There was a hurricane a few days ago that became a tropical storm by the
time it blew through our area. However,
we had straight line winds that downed trees and left huge areas
without power.
"Are you okay?" friends texted.
"Nope!" I answered truthfully. Frankly, if not for my mother we would've been fine. A little thing like a power outage
is merely an inconvenience unless one has a 99 year-old mother with Alzheimer's
to contend with. So, here was the
scenario: Without power we had no lights
and Mom couldn't see. She was
disoriented. We hurried to plug in the
generator to run our sump pump so there would be no basement flooding. We got out lanterns and flashlights. We took one of the lanterns to Mom's bedroom because all of
the night lights were plug-ins and there was no electricity to power them. We had no monitors, no safety alarms, and no
camera for her room. Wait a minute...WE
HAD NO POWER--HENCE NO CHAIR LIFT TO HER ROOM!!! Together Skip and I tried to get Mom up the
stairs with her fighting us all the way.
"Will someone get this man off of me, DAMMIT!!!"
she yelled angrily.
"C'mon Mom," I coaxed. "This man happens to be my husband,
Skip. I am your daughter and we are
trying to help you get to bed."
Mom calmed down enough to allow Skip to assist her up the
stairs with her groaning every minute of the way. She was certain that we were both trying to
kill her.
Once I got her changed and tucked into bed I left the
battery-powered lantern on for her to find her way to the bathroom in the
middle of the night should she feel the need.
Why I bothered, I don't know, since the only need Mom ever has is to tear her
nightgown off, take her diapers off and proceed to wet the bed. Sometime during the night, the lantern
battery died and THAT'S when Mom decided to awaken and walk around. We, of course didn't know, because there was
no monitor to awaken us by her motion.
She stumbled around, knocking things over and finally crawling back to
bed. I can only imagine what went on up
there.
In the morning when I went to get Mom she was sitting on her
bed looking like the hurricane had swept into her room overnight. The electronic
monitor was lying on its side on the floor.
The lamp was off the table and the table was swept clean of all of its
items. Her nightgown was off and tossed on the ground. Her covers were strewn and a towel was
wrapped over her otherwise naked body.
She looked like a scene from Gone With the Wind (um...literally) as her
room was laid to ruin and the only things remaining were upended. I assessed the situation and quickly
discovered that while we were using the sump pump in the basement, we could
have used it upstairs as well to alleviate the flood that Mom created on her
mattress. The room smelled like a
barnyard, everything was soaked through and through, and I knew that there
would be no flood insurance to cover this
disaster. We had no hot water (having
tankless water heaters that require power to turn on.) Mom had been lying in urine and obviously
found that rolling around her wet bed was fun because even her hair smelled
like Eau de Pee. There was no bathing
her because the water was too cold. According
to her screams of protest, I was trying to contribute to her demise by even
thinking of cleaning her."It's FREEZING!
Stop it right now. You're killing
me. HELP! POLICE!!!"
"Okay, okay. I
won't shampoo your hair or wash your bottom.
Fine. Let's just get you
dressed." Mom shuffled her clothed bottom onto the wet bed and sat down
before I could get her to stop. "NOOOOO!" It was too late. Her clean pants now wore a nasty wet spot
that was sure to smell.
Once Mom was dressed we needed to get her to navigate her
way down the stairs. Between the two of
us, Skip and I managed to take her down one slooooooow step at a time. Explaining to her that there was no power and
that we had no way of using the chair lift was like shouting in the wind. She couldn't hear or process our words. Once
downstairs, Mom made a beeline for her place at the counter to have breakfast;
only breakfast was not as usual. We had
no way of heating water for tea and no way of toasting her bagel. Mom didn't complain but seemed unsettled. We gave her coffee since we ran a wire from
the small generator to the coffee pot. Mom complained, "This is
bitter!"
"Sorry Mom. It's
all we've got," Skip told her. Then
he explained about the hurricane, the power outage, etc. for the 10th time that morning. Mom ignored him and went back
to eating her piece of cold bread with cold cream cheese and cold strawberry
preserves. She grimaced and scowled
while I secretly wished I could just go to a hotel somewhere far away and let
Skip, the dog, and my mother fend for themselves. (Okay...not fair to Skip...or the dog.) Truth be told, my dark thoughts were not fair
to Mom either. It wasn't her fault that she had Alzheimer's. It wasn't her fault she was old, incapable of
understanding why she had to forego hot tea and toast in the morning, why we
had wires running down the hallway making it unsafe for her to cruise around
and around with her walker aimlessly moving without thoughts or understanding.
Skip plugged the charger into the phone and then into the
generator. We were back online! He checked the power outages in the area and
reported grimly that it was widespread.
This was a bad one. There was no
hope that we would see power restored anytime soon. Our sump pump was still working hard to get
rid of all of the water seeping in and we knew that we would have the generator
working overtime downstairs so being prudent with its use for refrigeration,
charging batteries and making coffee was important.
By the third day without power we were getting pretty proficient 'roughing it' in our home. However, Mom gave us quite a bad time being walked up and down the stairs without use of the chair lift. Her patience had dwindled to complete refusal to move. She was terrified and frozen stiff to one spot halfway up the stairs the night before. No matter what we did, how we talked to her, how we tried to reassure her she was bent on flinging herself backwards down the stairs. When we physically pushed her to keep moving, she screamed bloody murder and at the top step, flopped down on the floor crying hysterically until we bodily lifted her and carried her to her room. Oh! The commotion as she pushed and cried. (I mused that perhaps we should just leave her on the floor, open the windows and let the residual winds carry her away.)
In the morning, when I went into the kitchen to start coffee I found out there was no water! Our community water tower was dry. (We later found out that without power, the sensor to signal water levels was not operating, so we had drained ourselves of all water. Just about that time, Mom decided to go to the bathroom. (AND I DON'T MEAN TO GO PEE!) There was no way to flush. ARGH! I was now beginning to panic. I yelled for Skip to call the water emergency line and tell them that this was a major emergency. I guess that his explanation and tone of voice was enough to get someone out here ASAP. While we awaited the solution to the problem I suddenly began smiling and feeling an unexpected calm spread throughout my mind and body. Being an ex-Girl Scout, I have lived a
lifetime by their motto 'Be Prepared'. I
was prepared. While madness might have prevailed, I was still sane enough to remember that storm preparedness included an
ample supply of wine. It was 11:00 AM and
frankly I was ready with my Cork puller and a wine glass. While the power was out, nothing was working, and things were going from bad to worse...NO PROBLEM! My coping mechanisms were thankfully still fully functional.
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