Day 157 - Settling In

          Life with my father-in-law, Nelson, is going to be a challenge. I knew this going in. I hope I’m up to it. Nelson is 89 years old and has a host of medical issues. Principal among these is Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s is not pretty. My dad had it and it finally killed him in 1993.

Most of us are familiar with the tremors and the mincing little steps associated with the disease, but many of us—myself included—are surprised to learn that it also causes depression and paranoia. It tied my dad up into knots. He was bed-ridden for the last two years of his life. I never noticed paranoia or depression in him, but I didn’t spend very much time with him after he got sick. I lived too far away and was too busy trying to carve a future out of my association with Henry at the time.

Nelson is a different story. He’s got paranoia to spare. He thinks all his doctors hate him and that they are deliberately trying to torture him. This doesn’t prevent him from saying ugly things to them whenever the opportunity presents itself. Then, when he’s had time to reflect on what he said, he’s convinced that the doctor he was ugly to hates him even more. In Nelson’s mind every test, every pill, every bit of unpleasantness associated with his diagnoses and treatments are the result of the assorted doctors he has offended exacting their revenge on his ancient body.

          He sees a lot of doctors on a regular basis. There’s his regular doctor, a DO, who is managing the Parkinson’s. Then there’s a neurologist to assist in the Parkinson’s care, a urologist for his enlarged prostate, a cardiologist for his hypertension and congestive heart failure, an ophthalmologist who looks after his eyes since he had cataract surgery, a dermatologist, and the folks who made his last set of dentures that he refuses to wear because they don’t fit.

He also has a collection of nurses, therapists and caregivers who come by daily or weekly to help him re-stabilize after his last hospital visit. A visiting nurse comes by twice a week to draw blood and update his charts. A physical therapist comes twice a week to work on his strength and endurance issues. An occupational therapist comes by once a week to work on his balance and help him maintain essential skills for dressing himself etc. A caregiver comes 4 days a week to do his laundry, make his bed, clean his bathroom, iron his clothes, and feed him lunch. My sister-in-law, Anne, comes every Thursday to take him to his many appointments. She also stops by every night to see how he’s doing, and if he needs anything.

All this activity keeps him pretty busy, and generally speaking, mad as hell. He hates the physical therapist. He likes the occupational therapist and the nurse well enough because they are pleasant and attractive, but if they dare suggest anything new—anything he’s not already familiar with and already on the schedule—he doesn’t hesitate to go off on them. He doesn’t trust the caregiver. He loves Anne who has been taking care of him non-stop for years, but he will whine and cuss and heap abuse on her for the duration of every trip to a doctor’s office or lab or x-ray. Anne is a saint.

My wife and I are here to take some of the load off Anne. We’ll make sure he gets breakfast and dinner, do the grocery shopping, take him out during the week if he needs or wants to go somewhere, manage his many medications, and generally see to the things that are not being done now. In exchange we get a place to live rent free.

Nelson also intends to buy all the groceries, although I plan to split those with him. Between my wife's income and my unemployment checks we can surely afford to pay for our own food. I’ll do the cooking because I have been and I’m good at it.

Day 124 - Slouching toward Decrepitude

          I miss Bud a lot. I’m not really sure why this is. I haven’t really known him a very long time, and most of the time I have known him I’ve also known that he was sick and not likely to survive his illness. I had plenty of time, in other words, to prepare for his death. So here in the realization I ought to find resignation, acceptance, closure, and peace in the finality of it, but I don’t.

I want Bud back. Bud and I had an affinity that I can’t explain…or maybe can, but don’t want to admit. I find the things that I miss most about him are his least redeeming qualities. I miss his stinking breath. I miss his messy eating habits. I miss the tortuous way he got up off the floor to go do his business. I miss his general slovenliness and his abiding uselessness. When I think of all the things I miss about Bud I realize that, except for (hopefully) the bad breath, these are all attributes that I possess in equal measure.

I haven’t eaten a meal in recent memory that I didn’t get part of on my shirt. I’ve taken to telling people that at my age and with my history of colon cancer it’s important to keep an accurate record of what I eat. I keep mine on my shirt.

It takes me forever to get up out of a chair. It takes me an average of 28 seconds to get out of our car. I know this because my grandson times me. He got tired of waiting for me. He’s usually out of the car and inside our destination before I even get my seatbelt off. Putting a stopwatch on my torpor seems to him like a good way to occupy otherwise wasted time just waiting. He takes a lot of pleasure in announcing my times to the general amusement of the rest of the family. If I had anything to leave I would consider writing him out of my will.  

Now that I’m unemployed I just putter around getting in other people’s way. My wife often has to park me in a corner when we go shopping together so that I don’t impede the flow of traffic up and down the aisles of the stores. Bud and I were images of one another. We were old men sliding inexorably into decrepitude, and both grown useless as the tits on a boar hog. This is why I mourn Bud so much. It’s as if a big part of me has gone missing.

*****

There was a point in the midst of all the turmoil at Albatross where it seemed as though my star was in its ascendency. It was short lived. This happened when the new CFO, let’s call him Quentin Parks, asked me to assume the duties of the Operations Controller in addition to my own. This was to be a short term assignment that would be made permanent if I acquitted myself well. I planned to acquit myself well. There was, of course, a monkey wrench waiting in the wings for the opportunity to hurl itself into the mechanics of my forward progress. Let’s call him Rod Chandler.

Rod was a nemesis of monumental proportions, although I didn’t realize that at first. Rod was the new controller of the North Alabama plant. Rod had a career track in mind, and that track intersected mine. My problem was that where my career track was a passive thing that went where I thought the company needed it to go, Rod was actively engaged in mapping his track to take him where he wanted to be.

Where he wanted to be was where I thought I was going to end up if I acquitted myself well. So while we were both headed for the same destination, I remained blissfully unaware that I was in a competition. I had a huge amount of work and responsibility to take care of in order to acquit myself well. Rod on the other hand, less blissful and infinitely more aware, arranged to have nothing to do but lay track.

I know this because the old controller of the North Alabama plant complained to me about it. The old controller was trying to retire. He had announced his retirement, and the company had hired Rod to replace him. The old controller agreed to stay on and train Rod in the particulars of the job.

Even in the worst circumstances, this shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of months. Rod was, after all, a degreed accountant with years of experience in manufacturing as an assistant controller and controller. He didn’t need to be trained. He only needed to be shown where things were.

It took way more than just a couple of months though. This is what the old controller complained to me about. It was taking forever because Rod never got to the point where he was actually taking over the work. The old controller continued to do all the things he had been doing all along while Rod engaged full time in managing his career.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that Rod wasn’t doing any useful work. He probably was. At least he was doing work that seemed useful to the plant manager at North Alabama and to the CFO at the corporate offices because the work he did was deliberately tailored by Rod to appeal to their particular management sensibilities.

It was not, however, the work he had been hired to do. It would have been nice if the rest of us finance and accounting stiffs had the same luxury—to have some poor slob who was trying to retire do our jobs while we cherry picked tasks and projects calculated to make us look like geniuses to senior management.