Too much life, too little research

On Saturday when the Goose and I were on our way to the movies my Mom called. Since I was driving I let the Goose do the talking at first, but my Mom seemed to want to talk to me too. Driving and talking without a hands-free set is illegal in Sweden, but I assumed it wouldn't take long. Wrong. Turned out my granddad had been in hospital for the last few days and suddenly gotten much worse the night before. Some sort of infection but the doctors didn't know at the time what it was (found out later that it was a combination of urinary tract infection and pneumonia). So we shed a few tears in the car ( I managed to stay on the road) and decided that after the movie, we would go to my flat to pick up the things we would need for holidays in case we had to leave a week earlier than planned if things got worse. On Sunday it seemed that the situation had improved so we could relax and get on with our lives as usual.

The man is old, born in 1915 (you do the math, smartypants). He was allowed to keep his driver's licence till he was 90, then he realised he wasn't sharp enough anymore. Quite exactly two years ago he suddenly (more or less overnight my grandma told us) he started seeing things that were not there (black lines across the room), had a lot of imaginary (or for him probably very real) important meetings to go to (he used to be an engineer), and sometimes would get confused about who my grandma was ("Where is that lady who comes here to clean and cook?). He would sometimes go out for long walks both during the day and in the evening, so my grandma spent a lot of time keeping track of his whereabouts. He would leave his walking canes all over the house and forgetting where he left them so my grandma spent most of the rest of her time looking for them. The good thing is that his base level has always been incredibly sweet, mellow, quiet and modest. He is one of the gentlest men I know. So as the dementia progressed and his more aggressive and stubborn sides surfaced it wasn't as troublesome as it can be in many other people. The worst thing I've heard him say (as I tried to prevent him to take a stroll along a busy highway this summer) "Well now you can't just come here and think you're allowed to decide something!". Oh yes granddad, I think I can. Considering he weighs probably less than 50 kilos now, skinny and frail as he is, he was pretty easy to turn and bring back home.

Anyway, my grandma has been a real hero staying at home with and taking care of him for these two years. She's no youngster either, born in 1922. For a few months now nurses have come to their house twice a day to help him get up in the morning and to bed in the evening. And they were the ones who said he should see a doctor when he didn't want to get out of bed Thursday last week. My parents and my grandma started looking for a place in a home for him in case he would ever get out of the hospital. And he recovered relatively well and yesterday it was decided that he would move to a home today*. Relief for my grandma since she was getting very tired, but obviously she will be very lonely.

This morning as she went to pick up the phone to have her daily chat with her youngest daughter, she fell. She couldn't get up and diagnosed herself correctly; broken femur neck. Answered the phone, told her daughter what had happened and hung up. Keeping her cool she called for an ambulance, called her neighbour since 1947 to warn her that an ambulance was on it's way and she that didn't need to worry and that she would have the ambulance crew close and lock the door and give the keys to the neighbour so her middle daughter and her husband could get in when they arrived later in the evening. She kicks total ass.

Even if recovery from this type of fracture is much better than thirty years ago when the same thing happened to her mother, it's just heart-breaking. She could finally have got back to do a bit of living again and now who knows if that will ever happen. So yes Cath, even if I still mostly worry about the generation above my parents, I do fear the Call. And even thought I'm much closer than you to my folks (~6 hours by air, ~12 hours by car), I'm still to far away for my taste. 

*One fun thing about it all is that my granddad's big sister moved in to the same nursing home as he did - also today. The staff joked about calling the local newspapers to picture these two 93 and 98 years old siblings moving in on the same day.