Dear Readers,
Much time has elapsed since Chapter 22 — more time than I thought! How did you like my narrative about “the art of letting things slide”? It was one of this old caregiver's more candid writings of late, to be sure.
What's happened since? Well, for one thing, Elizabeth and Megan of Merry Maids in Appleton have been joined by Roxann of Merry Maids in Green Bay — and this old house is standing tall. They have collectively removed so much dust and dog hair that I no longer need to suck on cough drops all day and into the night!
My patient, Robin, nicknamed Rawbaw, and her funky dawg, Brooke, have also noted the marked improvement in air quality since “the maids” have made merry here. The important work they do also frees me up to let more things slide. I'm not kidding. I am beginning to make “the Artful Dodger” (author Charles Dickens's pickpocket character in Oliver Twist) look like an unimaginative slug.
For you readers who have just stumbled upon this blog at this new chapter, allow me to bring you up to speed on how I started doing the blog. A few years ago, I was asked by Marcia K. Horn of ICAN to write a blog from the caregiver's perspective, after she learned that I was caring for my wife at home, following her diagnosis of Stage IV small-cell lung cancer.
Carol Ann lost her battle with that aggressive form of the Big C on November 2, 2014. Bewildered and grieving, I thought I was through blogging, but in late December I was asked to travel from Michigan to Wisconsin to look after an ailing younger sister for a while, and what transpired there gave me lots to blog about.
Rawbaw had been hospitalized due to complications of her Type 2 diabetes, and needed a family member to help her at home immediately after her discharge from the hospital. I seemed to fill the bill. I was at loose ends, needed something to wrap my mind around, and could identify closely with Rawbaw's problem because I'm diabetic, too. (But my ailment is manageable through diet and exercise. I am one lucky son of a gun.)
I moved in with Robin to look after her “for a few weeks” — and at that time Marcia of ICAN suggested I resume writing my ICAN blog, “because a caregiver is a caregiver, no matter what the patient is suffering from!”
Marcia is such a smarty. I identified immediately with Rawbaw's diabetic challenge — and also reasoned when she lost her youngest son to pancreatic cancer in 2016 that I was still helping people impacted by cancer, too! A pretty slick rationale for blogging on, if I do say so, myself.
Actually, my argument that I was still linked to cancer was more powerful than just my relationship to Rawbaw. Our two older sisters had both had cancer, got treatment, and went into remission. Two of my closest friends in Michigan — a married couple — were not so lucky and expired from different forms of cancer about eight months apart. And I have lost other people I loved to the dread disease as well.
All of which explains, I think, why I'm still doing this caregiver blog for ICAN while looking after an elderly diabetic woman (my kid sister) and her rather eccentric dog (a lab/shepherd mix with no health issues whatsoever).
It gets down to this: whatever illness (or illnesses) your patient is suffering from, you still have to administer a lot of meds, give shots, put on patches and take them off, listen closely and take notes during doctors' appointments, plan and provide an intelligent diet, run all over town buying medicines, munchies, and miscellaneous (what Rawbaw calls “the three ems”), and care ABOUT the person you're caring FOR — no matter how grumpy and/or uncooperative that person gets.
(B.T.W., Rawbaw can get really bitchy. But when she does, I always tell myself I am now making up for all the times I tormented her when I was 5 and she was 3, in Long Beach, California, during World War II.)
Life is a wonderful mind game, isn't it? And it takes only two people to play it. Of course, millions of people can participate in the same mind game, too (such as national politics), but that can get kind of crazy. Personally, I have found that one-on-one mind games are the most fun.
Before I forget, this ICAN blog chapter is supposed to revisit the importance of keeping your sense of humor. I have touched on this topic often before, because, corny as it may sound, laughter truly is the best medicine, overall. It reminds you that life can still tickle your funny bone, and laughter always makes you want more situations that lead to a giggle or a guffaw.
Rawbaw and I joke about everything.
Perhaps most, about Rawbaw's idiosyncratic mutt, Brooke, because she has such a distinctive personality and great sense of humor, herself. Rawbaw often says she'd like to enroll Brooke in an obedience class. I just start snickering. “That dog won't even mind us,” I routinely say. “What makes you think she'd listen to a perfect stranger?”
Last winter I nicknamed the dog “Wilhelmina Big Fanny” when she put on a bit of weight. But I say the name so affectionately, she loves it.
As I think I've told you before, Rawbaw recently started calling her “Rat Dog” after she refused to learn how to play conventional “fetch.” F.Y.I., Brooke plays only “one fetch,” a game she created on her own, quite a while back. She fetches the ball, no problem, but then she shoots through the doggie door and out to the back yard with it, indicating to all but the slowest observer that the game is over — and Brooke has won.
