Desserts

   Of course if you flip the word desserts around you'll come up with the word "stressed."  My wife tells me that my sleeping patterns are way off, something I'm well aware of as I pop awake around 3 AM and can't seem to fall back asleep until several hours later.  Then the other day, I felt a something like a small bubble move in my back...ouch.  Stress can do that, hit us unconsciously and often in areas that are our "weak" points.  And we all encounter stress at some point, even if its as simple as worrying about not making your flight on time or whether that tooth of yours will need a root canal.  But for many of us, stress isn't something that comes and goes quite so quickly; things never really seem to be so bad that we're sinking into depression or need help, those internal words constantly telling us that we can handle it...but can we?

    Today is the day I move my mother (again) this time to a new facility and out of her dementia ward (in an earlier post, I wrote about having her re-evaluated and professionally discovering that she was misdiagnosed and didn't really need to be in such a locked-down facility).  Another incident had occurred, a large man (one of the residents suffering dementia) entered her room in the middle of the night, ripped off her covers and said that he was going to harm or kill her.  Needless to say, it so frightened my mother that she lurched out of bed and fell on the floor, unable to get up (the offending resident has done this before to many others, and has no memory of any of it).  Emergency units were called and the paramedics checked her out and carefully returned her to bed (I also took her to the doctor's to be checked out the next day).  The facility prided itself on not having locks on its doors to "make it easy for the residents to get in and out."  And some of the staff there told me not to worry about it since he (the resident entering the rooms) didn't know what he was doing.  My mother --strong heart and all-- was frightened but obviously alive; still it haunted me that I could have just been told that she passed away from a heart attack, never realizing that she just might have died from being "scared to death."  After discovering what had happened, the issue now became whether to report them to the state authorities.

    Some of you will likely be reading this and wondering why reporting them would even be in doubt (the reaction of my wife and many of my friends).  And logically I would be justified in doing so for I had gone through all of the proper channels in previous weeks when a few hygiene issues came up in my mother's bathroom.  I had talked with the facility's director, waited two weeks, then talked to the administrator, waited two weeks, then wrote to the regional director.  Each meeting produced little results.  But this time I discovered that what I had thought were my mother's "ramblings" were actually true (I had thought that my mother was simply mistaking the aides and med-techs checking in on her at night as the "intruder" she was telling me about).  Looking back, I can imagine her frustration at me telling her that I would take care of it and little being done.  Moving her out of there was already in the works, there was no question about that and was already scheduled.  But getting the underpaid and understaffed workers in trouble...somehow that just wasn't in my nature.  But then this was my mother, and while I was getting my mother out of there my wife asked me to consider the other residents there who didn't have anyone visiting or advocating for them, who perhaps were "rambling" but also perhaps telling the truth.  I went to the state (generally, this results in the ombudsman of the state's health department that oversees such licensing will begin an investigation).

   So then what could be stressing me?  My mother was moving and I had hopefully started a process to correct the way the facility was operating (locks were now being put on all the doors) and the workers were all fine with me, one even telling me that "it helps us improve."  But something was still gnawing at me, perhaps the thought that likely the only people to be eventually "punished" would be the bottom workers with the management staff getting a minor slap on the wrist if anything at all.  Perhaps it was my guilt from the realization that my mother had put up with such intrusions for longer than I had believed.  Perhaps it was something altogether unrelated, the wife, the dogs, the house, the car, the checkbook, or all of it combined.  Here's how WebMD described stress: Stress means different things to different people.  What causes stress in one person may be of little concern to another.  Some people are better able to handle stress than others.  And, not all stress is bad.  In small doses, stress can help you accomplish tasks and prevent you from getting hurt.  For example, stress is what gets you to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting the car in front of you.  That's a good thing.  Our bodies are designed to handle small doses of stress.  But, we are not equipped to handle long-term, chronic stress without ill consequences...Stress can affect all aspects of your life, including your emotions, behaviors, thinking ability, and physical health.  No part of the body is immune.  But, because people handle stress differently, symptoms of stress can vary.  From there the site goes on to describe some of the symptoms, closing with this: Stress is a part of life.  What matters most is how you handle it.  The best thing you can do to prevent stress overload and the health consequences that come with it is to know your stress symptoms.

   There are ways to handle stress, among them meditation or exercise or (from another view) letting your emotions just explode and taking it out on others or in road rage.  We're all different and have all been brought up differently.  In my case, emotions of all sorts become internalized (women might say that this is the case of men in general), but I am generally able to let off steam slowly (or so I think).  But this was new to me, as new as if I were to suffer a break down...but I still had to ask myself why?  My problems (if indeed they could be truly classified as "problems") were minor, too small to even show up on most people's radar.  I wasn't being told that I had only a few months to live or that my house was being taken back by the bank; I wasn't being fired or wondering where I would find the money to heat the house or feed the family; I wasn't being chided or yelled at because of the way I looked or felt or how my skin was a different color or that I had a different faith; I wasn't out on the street or looking for a better life, a life without bullets and without bombs.  Why was I not sleeping?

   Late at night I try to visualize the world out there as one filled with energy, energy that is both good and bad.  And on those nights when I can't sleep, I try to purge my "bad" energy and replace it with "good" energy.  I want to be The BFG, the Big Friendly Giant so gracefully captured by Roald Dahl and brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg and the late Melissa Mathison (both originally collaborated on the film ET).  He's an outcast in the land of giants and one who captures dreams, dreams both good and bad...but more importantly he listens; as he says, to children and bugs and especially to plants and trees.  There's a lesson there, as sure as there's my back hurting and my sleep clock being off-kilter.   My body is talking and I need to listen.  Perhaps all I need to do is to just flip things around and to just dream...to dream of luciousm carefree desserts.