The Yellow Wallpaper

Today is mild and rainy. The ground is covered with bright yellow leaves and there are still many more to fall. Last year at this time my mother was in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism, and I was frantically trying to arrange for her to move from rehab right into Garden Manor. That didn’t work, and so she would come home for another month and a half before the move.

We are facing a very different holiday season this year. I’ve had it in the back of my mind to formalize Thanksgiving plans, but I don’t want to think about it. I imagine that my sister and I will have dinner at Garden Manor–taking my mother out anywhere would be too disorienting for her. Our usual places will be closed that day, and I can’t see us taking her to a more upscale restaurant for a big dinner. I’m sad and nervous about it–I knew that the holidays as I’ve always known them would be yet another collateral loss, but you just don’t know how it feels until you’re there.

I’m still not sure how “comfortable” my mother is in her new home. It’s very hard to tell, and I’m only still developing the skills needed to read the clues in her behavior. It seems odd to be saying that at this point, but it’s true. I realized this one day when I visited and she was just beside herself with anxiety and sadness. She told me over and over again that she would die if I made her stay there, that she had never been as depressed as she was now. But during this jeremiad, whenever one of the staff or another resident would pass by us, my mother’s expression would light up and she’d wave brightly at them. I discovered that I could change such a black mood by suggesting that we go shopping soon, and asking her was kinds of things she needed from the store. She rarely actually want to go to a store, but expressing her “needs” makes her feel better. She says that she wants nail polish and lipstick and “school supplies” but what she really wants is to be heard when she tries to articulate her feelings. She wants some control, some response.

So I’m learning to see my relationship with her in smaller increments. I just can’t think too far into the future–she lives so much in the present that I have to accommodate. I’m not going to throw out the past just yet, but I’ve got to put it aside for now.

I’m still surprised at how emotionally difficult it’s been for my sister and me to come to terms with my mother’s disease and the decisions it’s forced. I’m still having a significant problem with depression, but I’m improving. I’m in a graduate seminar that’s a challenge, and I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that I have another pup. I saw him on Petfinder and after a bit of an odyssey, he’s in his new home. He was listed by a Massachusetts rescue organization, but he was in Arkansas! I hadn’t been too keen on relocating a puppy from that distance, but when I talked to the wonderful rescue lady in AK and heard about all the dogs she’s trying to place, I took him. I’d been looking at his picture for so long by then and imagining him in my home, that he was almost mine, anyway. So the “puppy bus”–which makes the trip from Little Rock up to New England every couple of weeks–brought him to me, and in surprisingly fine condition. Waldo was presented to me with his tail wagging and beautiful amber eyes sparkling.

We think he’s a Catahoula Leopard dog–which I’d never heard of before. If you follow the Wikipedia link and scroll down to the picture of the patchwork dog, you’re looking at Waldo’s twin. He’s about 7 months old now and into everything. He counter-surfs and has successfully gotten out of the backyard twice. He and my 10-month-old Jasper have great adventures together (and also some squabbles) and are in the process of renovating my kitchen.

On a final note, I finally got to see Bob Dylan. He played at URI about a month ago, along with Elvis Costello, and I went with a friend of mine. The show was great–Dylan was his usual inscrutable self and sang some classics in unexpectedly new arrangements. We’d be bopping along with the music for a minute or so before realizing that he was playing “All Along the Watchtower” or “Don’t Think Twice.” Unlike Costello, who was positively garrulous, Bob didn’t speak until the encore, when he introduced his band. The older I get, the more his music means to me.

I’ve been mulling over the very insightful comments left by Marty and Gail on my last post. I think Gail summed it up well when she stated that “it’s the tension between ‘doing’ versus ‘being’.” I’ve always been someone who feels that the “being” will come later on–there is just so much that needs to be done right now and therefore no time to just “be.” What Gail says about the demented and routine boils down to living a life that is increasingly and necessarily “in the moment.” I was rereading Joanne Coste’s Learning to Speak Alzheimer’s and found myself interested in her remarks about the loss of depth perception in Alzheimer’s sufferers. There’s a psychological analogy to this loss as I see my mother losing context–forgetting the stories that surround everything. And yet she still knows that there should be a story, so she pulls out whatever’s left and patches something together.

