CAREGIVING / DEMENTIA
A Stuck Car, A Stuck Tow Truck, A Cuppa Joe, And a Really Big Day
And some humor
Fiadh (fee-a)
Fiadh is an old Irish word meaning “wild,” like a wild animal. Feral.
Fiadh was a dementia patient who had a bad knee. My job was looking after her a few days a week. She was 81 and had lived alone on five acres for years. She’d bought the property in the mid-1970s when she was 38 and the area was still rural. But there was an upscale housing development that went in during the 80s on the other side of her fence and gate to the west. And a couple of strip malls and a hospital not far away.
Though Fiadh had been fiercely independent all these years, she started having memory issues. Still, she denied needing “help.” She freaking resented “help.” This is not unusual with dementia patients.
When I first started working with her, shifts were for five hours, 10 am until 3 pm. Get her breakfast, get her dinner. Sometimes she was ready for it, other times, just cover dinner and leave it on the table for her.
Of course, there was personal care: helping her to the toilet, bathing, keeping her hands and nails clean. And there were household chores: laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, changing sheets. Watering the garden. And whatever else needed to be done.
One morning, I arrived and there had been some excitement. Fiadh had gotten up early — often she’d sleep in until after I arrived. But that morning, she was up at 7 am and wanted coffee.
She couldn’t find the coffee, and had she, she wouldn’t have remembered how to make it.
I get it: an emergency. So she called 911.
Her property is really challenging to find and no doubt the police car circled the development next to Fiadh’s place a few times before they zeroed in on it.
I had had directions to get there but I overshot a critical turn and it took me more than an hour to find the place my first time.
By the time I arrived, the police were gone and the excitement was over. Fiadh had had her coffee and gone back to bed.
I just saw the business card and heard about the aftermath. Fiadh had convinced the police that she was being neglected and abused. People left her home all alone without coffee and they were stealing her money.
The other incident that involved coffee is when, again, Fiahd got up early and wanted her cuppa. There was some left in the pot for her, so she put it in a pan on the stove. Then she went to her easy chair in the generous kitchen and fell asleep.
Fortunately, Jane, who Fiadh had given Power of Attorney to years ago, had stopped by on her way to work and discovered the empty pan, the smoke billowing throughout the kitchen, the flame.
Fiadh couldn’t understand why Jane was so upset.
Shortly thereafter, the caregiving team went from went from five-hour shifts to 24-hour shifts. And of course, the knobs were removed from the stove and put out of Fiadh’s reach.
I’d been planning a “jail break” for Fiadh because she complained that she’s a prisoner, never gets off her property, which was pretty much true.
Her five lovely acres were a wonderful place to be “jailed” actually, but she really was ready for some fresh scenery, fresh impressions. I planned to take her out for a ride. The problem was that bad knee and getting her to the car.
Fiadh had a lot of pain when she walked. She could get around on a walker, but it was an ordeal just to get her 20’ from the kitchen to the bathroom. And there was a step involved.
It had been a few months since her walk to David and Angela’s and she’d lost mobility in that time.
To get her out would involve getting her to my car, which is parked a good 200 feet from her front door, down a step, across gravel, through some generally spongy grass — this is the Pacific NW, after all and September through June, a rain forest.
Though it would be a challenge, I figured I could save a good 170’ of that walk by backing up my car on the path adjacent to the house. I could get the car within 30’ of the front door.
I knew it was a risk — I could get stuck — but I thought it was worth a try. After all, if there was a mishap, I could always call roadside service, which I have through my auto insurance policy. My little piece of security.
So, I backed my car up and it all went swimmingly until it didn’t. I was as close to the house as I was going to get, but when I stopped, my front right tire got mired. Attempts to get unstuck just got me more stuck.
Over the next hour, I tried putting cat litter under the tire, then a piece of plywood. I got in and out of the car, making adjustments, hoping for traction but nothing worked.
Fiadh loves drama. The first thing she did when it was clear that I was stuck was to call Jane because you never let a good drama go to waste. She wanted to share the excitement.
Jane — who had Power of Attorney for Fiadh, and who had hired me. I’d let Jane know the day before that I planned a prison break, so that part wouldn’t be a surprise. But the stuck part would.
By the time Jane arrived to assess the situation, Fiadh had taken her walker and made it all the way down the pathway to the car park to greet Jane! A full 200’’ down a couple of steps, through gravel, up a little incline and through lots of wet, spongy grass!
Honestly, I didn’t think Fiadh was capable. No doubt adrenaline gave her this super power.
I assured Jane that I’d called roadside service and the tow truck was on the way. The situation would be handled, I appreciated her taking time out of her day but it was under control. Nothing she could do anyway.
Jane was sympathetic.
It was three hours before the tow truck showed up and when the driver arrived, I tried to warn him off that spongy ground at the beginning of the path to the house but before I could, bam, instantly, his tires spun. And he was stuck.
Still he dealt with the task at hand, getting my car unstuck and after about 45 minutes and three tries, he was able to winch me out. But now he was faced with getting himself out.
He used his own equipment — a hydraulic lift to get the tires up, boards to give some leverage, winch around a tree and his rig still didn’t budge. It just gouged deeper holes in the wet soil.
He worked on it for more than an hour before he conceded and called for help. Second bigger tow truck only took about 30 minutes to arrive. The red and white lights on each rig flashed, though there was no one there to enjoy them but Fiadh and me.
Together, the tow truck guys worked for more than an hour and finally were able to get the first truck out. It was dark by now.
And the ground is wrecked: deep gouges, gravel on the actual driveway is gouged. They even hit a board on the gate frame on the way out and that would need to be replaced.
The second driver recorded all the damage, reported it to his boss, and said they would make it right.
So what did I learn? I knew it was iffy, backing up onto the path, but thought it would be okay. And I had the security of knowing I could call roadside assistance if I got stuck. I thought it would be a simple fix. Anything but!
I sure underestimated Fiadh’s abilities. Normally, she wasn’t nearly so energetic.
Initially, Fiadh was disturbed, tried to shame me over my poor decision to try to make the trip to the car easier for her. I owned it. Later, she was calm, then she got agitated and mean again, then back to calm. She wore herself out. That day, she was awake until 8 pm when she finally went to bed, completely spent. Sleepy time. Thank goodness.
Update: When I returned for my next shift three days later, Fiadh hadn’t forgotten. As I said, she loves drama, the stuck tow truck, the flashing lights, this, next to the sameness of her days, made quite an impression on her.
With her dementia, however, she didn’t have facial recognition. She knew something big had happened, she knew it involved a car that got stuck and one of the “girls” who looked after her, but she didn’t know that I was that girl.
And she couldn’t quit yapping about it: “That stupid girl who got stuck. Why would she call those men? I own this property … blah blah blah stupid girl, blah blah blah. What a mess they made. What would be an appropriate punishment? What would teach that stupid girl?”
The frustration rose in me and I decided to chime in on an appropriate punishment.
“I agree,” I said. That stupid girl ought to be publicly humiliated, then she should be hanged, shot, disemboweled, drawn, quartered … “
Fiadh lit right up, exclaiming, “You’re just trying to make me feel good!”
Thanks for reading.
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