What I have learned so far this week:
1. Don’t tell someone you’ll visit them in the nursing home and never actually get yourself there because you’re too afraid it’s going to smell like urine and depress the hell out of you. Think how they feel.
On second thought, maybe they get used to the smell and it doesn’t bother them. The way people with cats have no idea their house smells like a litter box. Oh, shit. I just insulted half my readers. Not YOUR cat. Other peoples’. You have a cat?
2. Don’t put off calling the infirmed. They might get transferred to a less expensive facility after they’ve lost their marbles. You’ll call, get a disconnected number, cry on your couch, beat yourself up for contributing to someone else’s miserable, boring, lonely death. I want to die doing something I love. Not staring at a ceiling whose cracks I’ve memorized. Unless…nevermind.
3. Don’t assume people are dead.
4. The real live voice of someone who you thought was dead is the sweetest sound on earth.
5. Nursing homes have strange rules. Find out what they are and break them. (Another blog.) Do this as a proactive measure. They’ll have risk management meetings and resolve to never allow your return to the building. When it’s your turn to check in, you’ll already be blacklisted. Your kids will have to take care of you.
At no cost to you, here is my long-term plan to never wind up in a nursing home:
When my kids are sick I give them a little bell to ring whenever they need anything. I can go about my business on the other end of the house. They ring it if they need anything, usually as soon as I have my hands in raw meat, or when I’m up on a chair changing a lightbulb.
I need a reply bell strapped to my waist. I can skake it like Shakira for “Give me three minutes, my hands are in raw meat” or just a quick hip tilt jingle for “I’m on my way.”
My kids think I’m deaf, so they ring their bell until I walk in the room. We’re still working out the kinks but it’s a step up from smoke signals.
I don’t want my boys to think they’re going to get this kind of service from their wife. I hope they don’t blindly go into a marriage expecting it, like their dad did. I just want them to learn how I’m going to need things when they’re taking care of ME.
When my husband gets sick, it is a window into the relationship he had with his mother whenever he was ill. I can tell that my mother-in-law sweet-talked my husband when he was sick. Pampered, babied, checked in on him, adjusted the blinds and brought him a stack of National Geographics and Scientific Americans and cold compresses and a softer pair of socks.
I can tell because his expectations when he’s sick lean in that direction and I don’t seem to get it because my mom was a nurse and a healthnut and she loved having a house to herself when her seven kids were in school. We were never home sick unless we were throwing up. I don’t throw up. I can’t. I never. But I can spike a fever, so that was my ticket to a day home with Nurse Mom the Healthnut.
She would bring me milkshakes. Stop right there. It’s not what you’re thinking. These milkshakes contained no ice cream. ARE YOU KIDDING? Raw eggs, brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, yogurt and lumps of frozen strawberries. We were supposed to drink it and get better. She had a lot of tricks like that to get her house back.
For lunch it was more homemade plain yogurt, sweetened with honey. I hate honey. There was no sweet-talking, no catering, no “is there anything else I can get for you? Real food, perhaps? I am totally at your service, focused solely on your needs until you stop suffering and feel better again.”
None of that. My mother was the one suffering here. There was a kid in a bed upstairs interrupting her alone time, which meant she was going to have to go up and down that staircase when she had other things to do. Like make a new batch of homemade cat food, put it in freezer containers and label them. There was more food in that freezer for the cat to eat than there was for us.
I am a mix of those two types. A compound of 90% mother-in-law, 10% Nurse Healthnut. When my 13-year old was home from school last week with a sore throat and fever, I let him sleep in my bed with the remote and the TV and handed him a plate of mixed grain toast with hummus and a little bell to ring if he needed me while I was blogging so he wouldn’t have to yell. I said, when I handed him the bell: “Your wife is going to hate me.”
My plan is that he won’t come to expect the royal treatment when he’s married but he’ll be able to give it to me when he’s taking care of me. I already know which child I’m going to live with in my dotage. My high-maintenance child. Duh. Payback.
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