I’ve been taking her out for ice cream after dinner once a week, now that the weather is nice. Literally around the corner from Garden Manor is a place that makes its own ice cream in flavors you can’t get anywhere else: lemon coconut, chocolate raspberry. The area around the ice cream shop is still very woodsy (although development is slowly approaching) and across the street is a big lake. We get our cones and I park the car facing the water. We don’t say too much–we watch the boats and the anglers. I’m regaining an appreciation of simply looking at water. Possibly because I’ve had so many wonderful experiences around water–many of them with my parents–just the sight of it is calming.

When I was a kid we used to go the the beach in the evening, when my father came home from work. My mother would bake chicken in some kind of cinnamon coating, and we’d pack it up, pick up my grandfather, and drive to either Newport or Point Judith. Once we spread our blanket out on the sand and got settled, my grandfather would smoke a cigar without saying much; my father would read. My mother, sister and I would walk to the tideline and look for shells while the water washed around our legs. That evening light and the salty smell can lower my blood pressure to this day. The sounds of the buoys and the seagulls, the great big rhythm of the tide–when my mother and I now sit and look out at the lake I begin to feel a bit of that peace. I wonder if the sight of the lake can still suggest to her the peaceful feelings of those days, even though the stories might be lost?

Yesterday I took Jasper with me, which reduces the peace factor but my mother enjoys him so much. I found her in her room, in the middle of something that had to do with taking a break from “the people in the auditorium.” I suggested we go for ice cream and she immediately agreed, but needed to let them know she was going. The “people,” it turned out, were a new resident–a sweet, childlike woman named Betty. My mother found her in the common room and talked with her a few moments. “You go and have a good time,” I heard Betty say as I approached them. “This is my sister,” my mother introduced me, but Betty had her eye on Jasper. “A little dog!” she exclaimed and bent over to pat him.

Jasper shines at moments like this. He lifts his little head and lets himself be petted, then gives his admirer a kiss. His behavior there continues to amaze me because he can be a demon puppy at home–he’s chewed the kitchen linoleum, several shoes and his very nice dog bed. When I lean over and sternly say “NO” he looks at me for a moment with those adorable eyes, then barks sharply as if to say “Make me stop,” and runs off to find something else to get into. He “graduated” from Puppy Kindergarten last week, which involved the awarding of a diploma. I accepted it for him, and–the pressure finally off–he squatted and did his business in the middle of the training room.

So we finally dragged Jasper away from his fans and found ourselves enjoying our ice cream and watching the water splash as the small boats passed by us. My mother was quiet for awhile, but finally said, “I’d love to be on a boat.” I tried to remember the last time we’d taken a boat ride together–maybe years and years ago across Lake George in upstate New York?–and remembered that one of the activities planned for the residents at Garden Manor was a boat ride. I wondered if she would go on that trip, or if she would prefer to be on a boat with me. I made a mental note to check on possible boat rides across the lake.

When we returned to the Manor at about 7:30, most of her fellow residents were in their pajamas, including Betty. My mother would not settle in her room until she tracked Betty down. I spotted the two of them saying good-night to each other in the hallway and giving each other a kiss on the cheek, which made my leaving a little easier.

As I write this I can hear my sweet, nearly-14-year-old collie Lily as she yips plaintively in the other room. There is nothing in particular the matter–she has begun doing this at various times of the day and night. We visited her vet this past Thursday and I asked her if dogs could suffer from dementia. She didn’t laugh when I asked her–it seems that there is a condition called Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, often seen in geriatric dogs.

