Two things I've never seen Grandmother do.
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On Saturday I came home from watching the Stanford-USC triple-overtime debacle, and naturally I checked in with Grandmother. She was lying on her bed. She wanted to take the pill that would help her sleep. She has trouble discerning her medications, so I gave her one Zolpidem, which was prescribed to her by her doctor.
Later, I went to the bathroom to take a shit when I heard a loud noise coming from Grandmother's bedroom. Must be her dropping something again ... nah, I have to check this. So after I drop off the reading material I had while excreting in my bedroom I go to hers.
She's lying the floor, on her side, right next to her night table. Grandmother wasn't writhing in pain; in fact, she's loudly snoring. If she were doing this on her bed, I wouldn't think anything of it. But it looked like she was on one corner of chair and then the Zolpidem just kicked in. She slid off the chair and onto the floor -- dropped like a sack of potatoes. My Father continuously complains about all the noise Grandmother makes at night. Yet he didn't run upstairs when this happened.
I stood there for a minute. First I thought, "What the fuck is going on?!" The second thought I had was, "How in the fuck do I get her on the bed?" On the assumption that she didn't get hurt (and I will admit that that didn't cross my mind till now), I just had to lift her up onto the bed. For a girl so tiny, she was pretty fucking heavy. Grandmother, if you lose some weight, not only would it have been easier to throw you on the bed, you would cure your diabetes, too.
I lifted quadrants of her body when she came to. I don't think she had any control over her muscles, but it somehow made it easier for me to throw her arm over my back and lift her up enough so that her upper body was securely on the bed. (It's a very high bed, and her knees bend at an acute angle in order for her to get on it. For someone so old, she should get a lower bed. Mental Note That Won't Go Anywhere.) I then threw her legs over so she was lying face-down. Grandmother was able to pick her head up, draw a faint but devilish smile, and say something I forgot. She looked like she was still delirious over the medication. I didn't want her to suffocate, especially since she was lying face-down eerily still, so I rolled her over, pulled her up to her pillow, and pushed her in towards the center of the bed more in case she regained the strength to roll over to her side.
The next morning she was up and at 'em, like the night before didn't happen. And because of her short-term memory loss, according to her, it didn't happen.
Weird -- she's been taking Zolpidem for about a year now with no adverse effects.
Never seen her do that before. Never.
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So remember that she was acting psycho on Monday, 24 hours after I saw her ambulatory without any Zolpidem-induced hangover.
From the other side of the counter, everything appeared to be. She was just putting the teapot on the stove for hot water. But she was sliding her arm down the length of the stove as she was trying to walk along it. I met her at the end of the islet, where she unsteadily put one foot in front of the other and ran into my arms.
I couldn't believe it. When I was young I'm sure I ran into her arms, but the other way around? Why? Is she sick?
That's when Grandmother started to speak, and the first indication things got weird is how she said them: Haltingly, through sharp breaths in -- like she was crying. "Without the insulin shot I will die. If you don't give me the shot I will die," she said. I looked down and her eyelid was quivering back and forth, and when she opened her eyes, they were coated with tears.
I will never forget what she said next: "Father always yells at me. Mother always yells at me. Only you never yell at me."
She has never cried in front of me -- never. So either this was a huge cry for help, a really bad sign her dementia's getting worse, or, the most probably cause, a combination of the two.
I'm glad she came out of her bedroom minutes after my parents slammed the front door shut. I could try and talk her down slowly without My Fucking Father breathing down our necks and telling us to stop crying and go to work. I walked Grandmother to a chair at the dining table (through all this unprecedented news I still remembered that I wanted to take her vitals) and explained to her that My Fucking Father gets angry when she repeatedly buys vegetables that she doesn't eat and eventually has to be thrown away. I didn't want to blame her for what she was feeling, but I couldn't just sugarcoat this and say that he's totally run and she could do whatever the hell she wants.
I got real nervous when she insisted that she can inject the insulin herself. I gave her the alcohol wipe, and she reached it with a hand trembling so bad I don't think I've seen my hands shaking that much when I walk with them gloveless in a January winter. But she insisted, and after shooting it into her system, she acted much calmer. After all of this, all she said was, "If you're happy, I'm happy."
Well, to be honest, I'm not happy. This rollercoaster past week has scared me. Any one of those things might happen again, and before it does I don't think I want to pass up another visit to her physician, or maybe even to a case worker for advice and -- Buddha forgive me -- potential assisted living and nursing home sites.
I don't want to put Grandmother in a home. She's been OK since Tuesday, so maybe this was just a phase. Maybe it was the meds. Maybe it was all the goddamn stress she feels being in the same house as those who don't want to talk to you.
Or ... it really is her old age. If that's the case, I don't know if I could handle the new responsibilities of reminding her of her day, making sure she's not pissing away money, cleaning up after her, making sure doors are closed and faucets are turned off, shit like that. Really, all those things are called a relative helping out another relative.
And yet ... her recent, uh, "fondness" of me is also very troubling. I don't like the attention, and I certainly don't see her as attractive. Dude, she's my Grandmother. As part of her (lack of) short-term memory, she left me two voicemails four minutes apart today, asking me when am I coming home. This clinginess is something I abhor and will run away from the second I feel someone's warm hooks sink into my body. I don't want to be caged in by something ... or someone. Without any support I trust, the main person taking care of an increasingly frail Grandmother will be me. I love her, but I just don't know when her and her borderline loyalty to me will become overwhelming.
I'm an asshole, I know.
At least Grandmother still recalls the crying. I think.
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