Week 459 Update

"Was Alice dreaming when she followed the rabbit down the rabbit hole?" It was only partly in rhetorical spirit that I asked the question of the semi-rectangular device I was about to step on. I had managed to sleep until 6 am somehow, and had pulled the device from his traveling box just for this moment. I didn't wait for a response, because over the years I have found that it is a certain waste of time. I mulled over the question as I stepped on Mr. Scale and he promptly said, "196.5 Pounds!"

I had two very different things fighting for my attention at that moment, and at the time, they both seemed more important than what this box of metal had to say. Okay, I continued to weigh less than 200 pounds and I was happy about that, but what about Alice?

I was looking for some point of reference for my own trip "down the rabbit hole." The Mad Hatter couldn't be far away. He felt close by.

Hatters in the nineteenth century were mad. Well, more precisely, they suffered from mercury poisoning, because they breathed the fumes from the stuff they used to process fur in the 1800s. It went with the job you see, and they didn't even ventilate the shops where they did the work. In time the accumulation of the deadly heavy metal in their bodies caused the shakes, they became clumsy, talked like drunks, had their teeth fall out and memory loss, depression, panic attacks and depression followed. "Mad as a hatter" became a cliche that made its way into Lewis Carol's work. Brain damage, from mercury poisoning is not so far removed from what Alzheimer's does. And Alzheimer's was not far removed from what was on my mind this morning. Today we would see Mom again.

Ironically, I was being flooded with memories of a time that was a brighter one. It was not a cloud free memory however. In January of 1998 we had attended a funeral in Spokane, Washington for a baby who never had a chance. He was James, Caudy's first baby, and Dotti and I made a quick run up to Spokane from Vancouver for the service. My clearest memory I have of that service was my poor sad niece giving me a big hug, with no words being spoken. It was an "I'm so sorry," from me and a "thanks for being here" from her, and it is still strong in my memory. It is quite remarkable what non-verbal communication can mean, especially at very emotional times in our lives.

But we set off for home, and trying to cheer up and think of hope and then, along about Kennewick, Washington, I started seeing something blowing across the road. It was swirls of something that looked like clumps of dust, volcanic ash, or was it SNOW? Looking out ahead, sure enough a few flakes were starting to fall.

By the time we crossed over the Columbia River and headed onto I-84 West, the snow was coming down with determination. As we entered the Columbia River Gorge the snow was getting serious and we learned that the freeway was closed up ahead due to white-out conditions.

At The Dalles, we pulled into a Chevron station, filled up the car, and I threw the chains on our tires, and we drove over a few yards to the Shilo Inn. It was the very same motel that I weighed in at this morning.

I can still remember looking out of our motel window and seeing Route 197 running over The Dalles Bridge, crossing the Columbia River. To the northeast, The Dalles Dam, which is located 191.5 miles up the Columbia River from its mouth, was almost as close to us as the bridge. At the time everything was covered in white.

Historically this area is significant to the migration of the white man into the area, all those who followed the Oregon Trail. The area that was flooded by the dam was once a huge set of rapids, a cascade that presented an impossible difficulty for navigation, and which gave the entire mountain range that the Gorge cuts through its name: The Cascade Mountains. The cascade is gone, the rapids have been flooded into quiescent silence, but their name is remembered on maps everywhere, even if they themselves are forgotten generally.

It was still light that snowy day, and we drove around town, the chains singing as we found a grocery store and looked the town over. Nearly everything, including the library, was closed due to the weather, and we soon returned to the motel to settle in for our three day layover.

Dotti had just started Weight Watchers that month. Neither of us had a clue where that was going to lead on that visit. We enjoyed each other's company and walked around in the snow. And Dotti ate OP, even though I didn't have a clue what that meant at the time. (A few months later she was 100 pounds lighter than she had been in November and she started her "little web page" Dotti's Weight Loss Zone.)

I have always treasured the memory of those three days. It was an unexpected vacation from life, and the snowy blanket gave it a magical quality. For me it was the start of all that was to follow with DWLZ. And here we were once again, a dozen years later. A lot of water had passed through that dam, and under that bridge over those years: around 750 trillion gallons I'd guess, and our lives have gone through so many changes since then it is a herculean task trying to identify them all.

As we spent the night a stone's throw from Lake Celilo, that has totally immersed Celilo Falls behind the dam, my mind was bouncing from past to present at odd and unpleasant moments. I didn't like it, and I still don't like it.

After our efforts last week, I was feeling pretty down by Wednesday. I wrote in an email:

After visiting the “home” that we can’t afford, and the attorney, I am worse off than I was before I did these “pro-active” steps. The attorney couldn’t come up with anything more positive than for us to call the state of Oregon and turn her into social services and let them take care of her. The only piece of advice that I got from him that I will for sure be following is that I am not, under any circumstances signing anything where I am financially responsible for Mom. That seems like sound advice. If we did that, it easily could bankrupt us in no time, and leave Mom no better off than she is.

Our next step is to contact a social worker to see what they can recommend. It looks like they are only $50 an hour. [I later found that she actually wanted $80 per hour.] (The “helpful” people are very pricey. They give information and nothing else and charge you an arm and leg to get it.)

"For the number of people who have Alzheimer’s in this country, you would think that there would be a simple straightforward path to move from diagnosis to death with no confusion and frustration with anything but the horrible results of the disease itself. Instead, what I see is a swarm of sharks all out there to take a cut of the corpse as the patient sinks to the bottom. The nursing homes get their cut, and the lawyers get their cut, and the social workers get their cut and the families get taken for a ride when they are least able to fend for themselves. (It reminds me of the funeral homes, where the rich operators drive their big cars, to their big houses, and are oh so sympathetic at your loss, as they put a price list in front of you that would make even the maitre’d at the swankest restaurant in town blush.) The whole system is in place to make money, not to give care. "