Now and Then
By Iris Winston
The daily pills are all set out. Alongside the assorted prescription medications and vitamins for me and my husband are pills to protect the cat and dog from ticks and possible tapeworm incursions.
The pile of meds is an indication that this is a senior household. As we grow older, keeping healthy and pharmaceutical backup seem to go hand in hand. There are several other indications that age is taking its toll. Apart from various medical appointments noted on the calendar, a hospital bed, an electronic patient lift and a wheelchair are in evidence. There are grab bars and a modified toilet seat in the bathroom and a transfer bench over the bathtub to help alleviate my husband’s mobility issues. Then there is the arrival of a personal support worker three times a day to help him. Every piece of equipment and every step demonstrate the downward spiral of a once healthy, capable person.
The PSWs see him only as he is now—aged and handicapped, with limited mobility and impaired hearing that makes it difficult for him to converse without his hearing aids. I am very aware of how much my caregiver duties change the conjugal relationship. It’s not that I care for my husband less, but I do think of him more as a patient who needs his nurse than as an equal partner.
But I still have visions of a man who was strong, upright and adventurous. I even have a framed studio portrait of him in his prime in the family room to keep the memory alive.
Evidence of the aging cycle is everywhere. When the pandemic hit, news reports regularly noted that seniors were at particular risk from COVID-19. Various articles describing a senior’s sickness, accident or demise note age only, rather than referring to a specific disease or problem. It is frequently there when we hear of chronic illness or death among longtime friends. It is even there in the kind offers from neighbours willing to help with heavy lifting or other domestic tasks.
It is very different from the way it once was. I still think back to one perfect day several decades ago. We were living in the Rockies. The scenery was breathtaking and life was moving very smoothly on all fronts—health, social contacts, travel, jobs for the adults and school for the children. As I took my dogs for a walk by the river one beautiful summer day in bright sunshine before picking the kids up from school, I thought “It really doesn’t get any better than this.” And, for a while, it stayed that way.
Sunny days still bring back that feeling of contentment, but never as perfectly as on that memorable day. The main reason is health—or the ways in which aging impacts health.
As my old aunt used to say, “You’re nothing if you haven’t got your health, dear.” How right she was. For my husband, a major encounter with failing health centred around going through two hip replacements, as well as open-heart and back surgery shortly after returning from an assignment overseas with an international volunteer association. I had a stroke, which left us both with limited mobility for a while. We recovered, in line with the adage to keep calm and carry on.
A little further down the road, there was another blast in the health department. I went through two rounds of breast cancer, close to a decade apart. My need for cancer surgery shook my husband to the core. He had always thought that because he was 10 years my senior and men generally did not live as long as women, I would outlive him. Now, he realized that his world could be turned upside down and his anxiety level shot through the roof. Then, after he recovered from his surgeries, we found out that I had not quite reached the 10-year mark before the second bout of cancer and I needed surgery and radiation treatment again.
But that was seven years ago and I have been declared cancer-free. Now, we must face gradual but relentless aging issues instead.
We have to deal with my husband having been diagnosed with probable Lewy Body dementia. Related to Parkinson’s, it’s termed ‘probable’ because the only way to be absolutely sure of the diagnosis is with an autopsy. Like Alzheimer’s, it eats away at brain capacity and memory but in a different way. Lewy Body is more occasional than obviously progressive, though sometimes it is accompanied by hallucinations. But until recently, people who hadn’t known him in his prime might not guess his mind was impaired. We both have one wish: that his brain should outlive his body. Maybe there will be a slow fade in the future, but to this point our senior household is staggering on, complete with a pile of medication as part of the daily routine.
