ART and M.I.D.

(Page 2)

Great-Grandpa & Alex

Sometimes, after the second touch of MID, he would forget having done something, like going into town, for instance. It was then that I started what I called memory-reinforcement techniques. They worked like a charm. I would tell him "Don't you remember? We went to town yesterday after breakfast. We went to the store, and then we went to the bank, and I paid whatever, ..." and so on and so forth. By the time I was through, he would be nodding and saying "yes, I remember now." The idea is to immediately replace a lost memory with a new one of the same thing, then re-inforce it by building a "fence" around it of related memories. It worked! Another technique I read about in a magazine article about older people's memory loss. You just keep reminding them of what was done yesterday, what is being done today, and what will be done tomorrow.

It got to the point that we would just get into town, and he would be utterly exhausted. So we curtailed our long trips, and just made short ones. We would go in and have breakfast and go home. We would go to the store, and go home. It seemed like every day we were going to town, but for just an hour or so. If we missed a day, he would remark how it seemed he had been housebound for days. He spent most of his time napping with our Karmel cat on his lap. He gradually lost interest in things Looking back now, I realize that he was winding down. He was like a balloon with a slow leak.

One day, a couple of months before he passed away, he decided he wanted to go ride his tractor. I helped him out to the tractor, and he clambered up on it, with me pushing, and him pulling. He finally got up on it, and I stood there panting, and he told me he had the wrong hat. I should run and get his "tractor" hat. Well, I walked! I found the hat, and brought it to him. He started up the tractor, and shoved down on the clutch, and the gears grated something awful. He kept trying it, and trying it. He was so disappointed! I looked at his foot, and I said "Get your foot off there, and let me try something". I pushed the clutch pedal down with my hand, and told him to try it again. It went right into gear! He had been pushing just through the free pedal. So he tried it, pushing hard, and it was fine. So off he went with such a look of joy on his face. I honestly felt that if he could get out and do this every day, it would improve his general physical condition. But it was not to be.

In March, 1998, he was having problems with leg cramps, so the doctor ordered oxygen for him on a 24hr basis. He was not happy about this, but it made his breathing easier, and alleviated the cramps in his legs. The doctor couldn't get him to exercise and move around, although he seemed to be able to get around if he wanted to, like the driveway episode with the car. He went for a ride on his tractor, up in back to the hayfield and back. He was so weak, he could hardly turn the steering wheel. (No power-steering). He had a big grin when he came back, though. His only comment was that he'd better start getting in shape if he figured on doing any tractor work.

When he had to blow his nose, he would pull the cannula of the oxygen hose up over the bridge of his nose. He was never able to get it back on right. He would forget to pull it down. One day he remarked on feeling a draft. It was blowing in his ear. Another time he had it up by his eye. Sometimes he would get both of the nose pieces in one nostril. It was a great source of humor for us both.

He was still gradually getting weaker and more tired. He lost appetite, and lost interest in the TV. He would just sleep. Once in a while he would read something. His attention span got very short. I would read him e-mails from people who would write to our LSM web page and he liked that. My daughter and her family would come up and eat supper with us once a week. Lots of hugs and kisses from granddaughters. He liked that! I took him up to his daughter's to see his second great-grandson the first part of May, and took another 4-generation picture.

One evening, after he had been on the 24-hr. oxygen for a while, and he had gotten the hose tangled for the thousandth time, he said "I wish I could just go home". I thought, Oh no, not again! I said "What do you mean?" He looked at me, and said "You know, I mean when it comes, I'm ready to go home." I felt a lifting of my heart. We had been concerned about his status with the Father, and this seemed to me to be as much of a statement of faith as I was going to get from him. From that point on, he seemed at peace with himself. He still complained about dragging the oxygen hose around, though.

On May 24th, he noticed a rash on his lower abdomen. I said I thought it was shingles. By the 25th, it was down his groin and over his thigh. I couldn't get him into the doctor until Tuesday the 26th. Doctor B. said it was shingles, and they had a marvelous new medicine for it that would knock the inflammation and the itching in two days. Arthur said "Not another pill!" He was disgusted. When we got home, he said he was so tired he just wanted to lay down. I helped him undress, and he crawled into bed. He fell asleep almost immediately. I sat with him for a while, and once in a while he would open his eyes and sort of smile at me.
It was getting harder and harder to keep his oxygen up past 85. If he was really still, it would get up to 93 or so, but the minute he moved, it would drop like a shot down in the 80's. Wednesday, I called the oxygen man, and he came the next day and looked at things. After he talked to the doctor, he said he'd bring another machine that put out more oxygen Friday morning. He left a mask to use instead of the cannula. This day passed as the one before. Arthur ate pudding, with all his pills ground up in it, and drank lots of water. He slept most of the day, and he slept well all night. Karmel still stayed by his side, and snoozed.

Bright and early Friday morning, the oxygen man was back with the bigger machine. He got Arthur all fixed up, and talked to him for a bit. Arthur's end of the conversation was mostly "yes", "no", and "uh-huh". After the oxygen man left, I went in and sat with him for a while. He slept mostly, but he'd open his eyes and smile at me. I held his hand and told him I loved him. He smiled, and went back to sleep. He just continued to slip away. About 9:30pm, when I went in to check his oxygen stats, (as I did every few minutes,) the read-out slipped down to 80, and beyond. He was breathing very quietly, and he took a breath, let it out, and that was all. He just locked up and "went home"

My final entries in this story might seem irreverent, but Arthur would have laughed and laughed. As far as I am concerned, Arthur passed away at home, very peacefully in his bed. Our neighbor (bless his heart) came at the final moment, and he called the ambulance. When they arrived, they pulled off his underwear, put in an airway, and rushed him to the Emergency room at the hospital. I knew he was gone, and told them so, but they felt they had to do this. ( I forgot about our "living wills"). At the hospital, my daughter and her husband, my stepdaughter and her husband, and I were in the waiting room, when the doctor came in and said they were still working on him. I expressed surprise that he was still with us. The doctor said," well not really". He came back about 10 minutes later and said he was gone, and asked if he had been "feeling ill"! I told him about the enlarged heart and the CHF, and I said "You know, Doctor, he saw that light at the end of the tunnel, and he took off at a dead run, and there was no way on this earth you could have caught him!" The doctor said he guessed not.

Now many years ago, when my granddaughter's kitten died, I told her that I felt God had a special place for our friends.....maybe a big sunny field where Jesus would come and feed them and play with them. This was a great comfort to her. When her baby brother died, and she was brokenhearted, I told her he was with Jesus, and they would go to the Field together to take care of the animals. (By that time we had lost more friends). When their other grandpa died, they decided he was sitting on a bench in the Field, with his little dog, talking with Jesus. Now we have used this field for many years, and it is pretty well populated. But when I told the girls about grandpa running down the tunnel, one of them piped up and said "Yes, gramma, and when he came out into the light, there was the Field!" A beautiful smile came over her little face. I couldn't help myself…I opened my mouth and said, "And you know, he didn't have a stitch on!".....

"A New Beginning"

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