Fighting Fit: World’s best Mum

86 going on 87!

“Fighting fit”, is what I told my brother, “fights with me,  fights with Mary ….she’s doing great”. He was asking me over skype about our mother who turned 86 this June or rather “I am 86 going on 87’ as she herself says!

 Those who have known her for long would not have believed me for she was always seen as a frail, timid lady totally without any hint of aggression. Its been over a year now since my brother and I began to take turns to be with her in the apartment we have rented in Bangalore to manage her care. I live in the city with my husband and my brother comes down from Singapore when its his ‘watch’.  

Mum has almost no vision left; she can just about manage to walk a few steps if propped up and needs total support for every daily activity of self care. She got to this physical point incrementally over the last few years. She was also started on mild medication for suspected dementia after she shook us all up with her increasingly aggressive abuses – I honestly hadn’t a clue she even knew such language! Her ability to communicate appropriately diminished as did her cognition. Last June just after her 85^th birthday she went into hospital intensive care after a series of seizure attacks. Uncertain what to expect or plan for her care post hospital, after much discussion we set this apartment up, hired live-in trained carers through an agency and decided to take turns to stay with her.

The first few weeks she was totally helpless - in bed, quiet most of the time, her activities limited to self care being administered to her. We got used to the idea of her using diapers, being fed her meals in bed and generally just being there. Slowly she came out of this state and in the next few months progressed to listening to music again (a source of real joy to her), ‘listening’ to TV shows and news (she couldn’t see) using a head set.

 Importantly we got her off the bed several times a day and she now ‘visited’ other rooms in the apartment in her wheelchair and also used the bathroom occasionally. Her communication with all of us steadily improved. She enjoyed having visitors. We started to take her out in her wheelchair in the evenings when, in addition to enjoying being in the open, she met curious children who would come near asking lots of questions about her condition. Asking her age seemed to be a favourite and her response invariably drew gasps and exclamations! Slowly she also began have her meals at the dining table and even ate herself. All in all we were delighted and amazed at her resilience and grit.

Then in April this year she was back in hospital in extreme distress caused by breathlessness due to ‘aspiration’ which means some foreign matter e.g. the food she was eating, was entering her respiratory passage, causing infection and making her breathing perilously difficult. She was in intensive care again but recovered her breathing rhythm in a day. She was now fed through a Ryle’s tube passed into her stomach through her nose.  She hated the tube, hated the hospital, hated all the nurses and made sure everyone knew that by creating such a din and even pulling out the tube. She wanted me with her but hospital rules didn’t allow that.  She was among strangers– all of them very kind but strangers nonetheless. She couldn’t see any of them, couldn’t see where she was……and she dealt with her trauma by lashing out in a torrent of abuse! One spin off was that she, and by extension I, got all the attention of the hospital staff!

Once back home the tube feed continued. Her doctor explained that her ability to swallow had likely weakened and therefore the risk of aspiration was high if she took food orally. It looked like the tube wouldn’t ever come off.

Managing a nutritious tube fed diet was challenging and by the time we learned how to do this her hemoglobin levels dipped dangerously. On the verge of rushing her back into intensive care we made a decision not to put her through that trauma again. Instead we combined doctor’s advice with common sense to plan a power packed regime of meals with spinach occupying centre stage. And she responded like Popeye the sailor man! Over the next couple of months she regained her strength, her voice and her fighting spirit! The tube came off too! She is once again enjoying her steaming cup of morning coffee, savoring the taste of delicious mangoes, even complimenting the cook on the hot ‘dosas’ and chutney. 

Right now its my time with mum and young Mary is the home care helper. Both of us serve as prime targets for mum to polish her fighting skills and spirited barbs! Just when I am feeling pleased about having successfully organized her stock of medicines, diapers etc. she remarks, “I thought you were a good person but you have turned out be really mean!” And for extra effect adds, “Raja (my husband) is a really good man but you are cunning!” Or if I am trying to coax or bully her into sitting upright while eating she calls me a dictator or ‘rule master’ and says she will not follow my rules and regulations! Some days at meal time she is very well behaved, then suddenly lifts her head slightly to ask me in a quiet voice, "Are you going to kill me now?”

With Mary mum’s constant effort is get her sacked so I (or my brother) can do everything. Her strategy for this is to scream out when Mary is giving her a wash or changing her that Mary is hitting her, pinching her. When I don’t respond she screams louder that Mary is now killing her!  I ask mum why Mary would do all that and she says that she (Mary) is jealous of her (mum)! We are still trying to find out why! At other times she calls Mary pure evil. Once when Mary was out she called for her. I reminded her Mary wasn’t here and she asked hopefully, “has she died?!” Luckily for us Mary finds all this amusing.

I don’t just find mum funny, I also find her cute and adorable like she’s my baby – albeit a brat! I hug her and tell her she’s the best mum in the world. She loves it, smiles and tells me I am a good daughter, I hug her tighter and laugh. She says, “Stop that laugh, sounds very silly!”