Dog Days and Nights Repeated

 

I haven’t been blogging much in 2022. The reason: insufficient quality time to put fingers to keyboard. That is, I’ve assumed the role of caretaker for a family elder, which has been the be-all and end-all of every one of my days this year. The abiding experience has been something akin to the movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray: I woke up every morning and repeated the day, day after day after day. I valiantly endeavored to maintain a daily routine, hoping and praying there wouldn’t be any major snafus along the way, which there sometimes were. Mercifully, though, the baton has been passed—temporarily at least—and I can do a few of things that I always did.

During the past several years, I’ve witnessed first-hand what life in a facility—be it a nursing home, rehab, or hospice—is like. And it isn’t pretty. I understand some are better than others, but suffice it to say, I’ve visited a fair sampling of the bottom of the barrel with—for starters—lousy food and overuse of disinfectants whose insidious scents established residence in patients', visitors’, and staff’s hair, skin, clothes, and presumably in the not-so-fine fare served as well.

Last year, my mother landed in the rehabilitation wing of a medical complex that included various specialty clinics, a large hospital, and a nursing home. As so often is the case, the place appeared respectable on the surface. But isn’t a rehab stint supposed to accomplish some semblance of rehab? In this instance, it set the patient back months. After a bout with gout and dehydration, the task at hand was getting Ma mobile again. Diagnosis from a physical therapist: She will never walk again. Wrong! Her waking hours at this joint were spent mostly in a wheelchair staring into space.

After three full months there—until Medicare coverage ended—Mom comes home with awful pain in her feet, confused, and was dead weight. In addition, she was released with a seriously infected wound from a skin cancer, which this medical behemoth neglected to diagnose or treat in any meaningful way. Soon after the discharge, a visiting nurse took one look at the unsightly thing and said my mother belonged in a hospital ASAP.

Enjoying my newfound freedom this morning, I passed by the neighborhood Carvel ice cream store. I couldn’t help then but reflect on the passage of time and what’s in the offing for so many of us. When I was a youth, the local Carvel was a standalone shop originally owned and operated by a mother and daughter. It had a giant ice cream cone on its rooftop, window service only, and was seasonal. The building was subsequently torn down and a mini mall took its place, which includes a Carvel all these years later. The ice cream is still okay, but the unique Carvel taste of yesteryear—like so many other things—is gone, along with the reasonable prices. A famous Fudgie the Whale Carvel ice cream cake costs $49.99 and a quart of ice cream, $13.99, for delivery via GrubHub!

There were a series of tennis courts alongside the Carvel of my youth, which were cast asunder to build a McDonald’s. A McDonald’s in the neighborhood back then—the mid-1970s—was a real happening. No ordering with apps in those days gone by. No breakfast served, either. Imagine that!

Anyway, I hope the Carvel daughter took care of her Carvel mother in her sunset years. The latter seemed ancient to me while still on the job. But then again, everybody seemed older than they were in those days. She could have been in her fifties for all I know. I would hazard a guess that the daughter cared for her mother. It’s what people did once upon a time. But the question is: Who was around to care for the daughter when her time came? Who indeed? Ice cream for thought as the clock ticks.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)