I enumerated the changes I’ve seen in Lily over the past couple of years: her housebreaking “skills” are on the wane, she will repeat certain pointless behaviors ad nauseum, and I am convinced that she is sundowning. The vet nodded and says she hears this frequently about older dogs.

I did a little research and came up with many articles like one found in the January 19, 2006, issue of Brain Research titled: “Cognitive disturbances in old dogs suffering from the canine counterpart of Alzheimer’s disease,” which states:

Due to advances in medicine and nutrition, pet dogs live substantially longer than a few decades ago. The majority of owners are, therefore, faced with the aging processes and veterinarians are increasingly confronted with the physical and mental consequences of old age. Currently, Alzheimer-like behavior occurs frequently in geriatric dogs (Landsberg and Ruehl, 1997). Some examples of this behavior are: being disorientated on walks, active incontinence, sleeping at day time but restless at night, trying to pass through narrow spaces

Last night was a fairly normal night. Despite the presence of a plush doggie bed (with memory-foam–I don’t even have memory-foam on MY bed) Lily will eventually circle and then suddenly drop on the hardwood floor beside my bed. I bought an egg-crate foam pad and made a cover for it, then put it where she usually sleeps, but she avoids that, too. Sometime around midnight she’ll begin her lament. I can hear her building up to it–emitting short breathy spasms that eventually become high-pitched yips. Sometimes I’ll just lean over and stroke her, which calms her down for a short while. Sometimes the sounds will be muffled, and I’ll look over the side of the bed to see only her tail and back paws. I must then get out of bed and pull her out from under it–I don’t know how she gets herself under there, she’s a 50-lb. dog–and she emerges wide-eyed and breathless. She skitters off, only to return and repeat the same circling-sleeping-yipping cycle.

Sometimes I hear the yipping from another part of the house, where Lily has trapped herself in a tight spot. Liz stayed over a couple of nights and reported that Lily managed to get stuck–three times–in the fireplace screen in the den. She got stuck in the bathroom last night–because of her arthritis she can no longer back up very well, and her turning radius was too wide for the space between the tub and sink. So she stood there and yipped until I came to the rescue.

I bought a sling at Petco which is a great help, not only in helping her to get up but also in guiding her along when we’re out in the backyard. I’ll take her out to relieve herself and she often has trouble finding the back door. So I grab the handles and steer her to her ramp, then lift her up and set her down on it. Our vet hasn’t found anything measurably wrong with Lily–I have full-panel bloodwork done on her every year, hoping to catch any ailment before it can cause her any pain. So far, only slightly elevated liver functions–which is normal for an elderly dog. And, of course, the arthritis.

Today I tried to remember what Lily was like as a younger dog. She has always been energetic and talkative. As a puppy she would often play by herself in the backyard, tossing her toys in the air and then tearing off with them, as if escaping an imaginary littermate. She has always been my watchdog, too, jumping up in a fury of barks at the slightest ground tremor, day or night. I think she was a little put off when I got the more-sedentary Dustin. Although he was the alpha dog, he let Lily do most of the guarding and greeting. If she got too assertive, he’d let her know by a stare or a bark, and then Lily would look at me and, with her eyes, say: Why? We were so happy before he came along.

And unlike Dustin, who was on medication for hypothyroidism, eczema and acid reflux (yes, I had to give him Pepcid AC everyday), Lily has rarely been sick. Her big adventure was a hyperextension of her left front paw, tearing the ligaments and requiring a joint fusion. I don’t know how she did that–at the time I had a broken foot, myself, and wasn’t able to walk her, so I let her out to play in the backyard in lieu of a walk. I later found her sitting quietly at the bottom of the steps, holding her left paw daintily in the air–a la Lassie. She went through three splints in her recovery and hasn’t had a problem since then.

