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PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
Craig Marvinney center, and his parents
Mom finally passed one December morning at age 65. Jack was 81 at that time and fading from what turned out to be
a series of minor strokes that chewed away at his mind.
Jack was a man’s man. Born within a year of the Titanic’s sinking, as a young man, he and a friend drove from his native New York City across the United States in the 1930s, long before highways and interstates, and worked on the Hoover Dam as it was being built, and lumber-jacked in Oregon before heading back east. He played a season with the Philadelphia Eagles. After World War II, as a sales manager for a major can company, he saved his company by convincing the soft drink industry to put pop in a can.
By May, after Mom passed, Jack was in decline. One Sunday, he was convinced he was having a heart attack, so I took him to the hospital. He was lightly medicated on check-in the next day, resting comfortably, and the docs said his heartbeat was equilibrating.
As my family finished dinner a half-hour away, I got a call from the hospital. I was needed right away as it looked as though Jack had a major stroke. When I arrived on the floor, Jack was visible in his room at the end of the hall. My younger sister Suzy was there already and was talking with Jack’s doctor for the moment. The doctor was a younger resident now dealing with a major stroke victim, Jack. The young doctor noted the stroke rendered Jack a hemiplegic and took away his ability to talk.
The immediate concern, the doctor said, was to calm Jack as he was flailing violently in his bed. The doctor planned to strap him down to the bed and medicate him. It was when “clot-busting” medications were beginning to come into use, and I asked him if he meant that. “No, I’m talking about seriously sedating him,” he replied.
We viewed Jack down the hall. Suzy noted he was “reaching for heaven.” Watching Jack for a moment, I noticed a pattern in his movements. I asked the doctor if he had told Jack what had happened. The doctor looked incredulous – “He doesn’t have a clue. He’s just thrashing and would never understand me!” I looked across at Jack.
Jack was focused intensely on his movements. One look at his face told us. He was trying to get out of bed. He was throwing his good leg up, trying to use it as a counterweight to roll his torso up as he threw his good arm forward. All to no avail, again and again. As I explained what I saw, my sister saw it too. The young doctor suddenly seemed to be the one who had no clue.
I blew past the doctor into the room, grabbed Jack by the shoulders, and put my face entirely into his line of vision. The doctor followed us into the room, “You can’t do that!” I turned back to Jack, “Jack, Jack!” He looked at me, focusing on my face with his good eye, and stopped thrashing but remained stiff, resistant. I held him firmly and told him what had happened and how sorry I was he had had such
a stroke. His stiffness dissipated, and he seemed almost to surrender.
Instead of seeing this calm Jack down, the young doctor responded in anger as if we ‘stepped out of line’ from the usual passive patient families he dealt with. We were happy to know Jack was not “seriously sedated.” More so, we could see he still had a sense of comprehension despite the stroke. The doctor, though, chose not to understand, continuing to talk over Jack as he would over a piece of furniture and not to the man Jack still was. Although Jack passed away two weeks later, that lesson of not simply accepting a physician’s point of view, especially when it flew in the face of common sense, stayed with me.
It’s not about you.
A loved one’s dementia teaches this quite effectively. Upon
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