Text 29531, 97 rader
Skriven 2015-07-28 20:57:00 av NANCY BACKUS (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Re: awkward 15
======================
-=> Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 07-25-15  21:15 <=-

 ML>> Ah. Here I'm staying with my friends Bill and Linda; her mom
 ML>> is in that same situation, but in this case Linda is the
 ML>> caretaker, driving half an hour to the home every day (used
 ML>> to be an hour, but the full-care facility she's been moved
 ML>> into is closer than the assisted place was).
 NB>> Been there, done that... and had to be at the care facility with my
 NB>> friend almost full-time to make sure that she was doing the rehab work
 NB>> the way she was supposed to, and that they didn't mess up her meds any
 NB>> more than I couldn't prevent...
 ML> It gives structure to your life if nothing else. Sort of the
 ML> way the stocks or a straitjacket might do.

Indeed.

 NB>> I fully agreed with my sister that bringing
 NB>> Mommy back home, to where she lives semi-independently (usually)
 NB>> with my sister, was much the best idea for her... especially as she
 NB>> is easily affected by hospital like setting caused delirium...
 ML> A terrible but understandable side effect of staring at
 ML> a field of white and a bunch of medical apparatus and
 ML> personnel all day. It's a different reality and one that
 ML> makes one want to break out of it altogether. 

To say nothing of the almost constant background noise, sometimes more
annoying than other times, but always not the normal... machine noises,
staff talking, other patients, other patients' blaring TV sets... We
covered up some of that for Mommy by having her music there in the room
with her... a boombox with either the classical station or her own CD's
playing, 24/7, just like at home...

 ML> When I was in for the head, for a while I had a roommate who
 ML> had become a screamer - I had to push my earplugs in extra
 ML> deep when he started up. The doctor had to explain his
 ML> condition to the family and made no bones about its origin
 ML> (long stays in bed with scant mental stimulation) and its name
 ML> (hospital-induced psychosis). 
 
Yeah... that's the big brother of the hospital-induced delirium... ;0

 NB>> So I get to drive the 40 minutes or so each way to help out with her
 NB>> care at home, but it would only have been more onerous probably if
 NB>> we'd let her go into a rehab setting where we'd still have to be
 NB>> covering things pretty much 24/7, and she'd be more out of it... 
 ML> Hard on the family, but easier on her - and perhaps less hard
 ML> on you than if she were in the worse environment .

Definitely easier on her... and probably, from our figuring, also quite
a bit easier on the family... perhaps a little more hands on for us, but
probably not even much of that really...
 
 ML>> Maybe my attitude still requires adjusting, because I found
 ML>> both wanting, but in different ways, the former for its
 ML>> ham-handed stereotyping of all sorts of English types - though
 ML>> Swiftian satire does paint with a broad brush, one prefers a
 ML>> hair or two of subtlety now and again -; the second for its
 ML>> plot holes, of which there are so many one suspects groundwork
 ML>> for a sequel, of which there was none.
 NB>> Perhaps you've merely developed a finer-tuned discrimination, with
 NB>> reading having been so difficult for so long...  ;)  One does want to
 NB>> maximize one's efforts especially when one is at a disadvantage...
 ML> I was always a highly critical reader and sometimes have to
 ML> rush through a book to blur over the inconsistency of details.
 ML> I had a young lady friend once who read plenty of what one might
 ML> call classic mysteries and who recommended to me three women
 ML> authors who she thought would please me - Marjorie Allingham,
 ML> Josephine Tey, and Dorothy Sayers. The first had just too many
 ML> inconsistencies and improbabilities, the second was too transparent,
 ML> and the third I read with some pleasure, enough to reread at a more
 ML> measured pace ... upon which I discovered holes that at times
 ML> compromised my enjoyment quite a bit.

Of the three, I'm most familiar with Dorothy Sayers... whom I've read
and reread with pleasure but, granted, always at a fairly quick pace...
 
 ML>> our mutually confessed assessment that the greatest chef in
 ML>> the world was Cheong Liew at Grange, which had become known
 ML>> to him via colleagues in the academic world and to me via
 ML>> colleagues in the FIDO cooking echo.
 NB>> Some things just make for a lasting bond... :)  And perhaps there were
 NB>> more, perhaps more subtle, things that you also had in common...  :)
 ML> We were all three interesting and rather eccentric, though in
 ML> the other two's cases their level of talent was such that they
 ML> managed to get a centric of their own. It is true that Gunther
 ML> and I sometimes saw eye to eye on things that nobody else
 ML> would understand the same way, and that was a source of pride.

Understood.  :)

ttyl        neb

... You have to ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste

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