So my collie girl may well have the same beta-amyloid plaques as my mother. I used to wonder if I was so attuned to dementia that I was seeing it everywhere: in myself, in my dog. But at least with Lily there seems to be justification. Like the dogs in the Brain Research study, she seems to have become a slightly bewildered shadow of her old self, literally bumping into closed doors and trying to squeeze herself into crevices. I’m off to rescue her right now. Somehow, when I got a collie I thought it would be the other way around…

I returned to work today, after two whole days of being unable to control my tears. Although I dreaded the day I’d have to say good-bye to my beautiful boy, I was still unprepared for the torrent of grief that followed. I am extremely fortunate to work with many animal lovers–people who actually cried with me today, left me consoling notes and one dear friend who made a donation to Dogs for the Deaf in memory of Dustin.

The experience of grief at the loss of an animal is something I’ve been thinking about a lot the past few days. I think the nature of the relationship (for many of us) cultivates these feelings. The “Dog Whisperer” would have a field day with me because, while I do understand at some level that these creatures are not human, I still invest them with human emotions at levels no human could ever sustain. Dustin followed me from room to room, he was jealous of any attention I gave Lily and would physically insert himself between us if he could. And there was no guile, no ulterior motive. He was devoted to me (I tell myself) and how on earth could I return that devotion while he was around, or replace it now that he’s gone?

So I’ve been having these very Victorian urges to sleep with his collar and tags under my pillow, and save tufts of his fur as keepsakes. (Both of which I’ve done.) I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, just from a cursory search of the internet for “pet memorials” and it’s interesting (and takes my mind off the maudlin stuff) to think about why I feel this way.

And so I can’t help but think that my dogs have increasingly become my emotional mirrors, now that my mother is growing more and more perplexed. This situation in particular–my sadness over a dead pet–is extra poignant because the one person to whom I’d always go when my heart was broken is no longer available. I can tell she is aware that something has happened to upset me, but it’s impossible for me to understand what she thinks. She still reacts to my tears, but in an unsettled rather than a consoling manner. “What’s the matter?” she’s asked, keeping her physical distance. She doesn’t like it when I’m not “status quo.” And when I do manage to control myself she acts as if nothing has happened–she never mentions Dustin.

Actually, though, she did do something odd today. Eva had the day off so my sister spent some time with my mother. When she arrived at noon, she found Lily lying in the living room, surrounded by four bowls FULL of dog kibble. In addition, my mother had added water to the kibble, which caused it to expand to twice its size. She’s never done this before–I always leave the dogs’ “lunch” in the refrigerator, and she has always known enough to take it out and give it to them. Today was no different, only she told my sister that she had to feed “all of them” so she put the extra bowls out.

My sister called me at work to tell me this, and I’ll confess that we had a chuckle over Lily’s seeming paralysis in the face of her luncheon buffet. When I got home, the bowls were in the refrigerator. “What are these?” I asked my mother. She smiled oddly and shook her head, as if to say “Beats me.”

I talked with a coworker today about my mother’s reaction to Dustin’s absence. “How hard that must be for you,” he said. “It’s hard enough to go through it alone, but to be with someone who can’t see it must be extra tough.”

And I thought, That’s it. It’s like being on the viewing side of a two-way mirror and trying to get the attention of the person I see on the other side, while all she can see of me is a dark, imperfectly-reflective flat surface.

I lost one of the joys of my life today: my collie Dustin. I’m still overcome with grief, even though I had been trying to prepare myself for this day. Oddly, I felt relieved to release him from his suffering, which had been short. His breathing has worsened overnight and by morning he was intubated. The vet I spoke to this morning said it was probably pneumonia–he may have aspirated some of what he’d thrown up. I remembered his distress as I’d driven him to the hospital–on top of the nerve damage his lungs had been rattling. I told her I’d come down immediately when she assessed his condition as critical.

My sister came with me, thank God. We stroked and kissed him for awhile before we were ready to let him go. I had my arms around him as the vet administered the injection, and I felt his heart settle down as his spirit flew away.

