life as a caregiver

Perimenopause



I have never been a fan of my plumbing. From the day my mother handed me a little booklet with characters out of a John, Jean and Judy book explaining the “exciting and wondrous miracle puberty”, I pretty much knew that girls got more than their fair share of the short end of God’s stick. It starts with not being able to be an altar-boy and just goes down hill from there. I think I was in sixth grade. Not quite twelve. And big for my age. So, my mother assumed, incorrectly I might add, that it was time to bring me up to speed on the whole menstruating thing. As it turned out, I didn’t start having a regular cycle until the beginning of eighth grade and that my greatest source of information about getting my period was not my mother, who’d had a hysterectomy before I was even born and hadn’t ever had what one could call a “normal” cycle, or the charming pamphlet or even the 1960-ish filmstrip presentation the sisters at my school inflicted on all the girls when they reached a “certain age”. No, like most things to do with the nether regions of my body – I learned what I needed to know from my peers. A dubious source of information to be sure but one that has stood the test of generations of young people everywhere. That is to say – the near-blind leading the legally so.

Now that I have once again reacher “a certain age”, I am finding that my peers are once again the leading edge of information as I wander, sometimes willingly and sometimes resentfully, into the valley of the shadow of menopause. 

Ironically, it is my husband who has supplied me with much of my current information as he as been down this path, so to speak, before with his late wife. All manner of natural supplements have been suggested for my own good and his comfort. Black Cohosh and red clover for hot flashes, he thinks. The hot flashes are mainly a night time thing right now and only around that time of the month. Too much information? The change is like any other phase in a woman’s reproductive and sexual existence. When it is in season, it is fair game for conversation. That’s why preteens obsess about their breasts and when they will get their firs period and teens and twenty somethings can think and talk of little else but sex. It’s why married women suffer, loudly, about baby hungry and pregnant women will divulge the most intimate (and disgusting) information to anyone without even being asked for it. Labor and Delivery stories, breast-feeding adventures, and the big C of life – we are arguably more fascinated with our bodies than any man could ever be.

I am technically not menopausal. I know this because I was having issues last spring and my wonderful doctor did blood tests and had an ultra-sound done just to make sure that nothing more sinister was afoot (which caused a fair degree of worry for both Rob and I because we are now firmly in the camp of “it can happen to us” because it has). As it turned out I am just experiencing that long and winding down part of the reproductive years. From my reading, I know that it can take up to a decade to wind down to the point of actual menopause and that your best predictor for a time frame is the age at which your mother and grandmother stopped unwinding and ground to a halt. Being adopted, I don’t have that information. But, given that I was about 42ish when I first noticed things starting to change, then 52ish is a good guess. That’s eight years. Good God. That is a heck of a long time to wait for the demise of something I have never been all that fond of in the first place, and the list of symptoms that I am/could experience just bring up the short stick thing I mentioned earlier. One of the symptoms I noticed on the list was memory and concentration problems. Oh great. First it is PG brain, then mommy brain, followed by caregiver brain and then widow-brain. Top these last six years off with the hormonal (or lack thereof) induced thinking blips caused by peri and definitely menopause and by the time I am in my “right” mind again I will be too far gone in senior “moments” to notice.

Until recently, the whole aging thing hadn’t been a big deal to me. I look a tad younger than most of my peers – which I attribute to good genes and a near shunning of the sun when I was a teen and in my youngest adult years (fat girls don’t wear bathing suits). But, the white hair is getting harder to hide with just highlights and the physical things I once did without thinking need to be thought about it, and I am not sure that when you throw hormonal imbalance on top of this that I am as indifferent to getting old as I have been in the past. Rob is always talking about having this finite number of “good” old age years. As he sees it, one can still be okay – as in fit and healthy – enough to do as they would like during the 50’s and into the 60’s but that one gets maybe about 15 years max once you reach the top of the hill and round over. That is so depressing and what is worse is that I appear to be under the elder Boomer delusion that I will still be functional as a 70+ year old. Of course, perhaps I will. I read an article in the Globe yesterday about a couple of studies down with centenarians that determined it is not simply good genes that help people live into their 90’s and hit the 100 mark. Lifestyle is key as well and that they really can’t say when it is too late to improve one’s lifestyle. 

It is not easy. Undoing the damage of caregiving and the stresses of the last years. Going on six now since Will’s first troubling symptoms began. I have started Yoga and I find that if I ignore the Mahareshi side of it I enjoy it quite a bit. I walk. I even have Rob walking. I can run again but try not to overdo it as it is hard on my knees. I lift weights. Heavy ones. I am Zena. I am a near total vegan but I need to work on the fruit thing. I hate out of season fruit. It’s squishy during the winter. How can anyone think about putting squishy fruit in her mouth without gagging?

Perhaps I will do okay. 102 is a good age to shoot for, don’t you think. One can’t set too lofty a goal where living is concerned, in my opinion.

