Page 62 - FDCC_AgingParents

PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
doctor was on the line to start and then passed the handset over to her to speak with me. She relayed in halting words that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which takes its victims down relentlessly and quickly. I flew out to see her immediately and raced about to arrange for my dad’s continued living in place.
While the tempting and easier path would have been to get him admitted to some form of nursing home, I knew this would not suit the dad I remembered at all. So, I met with the parish priest and concerned parishioners to see if we could fashion a plan to let him live and age in place. Apart from the above-mentioned arrangements to get him a bus pass, they also arranged to deliver meals, and some knew my parents well and agreed they could check in on him.
It was clear Mom would not last longer than a few months. And so the community cared for my dad when I knew my brother and I could not. I asked if Mom would make it home again, but the doctor said she could only recommend putting her on a palliative care waiting list at this stage. The doctor said it was hard to judge, but Mom’s expected life was predicted for a few weeks. She told me I could fly back for my court hearing, and Mom would last long enough for me to fly back. However, she strongly suggested I should be sure to get my daughters out for the last visit soon. So, with help from a friend in management with one of our national airlines, I managed to fly my family out to see Mom. Mom’s final words to me before I left to fly back for the hearing were: “Don’t get your dad upset, son. See that he doesn’t get aggravated...” My family spent an overlapping day in the local hotel before I flew back east to Toronto to do final preparations for and attend the week-long hearing.
At about mid-day on the third day of the hearing, I felt
a strange sense of a shadow lifting – I don’t know how to describe it. When I arrived home, there was a message from the hospital advising that Mom had passed earlier that day.
My niece had been there, and somehow, my dad also made it there, perhaps guided by his faith to be at her bedside when the time came. Neither my brother nor I can get that
missed time at my mom’s bedside, but I am not going to blame myself or the doctor for the fact that I flew back east for the hearing. My brother headed back to the Alberta oil patch – to echo the advice I give in my closing thoughts below, we did our best and did it based on what the doctor had told us. Her prediction of mom’s remaining lifespan turned out to be mistaken, but no one’s perfect.
My dad outlived my mom by about 18 months, which was both a blessing and truly challenging to manage from a distance. The church and parishioners were more blessed because they were also more challenged: they struggled to keep track of him and ensure that he was taking care of himself. I started to second guess the decision to let him age in place, given the challenges he presented to those who tried to assist. My niece continued to help him as and where she could. My brother also checked in on him but had moved up the island about an hour by this time.
Without belaboring, suffice it to say I made trips out myself but had little ability to control them except through those from the local parish who could report back on him. It was frustrating, but it was what I was able to do for him. And it was better for the dad than putting him in a nursing home or other long-term care facility.
The war comes to an end.
Then, one day, I received a call from the Nanaimo hospital advising that Dad had fallen and hit his head on a curb stone.12 I spoke with the attending doctor, who explained that they had to put him into an induced coma to prevent his brain from swelling. I was quickly on a plane out to see him, and it was apparent the man who was my hero, who had been a dad to me for all of my life, and who had been lost and confused in the baggage area at the airport a few years previously, was in a bad way.
I sat down with the doctor in charge of his care. He asked what I wanted to do. I asked him what the possible outcomes were, and he explained they had already done a scan that showed Dad had suffered several mini-strokes. In this
12 As explained to me by elder care professionals, dementia can also diminish the body’s response time so that a person who would normally raise their arms and hands to protect their head when falling, cannot do so nearly as quickly. This appears to have been what happened when they found my dad.
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