I am now going on Year Five of caring for my father. In a few short months, he will turn 94. Looking back, I appreciate the many lessons about aging that I have learned.
The hardest lesson came when my father was treated for swelling in his legs. It was so severe, he was prescribed massive doses of Lasix, generically known as furosemide. For a long time, he was miserable, trying to keep up with the constant trips to the bathroom. It sapped all of his energy.
But he was lucky. His saving grace was his vascular nurse, who recognized that he actually had lymphedema. Once she got him the proper treatment for this, he was no longer on Lasix.
Unfortunately, by that time, the diuretic had damaged his hearing to such an extent that my father was told he needed a cochlear implant. Given all of the medical issues he has had in the last year, he confided that he just wasn’t up for more surgery. In lieu of that, he opted for more powerful hearing aids.
But here’s a little secret about hearing aids for people who don’t wear them. Just like people who have eye problems don’t always have 20/20 vision with glasses, people with hearing loss sometimes experience difficulty even with hearing aids.
What does that do for an elderly person? It creates a sense of isolation. If you can’t participate in conversations, you are cut off from your social circle. And it can also create great challenges, especially when you are in a situation where things are going on around you and you aren’t able to properly process the limited information you have at hand.
This became especially troubling for my father when he was hospitalized a few months ago with pneumonia. The medical staff often ignored him and his hearing limitations. A few young nurses called to him from the doorway of his room, to give him instructions. They assumed he heard them when he didn’t. One made the mistake of telling me that my father was “a little forgetful”. I informed her that you can’t forget what you never heard. I finally had to tell the physician in charge that the staff was not adhering to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Deaf patients are entitled to “effective communications”. They need to understand the medical procedures that are planned for them. And that means that if necessary, every doctor who wants to treat that patient must provide information in writing or have a representative make sure the patient understands his or her medical plan.
What the hospital staff didn’t know is that I have a significant hearing loss. I grew up lip-reading, so I know all of the tricks of keeping up in a hearing world without having normal hearing.
And there are tricks. First and foremost, it’s imperative that you get up close to your elderly parent and lean in, to be sure he or she actually hears what you say. In a quiet room, it’s often fairly easy to carry on a two-way conversation. But the minute the acoustics change or there is a great deal of background noise, all is lost. That is when deaf people really struggle to keep up. When the brain takes in minimal information or misinterprets it, it can cause all kinds of communication problems.
One of the most important things I have done with my father is to linger over breakfast. Why? Because that is the time we sit with the newspaper. My father often reads stories aloud to me that have caught his attention. It gives us a chance to discuss current events. There is a back-and-forth that involves him sharing his thoughts and views on a wide range of subjects, from politics to local events to sports and entertainment.
You might think this is similar to watching television together with the closed captioning on and chatting about what you experience, but it’s not always the case. If you read a story in a newspaper, it’s all there in black and white for you to see. But closed captioning doesn’t always capture dialogue accurately. It’s an assistive device that enables me to follow the gist of a show, but it’s not perfect. I am often so distracted by reading the captions that I miss the action. If I focus on the action, I miss the captions.
Hence, I don’t rely on my hearing to hear. Does that sound strange? I don’t rely on my hearing to hear. It’s true. I rely heavily on my eyesight to help me see what people are saying to me.
But what happens if your loved one cannot see well, as is the case for my father? His ophthalmologist said there was no point in getting prescription glasses because they don’t make anything clearer for him.
Yes, as our parents get older, their physical senses really can dull. They struggle to function in the world without the full range of perception.
A case in point? The other night, I was watching a television program while I was working. During the commercial, I whisked the dog outside to do his business. What my father saw was me hurrying away with the dog. When I came back, I found him in a worried state. He mistook my rush to get back to my TV show as a sure sign there was something terribly wrong with the dog. That cause him great distress until I reassured him that the dog was just fine.
That’s the trouble with growing old. The world moves faster than your senses do, and it can be very difficult to accurately interpret your surroundings.
That’s why I linger over breakfast with my father. Or whenever I am doing something that puts me in close proximity to him. I make an effort to converse as often as possible. It’s a way to connect with him on physical, mental, and emotional levels.
But it also serves another purpose. It allows me to check for signs of dementia. People with significant hearing loss often begin to lose their faculties because they are cut off from the rest of the world. By constantly engaging in discussions, even those that might be very loud to people with normal hearing, I can see how well my father is able to apply logic and reason to comprehend his world, and more importantly, his environment, especially with all of the challenges that his health presents.
When he is frustrated by his circumstances and believes nothing can change, I push him to express his frustrations. That is the only way I can figure out how to amend the situation. I can’t fix every problem for him, but I can and do regularly look for adjustments and adaptions we can utilize to keep him engaged and involved in his own life. That is what quality of life is all about.
So, if you are caring for an elderly parent, take the time to have interesting conversations with your mom or dad. Gauge how well your parent is coping with the challenges he or she faces. And above all else, recognize just how debilitating it can be to become isolated by the loss of physical senses. Work hard to keep your loved one functional, because that is the very essence we human beings rely on to feel that life is worth living.