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A New Phase

A New Phase

I don’t know if something is happening inside of Al, or he has finally begun to open his ears and start hearing me. He has said good-bye to the bad mood, and the swearing for the past day. There is no smile either, so I am thinking he is somewhere in the middle of zone world, but yet he is speaking, and he is speaking to me!

This is not something Al does well, for as I have explained before, Al looks at me and treats me as if his father was standing here, instead of me. This is new to me, and I now have to try to expand my mind a little more and figure out where he is so I can stay up with him.

Hickory Dickory dock

The mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one

The mouse ran down

Hickory Dickory dock!

This is sometimes the way I feel, never quite being able to stay one step ahead of the Parkinson’s game. Of course, if I went more with the flow of life, I would not even have to consider anything, but the moment, but I am not like that. I have always tried to be prepared for anything in my life.

We are in a new stage of Parkinson’s now, dealing with one of the side effects, but Al has taken it one step further. I used to work with the elderly and disabled for many years, and used to get so upset when I would walk into a patients rooms, only to discover they had somehow, without normally  being able to walk alone, had made their way to the restroom and were found sitting on the toilet digging.

Now I won’t go into great detail about this fine term, our society has labeled it, but I will tell you that it can be a dangerous thing, and it can also be found to be quite a mess. This all stems from the root of the weed, called obsession.

Al is obsessed with using the bathroom. He now takes a product called Miralax, which is for constipation. Before, that product we used Milk of Magnesia, but discovered that M.O.M. should not be used for long-term. It takes several hours for any of these products to work, but Al wants instant results. He goes in and sits and comes out all upset, because nothing happens, as he says.

I keep explaining over and over to him, that there are no rules that he needs to produce anything every day, but he isn’t listening to that part, so now I hear about this several times a day. Along with this stubbornness  of not listening to my voice, he has taken a total flip also in the help section.

He would rather struggle than ask for help, fall instead of hanging on to something, choke instead of letting me help, anything not to ask for help, because, in my opinion, he would have to admit to himself, that he was becoming more dependent on others, so yesterday when Al asked me to help him with something, I was shocked, but pleased.

He continued this all through the day and has clung to it also for this new day. He will come out to the kitchen, and get a glass and place ice cubes and water in it, then sit it on the table and ask me to carry it into his bedroom. He does not help any longer with getting his eating utensils on the table or his napkin. This morning he asked me to wash down his back, which I could understand. Al wakes up and within a few minutes, breaks out into heavy sweats, like he has just ran a marathon,so he does need to be washed down between showers, so I can see him asking for help with his back. He wanted me to also put his deodorant on him and help put baby powder on his chest. I see no problems in

helping him, but knowing the way I am, I am now wondering if he truly needs help to do some of these things. Are his tremors getting worse, and I haven’t noticed it? Or, is he realizing his sister can ease his load a little.

I don’t mean to sound cruel, but I have been learning that Al has a way of using his illness to get his own way. Sort of like a child throwing a temper tantrum, but this is an adult with a child-like mind, but is much smarter than given credit for.

I want to help Al in all that I can, but the medical part in me, realizes that the more I do for him, the less he does for himself, and the faster the muscles give up and become mush, and then the walking ends. So do I continue to help with anything he requests, or do I urge him to still do for himself as much as possible. Is he getting so tired and weak from his Parkinson’s and has been forced to give up things he has been able to do before? I have to figure this out, so I don’t destroy the muscles within  his body. What do you think?