He only got out of bed and fell once last week. After that Hubby decided enough was enough, he has now built a “fence” so he can sit up in bed but cannot get up and wander out of in the middle of the night. He attached a two by four to the wall and at night he attaches ratchet straps from it to the bed frame at a diagonal angle. This gives his dad plenty of space to sit up in the night but also keeps him confined to the bed so he is not able to sleep walk. It was cheaper than bed rails and we felt even safer because we feared that he might try to climb out of bed rails. He has a good deal more strength than he gives himself credit for and can be quite determined at times.
He is bruised and sore from the fall the other night. When he hurts he does not rest well and thus the rest of the house (or at least parts of it) do not rest well either. Our poor cat has given up on trying to sleep undisturbed on the bed with us.
Last week, I had to apologize to my hubby for disbelieving him. He has told me that his dad is not always asleep when he pulls some of his little night time shenanigans. I learn this first hand when I watched him sit on the edge of the bed and just pee on the floor. I had handed him the urinal and he told me he did not want it or need it…he told me he was already going and then he proceeded to finish, as I just stood there incredulous. Then about an hour or so later a similar scenario played out. I am not accustomed to this kind of blatant disrespect and I was a bit taken back by it.
He has managed to repeatedly rip the bandage off of his head and repeatedly kept that chunk of flesh disconnected to the spot it was supposed to grow down to…I fear he is going to have a chunk of skin hanging off of his head because he has kept the two pieces of flesh from growing back together. We have taped it down again and again to find him ripping it off. This is a battle I don't think we are going to win.
One day last week, when hubby and I went on a date to the grocery store, the girls picked him and the wheelchair up off the floor. It is our habit to strap him into his chair otherwise, he will take a notion to stand up (and then fall down). Well I guess the other day he had worked the strap fairly well loose and then he tired to stand up…when he sat back down, he came down hard and tipped the wheelchair over with him in it. The girls said he was not hurt but I bet it left him wondering what kind of mess he had gotten himself into this time.
He hates that strap and it buggers him to death. He would take the belting off the buckle but hubby put a big wad of duct tape on it so that he can't do that any more. But it gives him something to do because he constantly is trying to take it off.
I’ve had a couple of stern talks with him about not giving up. And I did raise my voice with him the other day. I came in to the room from stacking a rick of firewood to find him “refusing” to use his legs to stand up, while the middle daughter was trying to help him transfer from the one chair to another. He was hanging there like a limp rag doll, and while she is strong enough he is taller than she is and had her in a rather tedious position trying to get him moved. I came in and grabbed a hold of the back of the gait belt rather sternly and I yanked him up and yelled at him that he was going to hurt her back acting that way. I also proceeded to tell him that there are reasons why we try to get him to do certain things, certain ways, that it is for our safety as well as his. I explained to him that my husband already had a torn abdominal muscle, and that we all already had back issues and that we needed him to not give up and to try and help us.
As he has insisted on going into this limp rag doll mode more than he should, I have insisted that the family go to using the gait belt more. My Dad hated the gait belt but this dad does not seem to mind it. I suspect it makes him feel more secure. The purpose of the gait belt is to give the helper a handle to hold on to.
I am in some ways his worst nightmare because for the most part, I make him work at these chair transfers because I know that if we baby him he will just become a constant limp rag doll and there is no reason for it other than his own stubborn apathy. He might have met his match when it comes to stubborn. It is not about who has the stronger stubborn streak, it about encouraging him to do his part...and his part is to stand up on his feet and at least be able to safely transfer from one chair to the next...BECAUSE he can and because he can he should.
When I am helping him I remind him that I am using the gait belt so I don’t hurt my back…and he understands that, having lived himself with back pain. I do not believe that he does not want to hurt any of us so I figure it does him good for me to remind him that we are not super human just broken down people like himself.
A funny story from this morning. (I am dad sitting this morning so hubby can get a little sleep…they both were up most of the night.) He got up about 5 ish…then a few minutes later he wanted to go back to bed. So I put him in the bed. Well a few minutes later he wanted out of the bed. Now when I put him back in the bed, I pulled the one chair out of his room and into the kitchen…a matter of a few feet. When he got back out of bed and into the wheel chair, I asked him where he wanted to sit, in front of the tv or there by the bed. He said, “in that other chair” and I said, “okay, but I was sitting in that chair…” And the little stinker chuckled. We don’t hear that very often and it was not maliciously intended so I am perched on a rather hard bar stool at the kitchen counter.
And in the past hour, I have been up and down more times than I can remember. BUT, he has had one good leg stretching stand.
Well, folks I gotta go, he is on the move again...until next time!