We love Mom's doctor...the one who diagnosed the Alzheimer's. The one who treats her--and us-- like we matter. The one who is 'up' on all of the current meds for the disease. The one who will talk to us separately, so as not to upset Mom when we talk about the dementia and what it's doing to her. New symptoms to discuss, new questions answered, etc. That doctor, however, is 5 hours away. And I'm finding out that finding one closer is no easy task. My first step was to take her to my doc. I'd never even met him because I always see his NP, whom I do like. So when I spoke to my NP about Mom, she told me to have the Doctor see her first, that he was 'good with old people'.
Long story, short...I called the morning of her first appointment with him to see if her records had made it yet. "No records yet," his nurse told me on the phone. So, I very carefully asked her to ask him not to mention dementia or Alzheimer's, as all this does is upset her. His nurse was extremely agitated by my request.
"So. you don't want the Doctor to talk to her about what's wrong with her?"
The sarcasm in her tone should have told me then to cancel the appointment and keep looking. But I thought it'd be ok...that maybe SHE had never heard of being tactful around an AD patient about their disease, but that he would have more sense than her....As it turned out, he didn't.
I don't know what she thought I was really asking, or how she conveyed the message to him, but he came in the exam room, introduced himself, and proceeded to ask her about her dementia. Literally, his first words to her, "How's your dementia?"
He also had an attitude with me from the start and when the exam was over and I stepped out of the room to talk to him, he met me with disgust...as if I'd asked him to euthanize her or something. All I asked was to not mention the "D" word, and that I wanted her to feel comfortable here and to WANT to come back, because she wouldn't go see the last doc who told her she had dementia. He just shook his head, had a "whatever" attitude, and said, "sorry," and walked away from me. I don't understand how people like him can actually practice medicine. The number one drug prescribed in America today for AD is Aricept. This doctor couldn't even pronounce it. It was another red flag for me. We wouldn't be back.
When I got home from that doctor's visit, I was mad. It was Lent and I had been trying my darnedest to love everybody. I was almost through it, too. It's hard to love everybody, all of the time, believe me. But I had been doing a pretty fair job, not getting too upset at anybody or anything, and trying to just...LOVE. It felt pretty good, too. But the afternoon of that appointment, I wanted to take that guys stethoscope and wrap it around his neck until his eyes popped out. Yep...there goes the love...right out the window. All it took was one jerk who thinks he's a doctor.
....I was so mad, I went out back and started digging. I had wanted water feature in my yard and we had a small one by the house but I wanted to make it bigger. I just hadn't started it yet. When that doctor made me mad I went home and dug up the old small pond and started moving all the rock to the corner of the yard where the new one would be. And I started digging...and digging...and digging. I couldn't let go of the anger any other way. At least any other way that was legal or non-violent. And pretty soon the anger did go away. The more I dug, the more it looked like it was going to be a beautiful pond and I kept digging and chopping up tree roots and before long I had quite a hole.
Mom would come out to check on me...she asked me if I needed anything and I asked her for a glass of iced tea, knowing that I may or may not see her again with it. To my suprise, she brought it right back out. I know that it took all of the concentration she could muster to go all the way back into the house and fill a glass with ice and tea and then remember it was for me and bring it back out. So, when she did, all of the rest of the anger that I felt for this guy who tried to purposely hurt my Mom just seemed to completely melt away and I was standing in a hole that would be our beautiful pond. Mom asked me several times that day what the hole was for and why was I digging. I answered her every time like it was the first. I was happy with it and I climbed outside of it and stood and stared at the hole for what seemed like forever. When I finally looked over at Mom she was looking at me, staring into that empty hole and I said, "you probably think I'm nuts, staring into this empty hole...but when I look at it, it's full of fish and plants and water. And it's done!" And she just laughed and gave me a big hug that told me that she knew exactly what I meant.
We worked all weekend and for the most part, the pond was finished on Sunday, April 22, 2007. I've added a few plants and re-arranged a few rocks and it will always be a work in progress, I'm sure. But for the most part, it was done that Sunday.
I thought about a lot of things while I worked on it. I wanted it to be a peaceful sanctuary in the middle of this otherwise crazy neighborhood we live in. I wanted the birds to enjoy it, the dogs to drink from it, and the fish to thrive. I wanted to see what little wildlife we do have here in the city to be drawn to it. I thought about all of the people I'd met recently on the Alzheimer's message boards and hoped they all had as peaceful a place to sit and meditate, or pray. Because it was a peaceful place even before it was done. Every morning I was drawn to it...I knew what I wanted it to look like and I wouldn't really rest until it looked just like the vision. I thought about the people who were in the middle of their final days on this earth, having battled Alzheimer's and were fighting a losing battle, and I wanted it to be for them, in honor of them and the people who took care of them. And of course, I wanted it to be for Mom. I knew once it was done she would sit in front of it and love it (and she does).
The pond was finished the same day a woman, who I know only as "Serenity", lost her Mother to Alzheimer's. I had been following her posts on the Alzheimer's forum as her Mother lived her last couple of days. It was a beautiful death, wrought from an ugly disease but reflecting all the while the name the forum writer had chosen for her handle. We knew every intimate detail of her Mother's passing but only knew her as 'Mom' and the writer as 'Serenity'.
I couldn't shake the name, 'serenity', whenever I was around the pond. I kept thinking, even though I've never really named any of my previous landscape projects, that it was a perfect name for this one. But I didn't christen it or anything...just thought about it.
One afternoon, a day or two after it was done I was placing another rock near the water and one of the dogs chased a squirrel across the yard and up the tree that grows right behind the pond. He sat there on the lowest limb, just out of reach of the dogs, and watched me. The dog sat beside St. Francis and a sparrow lit on the rock and was drinking from the fall. And the fish had come up to me when I placed the rock, thinking I had food for them. So, for about 5 seconds, right here in the city I had birds, fish, squirrels, and the dogs all within an arms length, or two. It was a fleeting moment and one that told me all of the hard work was well worth it and my only regret in the moment was that I saw it all alone. Mom missed it but later that afternoon we were sitting by the pond and I said, "isn't it great, Mom, just to sit here and listen to the waterfall?"
She said one word.............
"Serenity."
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