On the way home I remembered a dream I’d had the night before he got sick. In it, he was healthy, but he said to me: “Why did you do this to me?” I look at it now as his way of telling me that keeping him alive would not have been right. I rerun the past two days obsessively, wondering if I could have prevented this–did I aggravate it by not taking him to the hospital first thing Sunday morning? I know that time will dull the pain but right now it’s tough.

On Saturday night, when he was fine, I decided to go outside to look for the Perseid meteor shower. Dustin didn’t want to go outside, and he didn’t want me to go out, either. He stood in the door and watched me as I watched the sky, then he barked a few times to hurry me along. He was a real talker. When I came back in I went into the kitchen for a drink and, on impulse, I crouched down and opened my arms. He came over and buried his head in my shoulder and I hugged him a good long time, rubbing his beautiful fur and kissing his long nose. Good-bye, my Dustin-sweetie.

I’m glad I let him go but losing all that joy is going to be a hard fact to face.

It’s 1 AM and I can’t sleep–I’m pretty wide awake, actually. The reason being that I’ve just returned from the emergency clinic at the Animal Hospital, after leaving one of my dogs there. He was fine last night, but awoke early this morning and vomited. I then noticed that his head was leaning seriously to one side and his eyes were darting back and forth rapidly. I hit the veterinary sites on the internet and discovered that this was most likely “Geriatric Vestibular Syndrome”–something goes wrong between the brain and the inner ear, causing loss of balance, nausea, nystagmus (rapid eye movement), and head-tilt. The sudden-onset is the primary diagnostic evidence.

The good news is that it almost always resolves itself and disappears within weeks. Dustin (my collie) rested fairly well for most of the day. I gave him mouthfuls of water with a syringe. Toward evening I noticed a rattling in his throat–as if he had a lot of phlegm. The rattle got worse as time passed, and he began to get upset. He’d tried to lift his head and the vertigo would flare up, then he would flail a bit and put his head down again and begin his difficult breathing.

I had planned on waiting it out, given the good prognosis, but I just couldn’t stand listening to his misery. I somehow dragged him out of my bedroom–he could not stand up at all and his head was lolling to the side–and got him into my car, which I’d backed up onto the front lawn. Then I drove him the 20 miles to the hospital, where someone came out with a gurney and took him in.

I was afraid he had pneumonia, maybe from inhaling vomit or water. He had it a year ago, after the bloat episode. I waited in the examining room and tried to come to terms with this: I was preparing myself to have him euthanized. I remember the harsh lights, and the deja vu of the place–I had waited in the same examining room last year after rushing him in. I am in such a different mental state this year. Last year it nearly killed me to leave him with strangers, even though they saved his life. This year as I sat in the clinic, I knew that at the first indication of undue suffering I would let him go. It would grieve me severely but somehow I have a different view of what I can control and what I must let go.

The doctor arrived, and he was refreshingly direct with me. First, though, he asked me to tell him what happened, and when it happened. Then he agreed with me that it was most likely Vestibular Syndrome, and–luckily–he could see no pneumonia. He thought that the stress of the condition was probably causing the congestion. He did, however, let me know that there are two Vestibular Syndromes: peripheral and central. The former is what is most likely to clear up on its own, the latter could be caused by something more serious within the brain.

“If you’re thinking of putting him down, I wouldn’t advise it. We’ll keep him for a couple of days, give him IV fluids and something to calm his stomach, and run some blood tests,” he told me. “If it’s peripheral, he will begin to improve by then. If he doesn’t, then you can decide if you want him to have an MRI. Even if it were to show a brain tumor, I would still suggest we try steroids for several days. They could slow the growth and make him comfortable without stressing him.”

My little sweetie is twelve and a half years old, and I don’t have any illusions. I don’t know if I’d put him through steroids, if the worst came to pass. Another thing I’ve gotten good at is taking each day as it comes.