Cragle Rock

Struggling to keep up I was again interrupted by my incessant cell phone. I’ve come to believe these things are tools of the devil. I answered the phone and Angie quickly spoke up.

Are you forgetting something?

Ok, I’ll bite, what is it?

Weren’t you supposed to meet with the family of Mrs. Denton today at 10:30 AM?

I paused and ran my list of to do items through my head. Uh, what time is it?

10:30.

Damn, tell um I’ll be there in 10 minutes. I gathered my scope and papers and stuffed them into my briefcase as I ran down the hall. Each nursing station I passed wanted me to stop and sign orders. I tried to brush them off as politely as possible and let them know I would be back shortly to fix whatever they needed.

I jumped in my car and pulled out into traffic intending to get to the other building as fast as possible. I pulled in behind a gray haired old man wearing a hat whose car sported a handicapped plate and a Jesus fish. A combination that is the kiss of death to orderly and efficient traffic flow. A word to you people who don’t have to be anywhere particular. GET OUT OF MY WAY I DO HAVE PLACES TO GO. And the green thingy at the intersection. The one below the yellow thingy and the red thingy. That means GO not stop and discuss the meaning of the Bagavagita in a post modern world. If he was Mexican I would have told him to pretend the light is the border.

I eventually arrived at the other building and rode the elevator to the third floor. I located a lost looking soul wandering around the lobby. His red proud to be an American baseball cap was proudly displayed on his wizened head. I fished my business card out of my pocket and introduced myself to him. He smiled broadly and then opened his mouth to reply. It was about this time that I noticed a peculiar odor wafting my way. Now sometimes in the nursing home one will walk by a room and be smacked upside the head by a code brown but that’s a different noxious cloud.

This odor assaulted slowly, building as the minutes passed. It seemed to be composed of one part unwashed body, two parts stale liquor, and three parts stale cigarettes. When the son opened his mouth and began to speak in a Southern/Country/Hillbilly drawl I got a glimpse of his teeth. Both of them. They rose like monuments from a barren waste and they reminded me of the cartoon drawings of the mouth of saber tooth tigers. The brilliant yellow bases were capped by a dirty brown snow. They were so disgusting that for a moment I thought he might be British but the accent didn’t match. To make matters worse he was a close talker.

I walked us over to the corner of the counter and reached out my arm and dropped my card on the counter so he would have to step forward to get it. This put him on one side of the 90 degree corner and me on the other side with the corner separating us. I explained that I had examined his mother the day before and she was doing well. He was concerned that she was depressed since getting admitted to the Nursing Home. I tried to assuage his fears and assure him that taking her home was not wise. She was here in a safe environment receiving 24 hour care. Something he would not be able to give her without severely comprising his own health.

He told me that he had found her in the middle of the living room floor at 1:30 AM. She was in pain and unable to walk. It was not until after her admission that he finally realized that she had severe memory impairment and dementia.

I see this sort of thing rather regularly. Families cover for their demented parent and refuse to acknowledge their decline. In this case his mom was probably walking across the living room when her hip fractured and she fell. It’s not unusual for the elderly to have their hips fracture just by doing everyday activities. I had one patient who was riding in her car when it hit a pothole and her hip fractured.

The entire conversation was punctuated by me trying and failing to not look at the craggy peaks of brown enamel bobbing up and down in the son’s mouth. It was like trying to look away from a train wreck. I resisted the urge to pull my dremel from my briefcase and file them down from Nepalese to Rocky Mountain proportions. I was quite relieved when the meeting was over so I could go outside and get a breath of fresh air.

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