Taking Care of Mama: With Grace and Grit

By Ruby Brown Britt

Many older adults are spending their golden years taking care of a spouse, elderly parent, or other relative. My book tells one such storythe story of a four-year journey my siblings and I took when our very independent mother had cancer surgery at age ninety. It tells of her resistance to some of her helpers and our struggles trying to have a normal life while caring for her. It tells also of the difficult decisions made on her behalf, especially that final decision to place her in a nursing facility.

Two sisters born a decade apart to the same woman felt they were raised by different mothers. The older sister felt treated like a distant relative in the home but with responsibility for the care and behavior of the younger two, while the younger sister was the baby of the family and loved by all. It tells of the double standard prevalent in the South during the first five decades of the twentieth century and how proper Southern ladies were expected to conduct themselves.

My story also reveals how someone who felt she was not cared for by her mother can find the courage and stamina to care for that mother when she can no longer care for herself.

Research done after the fact is recorded to encourage and help the readers experience less confusion and heartache, and to have an easier time with care taking and decision making if any have to take a similar journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504933094

Book preview

© 2015 Ruby Brown Britt. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/20/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3310-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3309-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913509

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

1 Health and Rehabilitation

2 The woman she was

3 Tough decisions

4 Standing by

5 Back in the hospital

6 Finding her voice

7 Live and learn

8 Wrapping up

9 Lessons Learned

About the author

But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. – Ephesians 4:7

I recently heard someone say that wisdom does not always wear a suit. I have found that sometimes wisdom wears a dress, a bonnet, overalls or a floppy, tattered fishing hat. Wisdom might even come in the form of innocent words spoken by the youngest of us, although more often it is found by living and learning from mistakes made and those inevitable after effects.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou may live long on the earth. – Ephesians 6:1-3

God has blessed my siblings and me with a mother who lived a long life – over 94 years.

ONE

Health and Rehabilitation

T he bad news came from my daughter Debbie. My cell phone rang just as I pulled up in the parking lot at the nursing home on June 18, 2012. Mama had fallen.

I was on my way to check on my 93-year-old mother. Rita, my younger sister, was out of town at a convention with her husband. Because she has power of attorney, she is the first contact. For some reason she could not reach me on my cell phone and had called Debbie, who lives next door to me. Maybe if I had left home an hour earlier the fall could have been prevented. Maybe the lift chair wasn’t a good idea – but no good would come of speculating on maybes or what-ifs.

I hurried in and found Mama to be really shaky and somewhat disoriented. She was in bed but she would not lay her head back on the pillow. She seemed determined to not give in and just relax, which would have been to her advantage. Instead she lay there holding her head several inches off the pillow.

I later learned that she had raised her lift chair up to its full height and her body slid out of the chair down to the hard floor. Her roommate, Bonnie, called for help.

While Mama was still at home and we had someone with her 24/7, we had all been careful to keep the chair control where she could not reach it. We think she might have actually been sitting on the control, causing the chair to rise to its full height, but we will never know for sure.

That was actually Mama’s third fall in recent months, but the first time while in the health care facility. She was outside in her yard when she had her very first fall. She bent over to pick up something and just went over on her face. She skinned her nose and had a bruise or two but otherwise was okay.

The second time was on my watch. We were in the bathroom preparing her for bed when she left her walker and went to the sink to wash her hands. She lost her balance and we went down together. I saw that she was falling and I grabbed her but could not keep her upright, so down we went.

I could not get in a good position to lift her from the floor or even to a sitting position. Although it was after 10:00 p.m. and Rita lives a good 20 minutes away, after several attempts to lift Mama by myself, I made the phone call. While we waited for help, I covered her and put something under her head and tried to make her as comfortable as possible on the cold, hard floor. Rita and her husband Henry came and we were able to get Mama up and into her bed.

Although she has weathered those falls with no serious consequences, after only one month in the nursing facility, which I had told Mama was a personal care facility, the change in her is unbelievable. She sometimes looks at us as if she no longer knows who we are. But she knows. I can’t help but wonder if she is thinking that we have just dumped her to the care of others.

Both Rita and I question the care that she actually gets, and we are in and out at different times to monitor that care, or lack thereof. The nursing home has four floors, has recently changed ownership, and is under renovation. Her particular floor looks clean and nice and the employees appear to be concerned for her wellbeing, but we still wonder.

The dining room is still unfinished and residents are being fed in their rooms or sometimes in a common area on each floor. Mama is a diabetic and the food she gets consists mostly of carbohydrates. I have questioned her diet over and over and they tell me she is on a limited sugar diet. Hello! Don’t they know that most carbohydrates become sugar in your body when consumed? Mama just doesn’t eat much of the bread or the huge muffins they give her. She is served sandwiches in the evenings and sometimes has gravy on potatoes or white rice – all carbohydrates.

Their answer is to give her insulin. Rita has been monitoring her medicines for a while now. With a proper diet and consistency in taking her meds, Mama’s blood sugar count has been stable and she has done well. She was not on insulin when she entered the health and rehabilitation facility, which is what they call all of those places now. That is meant to give the facility a more welcoming effect on the minds of us caretakers, I suppose.

Mama was also walking on her walker quite well. She required help in standing up from a seated position, but then she would grab the walker handles and start moving on her own.

TWO

The woman she was

B y Thanksgiving of 2008, Mama had turned 90 years old; had never suffered a broken bone; had no surgery other than an appendectomy many years earlier; and had once said to me that she didn’t remember EVER having an upset stomach. Now, to someone who has IBS, acid reflux, and catches every stomach virus that comes around, THAT was certainly hard for me to believe. However, I did not remember any particular event in the past when she had been sick except for a tendency to catch the flu and even develop pneumonia in winter. Of course, she takes shots now to avoid those problems.

Furthermore, Mama has always been very particular about what she eats. If she doesn’t like something she will not eat it, and if she thinks something might create excess gas, she avoids that. We always had fruits and vegetables in our home and Mama would simmer prunes on the stove with water and a little sugar for those of us who did have problems.

Of course, in the winter we took medicines such as Castor Oil, Grover’s Chill Tonic, etc. and were encouraged to eat right. She made deserts often, but we did not have junk food in our home. She made bread and rice puddings, and her chocolate pudding was to-die-for, better than anything you can get now. She also made gelatin deserts, both with and without added fruit. Sometimes on Saturdays when Daddy bought groceries he would come home with a small paper bag of penny candy.

But the ultimate unbelievable admission came when I was really having a hard time with the heat and expressed anticipation of the end of menopause. "I don’t remember ever