Dealing with the Elderly

There’s a scripture about applying a new patch to old fabric and when that was written I’m sure the parable was not about the circumstance my husband and I faced the other night......  My husband was on the phone to the tax department when his Dad (who usually asks me ) came up to him failing to notice he was on the phone,  due to his hearing and vision impairment .  He said in his usually loud voice “Can you come down to my room and stick a patch to my backside?  We are lucky that the tax consultant having heard this comment and interpreting it any number of ways didn’t stick us with some new tax.

My husband thought I must have delegated since I was cooking dinner,  and with sticky tape in hand and on his way down to the granny flat said “I’ll go stick that thing on Dad’s bum”.  Because both men are prolific communicators , I decided I better ask what it was all about and he just shrugged.  The passive compliant soul that he is was just going to do what he was asked, no questions.   This is why I am his Father’s carer!

For starters, what patch? It couldn’t be a hormone patch – he’s not having menopause.  Nicotine? He hasn’t smoked since 1955.   Secondly, I pointed out that you can’t use sticky tape on the skin of someone taking blood thinners because they bruise, graze and bleed easily and when he tears it off, then he'll have a bleeding and then infected butt.  And what’s this got to do with his butt anyway? 

My Husband knew nothing and he was just going to close his eyes and patch up whatever needed to be patched up.  He is a tradesman after all.  He once was in a work team for indoor cricket and they called themselves “no more gaps”.   Are you starting to see why I didn’t just let it go?

So, I went and interrogated my Father-in-law and without not really knowing why or how, he had bought a pack of adhesive panty liners from a woman who came to talk at the over 60’s club.  All he remembers is that the talk was something about arthritis relief and some magnetic strip.  On closer investigation and after reading the packet it turns out the panty liner has some metal or magnetic strip in the core of it. There ain’t no information about men slapping it on their backside for joint pain!

What I want to know is why some woman is peddling menstruation panty liners at an over 60’s club - It’s not really the right target market.  Maybe in marketing terms this is what is called a “Product Line Extension”  - selling the same product to a new target market and/or finding new uses for an existing product line.  My other thought was in terms of the primary market of menstruating women - who would actually risk putting something with a magnetic strip up against their privates?  And what is it supposed to do – attract all the negative ions?!!!

At this point my husband did one of his usual dry witted one liners and suggested  that since I am a migraine suffer, if this magnetic  panty liner works on his father’s bum then I should strap one on my temples and it might work.  I might be able to do school drop off without being drugged on Panadine Forte but the school will think my son has a complete loony for a mother.

After eventually adhering the thing to his Father’s butt cheek my husband looked pale and had to immediately have a shower. I told my husband not to be such a wuss – he’s lucky he wasn’t there for his last prostate examination. Or worse still, the day I was icing my daughter’s 1^st  birthday cake and he announced he was going to try Viagra because there was a lady at the over 60’s club he thought was interested!  Luckily, he misread her intentions and she really was just being a nice lady making him some fruitcake.  I don’t know what was worse – the thought of him on Viagra or having to have a discussion with an 88 year old (who was faithful to his one and beloved wife until she passed) about reading Women’s intentions and not jumping to conclusions and that even if he did read it right that Viagra can cause strokes.  I am grateful that my carer’s role has not included a hospital trip with rigamortis!

The next saga is finding the right electric chair for him to “trade up” to from his motorised gopher so he can safely go to the shops and to his social outings.  I need to get up to speed on wheel turning bases, investigate the gutter sizes on common trips he will take, explain to him that once he gets in this thing he will have to avoid becoming lazy otherwise his ligaments and bones will start to seize up without some range of motion etc etc.  All I can think of is that I’ll have Dr Who’s Davros leader of the Daleks to contend with in a few years!

God will give you the grace to deal with any situation he asks you to stay in.  I have received a greater measure of grace and humility since being the full-time carer of my 90 year old father in law.  But grace in my case takes the form of coping by being able to laugh at myself and the confronting situations that a woman in her thirties should not be exposed to.