Rawbaw and I also have fun with our human habits and rituals, and everything is fair game.
When I serve breakfast, Rawbaw often launches into ceremonious praise about Juan Valdez, the fictitious Colombian coffee grower in TV commercials who brings only the finest coffee beans to market (from high in the Andes) on his faithful burro, Conchita. As we sip our java, knowing only that we buy it at Walmart in Appleton, I salute Juan and toast him for his steadfast resolve to personally deliver only the finest coffee to our house every morning, piping hot and delicious, just in time for our first meal of the day. Then Rawbaw wants to know how one man and a burro can handle the worldwide demand for his coffee, and I suggest that perhaps nowadays Conchita and he fly in a huge turbojet cargo plane, at the front of a huge formation of such planes, all stuffed with coffee beans — so many planes, they darken the sky. We savor our coffee a bit, then dream up more embellishments to the theme that Juan Valdez personally pours our morning coffee, the world's best, every ding-dong day. It gets crazier. A few mornings ago, Rawbaw expressed her love for Juan in her best high-school Spanish. “Yo te quiero, Juanito. No me dejes NUNCA!” (“I love you, Johnny. NEVER leave me!”) As I recall, I was so moved by her declaration of love in the man's native tongue that I cried out, “Viva Valdez!”
You think that's nuts? Wait till you hear about the fictitious guy that Rawbaw didn't hire to deal cards at our home whenever we two square off at the gaming table in Rawbaw's family room for a brisk game of “Kings in the Corners.” Rawbaw thought we should get someone, because the tendinitis in her right arm was making it uncomfortable for her to deal, and she didn't want to make me deal all the time. She said she had contacted someone through the personals in the local paper — a really nice Filipino named Enrique, with actual casino experience. I asked what he'd cost, and she said he'd be happy to deal five nights a week for five percent of every pot. I observed that there are no pots in “Kings in the Corners,” and we never play the game for money, just glory. She replied that maybe it was time we loosened up a little bit and did play for money. That's about as far as we've gotten with this fantasy — and maybe we should let it rest.
Our sense of humor is probably most evident while we're watching TV together on the eight-dollar couch in our computer/TV room. We tend to mute the commercials — but we have seen some of them so many times that we can read the people's lips and say their wrap-up phrases for them (e.g. “Call now!”)
We also routinely comment on how old the personalities in the news are getting, then snipe at each other about our own failure to achieve eternal youth. I tell Rawbaw she should get to her lady barber for another pixie cut. (“The old one has really grown out since 2016.”) And Rawbaw counters with a suggestion that I shave my beard to modernize my face — or at least make a few extra bucks as a department store Santa Claus this coming December.
I think many of these exchanges are the result of sibling rivalry that goes back 78 years, to when Rawbaw was born.
Sometimes our funny business even involves Rawbaw's best friends in Appleton. Jerry and Patsy have established a wonderful tradition of coming to our home with gourmet meals they've prepared, themselves. And after a delicious dinner for five (the dog gets bites), Jerry often helps Rawbaw with her jigsaw puzzles, because she is forever pushing pieces together that should not be pushed together. A bit of a wag, Jerry recently bought her a jigsaw puzzle for little kids that has only eight big pieces to it. Rawbaw didn't think that was very funny, but I sure did.
Odd as it may sound, I think the award for best sense of humor at 1019 E. Eldorado should go to Rawbaw's dog, Brooke. She is already officially recognized as the morale officer for this outfit, but it should also be acknowledged that she has a personality that keeps us humans in stitches.
When I take her to the vet, she is very polite. Steps up onto the weighing scale all by herself. Stays calm. But if the door to the examining room opens, she moves with lightning speed to pass through it to freedom!
Always thinking, that dog. At home, she often won't eat the doggie dinner in the bowl on the kitchen floor till I enhance it with meat from my own plate.
The postman who comes six days a week must think she's an attack dog, because she goes nuts when she hears him walking toward our house from a block away. But she loves company, and is our official greeter when we swing the front door open to receive guests.
When I take her to the doggie park (not often enough), she is more attracted to the people than to their dogs. Brooke often walks up to families sitting at picnic tables scattered around the park, jumps up onto their table tops, looks down at them, and invites them to pet her. Most do. Brooke also likes cats. Has terrified a few, here in the neighborhood, trying to get acquainted with them.
Some days Brooke is the court jester. Others, the stand-up comic. This would be a much less amusing house without her. I guess I am advocating that everyone should have a dog — just not this one. Sorry, she's ours.
—Michael E. Hearons
