Remember the Forgetful

An ER doctor in a busy inner-city hospital was performing rounds in the early morning when she noticed a man in his mid-60s in one of rooms, constantly checking his watch, and looking around impatiently. She asked a nurse, “What is that man waiting for?” The nurse responded, “He got stitches last week and needs to have them removed.” The doctor noticed a long list of other patients slated to be seen before the man, so she decided to try and quickly attend to him prior to getting swamped with the other patients. She went into his room, introduced herself, took a look at his wound, and removed his stitches. As they were wrapping up, she asked, “I noticed you checking your watch a few times while you were waiting. Are you late for another appointment?” The man replied, “Kind of. I try to have breakfast with my wife every morning, but I have to be there by 8am or else they won’t let me in to see her.” “Where is ‘there’ and who are ‘they’?”, asked the doctor. “Oh”, said the man, “She has been in a long-term care facility for the past ten years. She developed Alzheimer's in her early 50s.” The doctor was impressed, “Wow. And you have breakfast with her every day, huh?”. “Yes”, replied the man, “Dinner as well. Every day.” The doctor was touched, “She must really love that you spend time with her like that every day”. The man replied, “Oh. She doesn’t know who I am. She hasn’t known me for at least 5 years now. Sometimes it takes her 15 minutes to stop calling out for the attendant to protect her from this ‘strange man’”. “Oh”, said the doctor, “I am really sorry. It must be tough for you to make such an effort every day when she doesn’t even know who you are”. The man patted her on the hand and said: “It’s okay honey. She may not know who I am, but I know who she is.”

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Note: I adapted this story from a Tara Brach talk, but she did not quote the original author, so I cannot credit it appropriately

Bats

We’ve had two encounters with bats here in the Benedetti household, and neither encounter has ended well for the bats.

On the first occasion, we had a bat that somehow got into our HVAC room and then managed to get himself stuck on a spider trap (that sticky paper) on the floor. Upon hearing a shrill noise coming from the HVAC room, I opened the door to take a look. Without the benefit of my glasses, I thought an enormous (and vocal) beetle got stuck on the trap. Val instantly recognized it as a bat. The poor little fellow was flat on his back, with the entirety of his wings stuck to the paper. There was no coming back from that, so I had to put him in a trash bag and leave it at that.

The second occasion was this evening, when, as we sat at the kitchen island, a rather large bat circled our heads. Val screamed and immediately ran out of the kitchen, but this cannot be interpreted as panic, as she immediately ran to the double doors between our family room and the rest of the house, closed the doors, and lined the bottom with towels to make it an airtight, bat-proof seal ;-) Meanwhile, I manned the other door with the electric racquet (for mosquitos), to make sure the bat did not get past me into the rest of the house, as Maggie, our dog, who is quite fearless, tracked the bat through the air and at every stop, waiting for her chance to pounce on it.

My first call was to a grade school friend of mine, Joe, to see if he had any advice or knew of someone who specialized in this kind of thing, as I was not too keen on killing the bat, but nor was I too keen on getting bit by it. You might wonder why I would call Joe for something like this, but I would not be able to offer you a logical answer. Let’s just say that if I ever happened upon Bigfoot in my backyard, I would call Joe on that occasion as well. He did, in fact, have a good idea. Get a large bedsheet and walk across the room with it fully extended to capture the bat, after which time we could let it go outside. It was a great idea, for two willing participants, but by this time Val had sealed off the other doorway with a sheet, leaving me alone in the Kitchen / Family Room with the bat.

Thus, with the sheet in hand, extended as far as I could manage, but with the racquet in my dominant hand as a fallback, I endeavored to cast the net. However, before I even took a step, the bat started circling the room, and, as I recounted to Joe, I had to pull a Serena Williams on him. I executed my best approximation of an overhead serve, sending the bat into the wall, after which he lay perfectly still on the floor. Val quickly dumped a few pickles from a large pickle jar into the kitchen sink and provided me with the jar and a cut out piece of cardboard, which I then used to maneuver the bat into the jar and sealed it accordingly. We found a small passage from the fireplace into the family room that we think the bay traversed through, and have temporary sealed it with rags and a 10lb weight.

The biggest lesson learned for me: I might want to take up tennis :-)

Vacation Report

My little Nicholas, six years old, is Autistic.

These days they call it Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is an apt name, because the kids we meet at the center where Nicholas goes for therapy range from not speaking at all to barely presenting as Autistic.

In his case, Nicholas is affectionate and social, has a strong vocabulary, though is not yet speaking in more complex sentences, and is not yet eating solid food, due to severe food texture issues. He has other quirks that will become apparent as this story unfolds.

One of the first things a parent of an Autistic child needs to do is dispense with expectations. I’ve never had expectations of normalcy myself - too many bad, made for TV movies while growing up, I suppose - but there is a lot more in the domain of expectations that one has to let go of when it comes to an Autistic child.

For the past few months, we prepared Nicholas for a trip to Niagara Falls. We called him an ‘International Traveler’, talked to him about his first long road trip, first stamp in his passport, first time in a hotel, first time sightseeing, and he was very excited to go.

The whole drive up, roughly 8 hours, Nicholas was very happy to see the sights and stop at the rest stops. He was excited to cross the rainbow bridge, check into the hotel, get settled in the hotel room, and look out of our hotel window on the falls.

After an hour or so, however, he became inconsolable with the idea that Maggie, our dog, was home alone, even though he knew that our daughter, Natacha, 22 years old, was home with her. He wanted to go home right away. It was more than just the dog, of course, as he was no longer able to follow his normal routine at home.

He cried himself to sleep that night.

I figured that after a full day of sightseeing the next day, Nicholas would have a different point of view, so I remained hopeful about our vacation plans. The next day we walked along the falls, went down into the tunnel behind the falls, took a ride on a boat right up to the falls, and walked through a lot of the sites around the main concourse.

As the day ended, I started to prepare Nicholas for all the plans we had for the next day.

Like a Baptist Pastor, preaching to his flock, each time I told Nicholas what we were going to do next, he would reply “…and then go home?” Thus, I started, “tomorrow we can go see the big whirlpool”, he replied “…and then go home?”. I continued, “and then we can go see the flowers”. He continued, “…and then go home?”. I persisted, “and then go see the butterflies”, he persisted, “…and then go home?”. In fact, he asked when we were going home about 300 times during the day.

Part of Nicholas’ condition entails repetition, most predominantly in the form of asking the same question over and over again. I don’t mean like how normal kids ask the same question over and over again. Nicholas is an order of magnitude above that.

Towards the end of her life, when my grandmother was suffering dementia and asked the same question 100 times, I was always surprised how it did not bother me, even as it drove my mother insane. I always figured it was because I only experienced it during my brief visits, whereas my mother was living with it every day. Living with Nicholas every day, I realize that I am just impervious to the agitation that might normally accompany such a phenomenon, though I am not sure my wife feels the same way ;-)

Needless to say, we drove back home the next day, so our vacation consisted of one day driving up, one day sightseeing, and one day driving back.

I was actually happy to go home, as was my wife, and I love to drive, so it all worked out in the end, but what do you think happened as soon as I pulled into the driveway?

Nicholas started crying that he wanted to go back to Niagara Falls!

He cried his way into the house, walked right by Maggie without giving her a thought, and then he cried himself to sleep. These days, I field 200-300 questions per day about when we will be going back ;-)