The weather here in southeast Minnesota has been balmy most of this autumn. Temperatures are running well above average for the months of September, October and now the first week of November. Without a major freeze occurring until just this past week, the leaves on the trees have been left to fall at their own will instead of the will of Jack Frost. The gentle weather has allowed the leaves to turn full color before falling to the ground.
There is something unnerving though about this weather—you know sooner or later the other shoe is going to drop. Winter will soon be here and nature has a way of averaging out warmer than normal temperatures. Yes, some may say that because of global warming our winters have become milder, but even so, there can be some mighty nasty winter weather even if global temperatures are rising. We will just have to wait and see.
The warmer than normal autumn has given me time to clean the chimney and get the wood pile in good order—there’s plenty of dry firewood in the house now and plenty stacked and covered along the fence line. This year’s chimney cleaning went much smoother than last year’s debacle. The stiff nylon brush worked better than the steel brush, although I did have the same concerns that it might get stuck. It took a bit of muscle to pull the brush back up through the pipe, but it did work like a charm. There was a lot of fine soot in the pipe, but no creosote build-up.
The forecast for next week is looking rather ominous with a chance of snow on Monday night and Tuesday. So far I haven’t had to stoke the stove, but next week could be the first week that the stove may need to be used to heat the house. The sun has done an excellent job up until this point of keeping the house warm, but shorter days and colder weather will eventually require other means besides the sun to heat the house.
Family Matters Now onto other things…not so pleasant. Lately I have been receiving emails wondering why I haven’t been writing much—both in the journal or the forum. I’ve debated if I should publicly write about some of the problems we’ve been experiencing as a family, but it seems appropriate since it really has impacted our lives.
As you may or may not know, both of our families live in the Chicago area and lately I have been spending most of my time in Illinois instead of Minnesota. While Jo and I were visiting the Twin Cities a few weeks back (we had tickets to see the Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Koehler…it was Jo’s 29th anniversary of turning 21.), we got a phone call that my Uncle John had fallen down and was in the hospital. My Uncle John is my dad’s brother and my dad has taken care of him for the past 20 years. We were just a few days from taking him to a veteran’s home since it was getting too hard on my dad to take care of him.
During the hospital visit, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and a fractured hip. The Alzheimer’s was effecting a number of his mental abilities including the ability to swallow correctly. Food particles were going into his lungs (aspiration). Since my uncle could no longer express his wishes, my father being the primary power of attorney, had to make decisions on his behalf. My father knew that his brother did not want any life sustaining treatment, including a feeding tube. Without the feeding tube, he could still feed himself, but he ran the risk of aspiration.
The hip fracture was another one of those decisions that my father had to make for him. Again, with my father knowing his wishes, he elected not to fix the fracture. A bone specialist stated that his hip bone would heal on its own and while it was healing, pain killers would be administered to keep him comfortable.
Because of his Alzheimer’s my uncle was able to get hospice care, but he would have to be in a nursing home. This required my father and I had to find a nursing home to take care of him for the remainder of his life.
After visiting a few in the Chicago area, we found one close to my father’s house that was a nice facility. On October 31st, my uncle was placed in a nursing home.
I decided that now that things had settled down a bit, I would drive up to Minnesota to get a few things done before winter sets in. Just one day after my arrival, Jo called to let me know that her father had been admitted to the hospital complaining of numbness on his left side and his speech was slurred. As I suspected, he was diagnosed with having a stroke and I was on my way back to Illinois.
I went to visit my father-in-law on November 4th at the hospital and he was in pretty good spirits. His speech had improved and he could move his left arm, although it was difficult for him to operate his hand. The days following a stroke are important, so I stressed to him to the importance of using his left arm/hand, even though it was somewhat difficult to do.
Meanwhile my father informed me that while my uncle was doing quite well during the middle of the week, he had taken a turn for the worse. I suggested to my father that maybe he was just having a bad day and that I would take my dad to see him on Saturday, November 5th.
On Saturday, Jo and I along with my dad went to visit my uncle. His breathing had become shallow and it appeared to me that he might only have hours or a few days left to live. I was shocked at how fast his condition had deteriorated. I called hospice and asked if they could come check up on him. In the mean time, we took my dad home and Jo and I went to visit her dad.
When we got to the hospital to visit Jo’s dad, we learned that he had fallen in the hospital. The fall didn’t seem too serious, but his left arm seemed to be a bit less agile than the day before and his balance wasn’t as good. The doctors didn’t know why this was the case and they considered doing another CTscan to see if he might be suffering from another stroke. Jo and I went home on Saturday rather frazzled.
Then about 1:30 in the morning on Sunday, the phone rang. You know that when the phone rings in the middle of the night, it’s not good news. My father received a phone call from the nursing home informing him that his brother had passed away. I don’t think my dad or I got much sleep that night.
If there was any good that came of this, it was the fact that his illness didn’t linger on long and because my father had the power of attorney, he was able to make my uncle’s wishes known to the doctors and health care assistants. I wish we had the same for my mother when she was unable to speak for herself.
My father-in-law on the other hand, did not have a power of attorney, but on Monday Jo, her brothers and myself got together at the hospital to have him sign the paperwork. This is not something that most people want to go through, but nowadays it is so important to have this form along with a living will. I will add that I do not believe the power of attorney goes far enough to define the type of life sustaining measures that you may or may not wish. Everyone has their own opinion as to the definition of life support. Unfortunately, living wills and power of attorney forms are rather ambiguous. For that reason, I collected a number of life sustaining treatment examples along with a few definitions of life support measures and allowed Jo’s dad to define them.
I hope to have my dad sign-off on these too, just in case there ever is any doubt. It’s not a fun thing to do, but it’s better to do this while your parents are still able to clearly define what it is they want rather than be faced with a struggle between you, the hospital and guessing at what your parent’s wishes might be.
For reasons that are still unknown at this point, Jo’s dad has lost most movement in his left arm. They have done another CTscan, but it doesn’t appear that he has had another stroke. There is some swelling of the brain, and we hope that with time the swelling will go down and he might regain some strength in his arm. He is now in rehab and we hope that he will get better over time and eventually be able to return home.. His house is not handicap friendly and we’ll probably have to put in a stair lift for him.
I can’t stress enough for those who are building their own cordwood homes to build your house as a handicap-friendly house. Our house has 3-foot wide doorways and is designed so that our main living quarters are on the first floor. Access to the bedroom, kitchen, laundry area and bathroom are all on one floor.
Finally, did I tell you the story of my dad’s transmission failing after going to an oil exchange place? They talked him into changing his transmission fluid and now he’s having problems. Oh, and did I tell you his computer is on the fritz too?
This is all too much fun for me.
