I then asked him if he wanted coffee, but he told me they made awful coffee at that place. He probably only used the word “awful”, but I knew what he meant. I told him I’d phone my husband to see if I could find out how to make the coffee taste a bit better. Dad indicated that would be a good idea by nodding his head. My husband told me to put at least two packets of sugar and two creamers into the coffee they make at the home so that Dad could enjoy it. I also added a bit of 2% milk so that the coffee wasn’t too hot in the temperature department. Dad sipped it gingerly at first, and then relished the first half-cup. After that, he didn’t really want anymore, so I didn’t press the issue. The nurse brought in his medications. She’d crushed and mixed them in peanut butter which I thought would be awful, but Dad took them without complaint. I gave him more juice, partly to rinse out his mouth, partly to help the medicines go down better, and partly to keep Dad hydrated. Hydration is a big problem for Dad. It’s hard to keep enough fluids in someone who’s asleep half the day, who has his mouth open a lot, who drools a lot, and who has trouble swallowing!

After the nurse left, Dad seemed to have a sense of urgency about him. He put his hands on either side of my face and pulled me closer to his face. I had been sitting on the side of his bed as he’d patted it to have me sit nearer to him when I first arrived. He stared at me so intently that I finally asked him, in a joking manner, if he was trying to memorize my face. What a surprise his answer was when he said yes, he didn’t want to forget me. That shook me. Actually, it made me cry. I put my face down into Dad’s chest and cried very hard. Dad stroked my hair and gentled me as though I were a little girl again. What a lovely gift of time and love we shared. It wasn’t much time, but enough for us both to know how deep is the love we still share. Dad may not be who he once was, but I know that somewhere deep inside the confused person who is in his bed right now, the father I’ve always known is in there. The Alzheimer’s disease stops him from coming out as much as he wants to, but Dad pushed his way through today. It must have taken a massive effort for him to show his love for me the way he did. What a wonderful miracle we both experienced. He had a big smile on his face for a few minutes.

When the moment was over, it was truly gone, in some way as though it hadn’t happened. The nursing home day staff arrived to get Dad up and dressed for the day. I had to leave to start my busy day of errands. As quickly as Dad had shown his love, he reverted to the Alzheimer’s patient, but we all noticed he wasn’t so grumpy with the ladies this morning as he usually is when they’re dressing him. So maybe my early morning visit was good for everyone.