Starbucks at the Safeway


Olivia and Wendy are usually the baristas on duty at the Starbucks when I am in Safeway during the week. Because I see them more than any of the others who work there, I asked them to pose for the photo I took when I decided to write about Starbucks. You might wonder, why write about Starbucks? It’s a completely commercial coffee house that is as responsible for the decline of civilization as Wal-mart, strip-malls and mega-plex theatre chains. They sit in nearly every grocery chain and mall and sometimes on multiple street-corners on the same city block. Starbucks is not the real deal but a pretense and so is not unique or special. But that is precisely why I want to write about it. Because they are everywhere. And for that reason, to me, they are special.

My step-daughter, Jordan, refuses to step foot in Starbucks (or its Canadian equivalent Second Cup) because she believe that the company is immoral and exploits poor coffee growers in the third world countries, although this isn’t true of Starbucks – according to what I have read (I don’t know about Second Cup) – I acknowledge that a cup of just about anything at Starbucks’ is priced well over it’s actual value and that what one is really paying for when one does stop and go with the logo cup in had is the stamp of privilege because only those with the time to burn and the cash as well, run into the nearest Starbucks for their morning latte fix. People who are press for time and money, or are too sensible to pay too much money for hot flavored water, stop at the corner gas-mart for the paper (those who are sensible because they read) and a cup of whatever is brewing. I began my chai days with occasional trips to a mom and pop coffee house at the Valley West Mall in West Des Moines. Will loved the mochas and he could talk football with the owner who was a Bears fan but that was okay with Will, at least the guy was devoted and knew his NFL. The little trips made shopping and running errands more palatable for Will and I can’t remember when he got me the first chai latte but I don’t remember taking an instant liking to it. It was too hot. I have never been a fan of anything I had to swallow quickly in order to avoid burning my tongue. I am like that about most foods and beverages really and Will’s standard question during a meal would be “Is that cold enough for you yet, babe?”

The coffee shop eventually moved out of the mall to a strip mall not far from where we lived and it became a Sunday ritual for us that continued until Will went into the nursing home in October of ’04. After that Katy and I would stop there to pick up a mocha to take to him when we went to visit and eventually help with feeding him on weekend mornings and whenever I was on vacation from school. After Will died, I couldn’t bring myself to go there anymore. The couple that ran the place had been so kind to Will when he was still able to go there himself which was a rarity. So many people would pretend he wasn’t present because the didn’t realize he had dementia and his behavior was so odd, or they would give him rude looks and when he failed to notice they would direct them at me. I stopped trying to explain early on. It did no good. I can remember a police officer who overreacted to Will’s agitation once and when I explained what the real matter was, he told me that he didn’t care – just keep my husband back. Will could barely see or walk without assistance at the time.

So, when I moved up to Fort Saskatchewan, I was quite happy to discover that the local grocery, Safeway, had a Starbucks. Just like the Hy-Vee grocery back in Iowa. It was comforting because despite the Canadian version of service (slow) it was the same. The same menu. The same baked goods. The same tastes and smells. The same rotating holiday items for sale. And, if you went often enough, the people would start to know your usual order and eventually ask after you as though they knew you. Amid all the unfamiliar, here was Starbucks – predictable and known. Kind of like the Catholic mass. You go anywhere in the world, walk into a Catholic church and the mass will be pretty much the same everywhere. The same holds true with a non-fat chai latte.

-28C


It’s freakin’ cold out today. The drifts are up to my knees. I have cat starving in the garage, a kid to take and pick up from school because buses aren’t running, and a car that isn’t happy about starting. Not to mention shoveling. And I shouldn’t mention that because when Rob reads that I shoveled, he will not be pleased. Shoveling, aside from being the man’s job, is fairly hazardous in this types of temps (and I am not talking wind child stuff but real minus degrees). I know this personally because the winter that my late husband was first sick I ended up with frostbite on several toes trying to keep up with the shoveling. It snowed quite a bit and was a colder winter than we’d had in a while. Will’s uncle was always telling me to leave the shoveling for him but then it would snow and he wouldn’t show up. So, I would leave Katy inside with Will (she was about eighteen months old and he was going blind and had dementia) and go out and shovel as fast as I could (two car drive but mercifully very little sidewalk). I’d be in and out checking up on them but not enough to save my toes. I had crappy boots though and no money for new ones as I was just paying the bills we had and feeding us without Will’s income. 

Texas, I am told, doesn’t have winter like this and I know that is why many people head south for the winter or to live permanently. I bet they get ice though. Ice is worse than frigid temps and snow by a very long shot in my opinion. People in colder climates are barely able to navigate it with any amount of sense but down south there should just be a general ban on travel when ice comes.

But, I really miss my garage today. My attached two car garage. I’d never had one before and spent not quite four years with it and now I am feeling hooped not to have one.