When the carer reaches the threshold

And an update on the Prayer House renovations

May/June 2024

Okasan came home from the hospital with just a bandage around her broken ankle, but even Shujin had to put that on her. The hospital didn’t do it! I was really surprised!

What the hospital did do was take a cast of her leg so they could make a custom-fitted plastic cast for her which would be adjustable. So as she got stronger she could weight-bear on her leg more.

The idea was that she would be able to stand and her weight wouldn’t be on her foot, but on the brace that would be under her knee, with poles down to the shoe. It was this whole contraption thing, it even came with a shoe for her other foot so she wouldn’t be uneven when standing and walking. It sounded amazing! But I just couldn’t believe they didn’t even bandage her ankle when they sent her home!!

Anyway, it would take a week for the cast to be made.

Knowing that she broke her ankle, and that she won’t have a cast for a whole week sparked excitement in me. My eyes danced with joy, for now I could do comfrey poultices on her ankle to promote the knitting of the bone! (NB the x-ray had shown that it was a very clean break, the two pieces had barely separated.)

Any excitement and joy I had felt that first day was swiftly stolen by stress and the realisation that I actually have one whole week of torture.

Keeping an eye on Okasan, making sure she doesn’t weight-bear turned out to be sooooooo difficult!

The doctor had instructed that she was to crawl around the house. No crutches or hopping or anything. The safest thing was to crawl. Thank the Lord since our house is so small, crutches would be an absolute nuisance! And a hazard!

Since she has stairs into her bedroom we set a mattress on the floor in the tatami room. Can you believe? We had eight people to fit around a table that just fits six in a room smaller than 3x3m! And now we had included a bed on the floor as well!!

Having her on the floor was great for her, even if it meant taking up precious living room space! The next challenge that came was all the different floor heights in our house.

It’s a big step down into the kitchen and through to the toilet. Okasan would want to hop down the step and I had to forever remind her to crawl down. If she remembered to crawl down and then over to the toilet, when she came out of the toilet, since she was in an upright position, she would just start hopping to make her way back to her bed. Getting up the step was so difficult and if I wasn’t there to say something, she would weight-bear on her foot and cause herself pain!

How do you get a dementia patient to remember to not try and walk on her foot??!!

Just one week, I told myself. It will be fine next week when she has the cast.

I thought the pain would be enough to remind her to not weight-bear. I went and helped mum and dad do some work at the Prayer House. Upon returning there were things beside Okasan’s make-shift bed in the tatami room that were previously in her bedroom! You have to walk up four steps to get into her bedroom!

Yes, she’d gone up herself and got stuff she wanted.

And then she complained more that night about her foot being sore. She admitted to Shujin that she had walked on it.

I felt awful. I shouldn’t have left her. After that, we would always make sure at least one person was home to keep an eye on her. If I went to help dad at the Prayer House, mum would stay home with Okasan and vice versa.

I only have a week of this, I comforted myself. Next week she’ll have her cast on and she can weight-bear and it will be easier.

Next week came and I turned into a near nervous wreck.

For starters, she came home with the cast on AND with crutches. Apparently kids can walk and even run with their cast from the get-go, but it’s more challenging for older people and they need to use crutches to support themselves until they get used to walking on the cast.

Crutches. In our house. Did I mention that nearly every room is a different level??? If that wasn’t bad enough, the house was small. There was barely room to use the things!

And then there was the cast. It was re-move-ab-le. Yes, Okasan could just take it off if she wanted, or if she forgot she needed to keep it on…. AAAARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Okasan sporting her cast

I could totally appreciate that it was uncomfortable, so when resting in bed she wanted it off. But then she wouldn't remember to put it on before she walked! And when she finally did get it on she fumbled around with crutches, up and down between rooms….

If I was stressed the first week about Okasan injuring herself even more, now I was near maxed out. To be the one to make sure she didn’t break another leg or her neck (!) was more than I could handle.

“Babe, I can’t do this. I’m so stressed, I can feel my whole nervous system is so heightened, I’m going to end up in hospital. You need to take your mum to hospital, otherwise you will end up having to take me.”

Thankfully Shujin understood.

We should have listened to the suggestion of the doctor to start with. He recommended she stay in hospital, until she got used to walking with the cast. We thought she’d be fine at home. She wanted to be at home, of course, and ignorantly we didn’t see why she couldn’t be.

Now I was packing her bag and sending her off. I anticipated the huge sigh of relief, the elation, the burdens lifting off my shoulders as I waved goodbye to her in the car.

But nothing came.

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Mum and dad stayed about a week more before returning to Australia. They put in a huge final effort to help us at the Prayer House, sacrificing their last weekend that could have been used for sightseeing, but helped us with renovations instead. (Thank you!!)

Dad had been faithfully chipping away at demolishing the bathroom. Even when we were doing renovations on the retreat house for Sujin’s work, we would get back home in the late afternoon and dad still had energy and would head over to the Prayer House and work on his demolition project! (Meanwhile I was so exhausted and just wanted to fall into bed! But of course I was stuck in the kitchen trying to cook dinner!)

The bath became dad’s nemesis. It was so tightly attached to the bathroom that it took days, maybe weeks, of dad chipping away at it before it finally came lose. He came home very elated one day, with a huge grin on his face, and announced he’d gotten the bath out.

Congratulations!

Before he left, dad had almost completely demolished the bathroom - only the wall tiles were left to remove off the walls. They were so tightly stuck (worse than the bath!) I think we’ll need a jack hammer or something!

Left to right: original state; work in progress; conquered!

Shujin and dad finished pulling out the kitchen. In the process we discovered that the house didn’t have a frame. It’s built with what we’ve called "sandwich boards" so, two large pieces of plywood with a wooden frame glued between them. So with these sandwich boards they have nailed them together to make walls, floors and even the ceiling. So we basically have a Lego house!! It's so strange, we aren’t used to houses being built this way!

When demolishing the kitchen, dad accidentally discovered that the tiles were very easy to remove from the kitchen wall, so they all came down in a hurry! Now all that’s needed is to remove the blue kitchen flooring and it will be an empty shell to build in. (We left the kitchen sink free-standing as we’re still using it for hand washing etc).

Having my dream shattered about extending the kitchen outward, I spent many hours mentally working out how to expand my kitchen. The plan now is to knock the wall down between the kitchen and bathroom and extend the kitchen into the bathroom vanity sink area. The rest of the bathroom is big enough to put the vanity in it. Three-way bathrooms are great, but I’d prefer a bigger kitchen over a big bathroom!

One time Shujin brought the chickens (that we incubated in December) down to the Prayer House to hang out with us while we worked. Are they looking like roosters to you?? Shujin is convinced. I want hens, so I’m trying to stay in denial!

We pulled off nearly all of the fake wood sheeting on the walls in the living room. Only a little bit left to do around the fixed bench on the left. We also started to take the wallpaper off the ceiling.

Dad took out all the stumps in the yard. There must have been about ten of them! Some were just from small bushes, but there were a few large ones from trees. The ground in the yard is a bit uneven, but it’s great to have it cleared from those trip hazards.

Mum helped me put in a veggie garden but the plants didn’t grow! The soil was so good at Okasan’s, but at the Prayer House it was clearly lacking something. Except bugs. Cucumber, zucchini and pumpkin seedlings all got eaten 😭 Lots to learn...!

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