Chapter 44 More Changes.

                                                           Chapter 44   More Changes

One day Pete rang me from work to say he was coming home to see the doctor because he was having trouble breathing. I thought he must have had a collapsed lung. We were both anxious, especially as his father had died suddenly at the age of 61 with heart disease.

    The doctor knew instantly what was wrong. "There's nothing wrong with your heart," he said, "Your breathlessness is caused by stress." We were stunned.

    That day he took one of his rare sick days and we sat together and discussed the problem. These days he would be granted stress leave, but no such privilege existed then. He had accumulated nine weeks of annual leave and he took it all to rest and recuperate. During that time we flew to Sydney to investigate a bookkeeping business, because Peter was casting about for something else to do. He felt he couldn't go on the way he'd been going in the ambulance. I was in agreement and supported everything he wanted to do.

    When we flew to Sydney to inspect the business and talk to the franchisor, five other couples arrived in Sydney with us, most of them in different professions, but with similar stress levels. We all wanted the bookkeeping to be a success, but we should have been warned by the signs that seemed so obvious with hindsight. There was no limousine to meet us at the airport as promised, and his office was dingy and not at all what we were led to expect. We should have got back on the plane and gone home again. It turned out to be the wrong time for positive thinking.

    But in the end, determined to turn our lives around, we all bought a franchise. Peter and I worked hard, walking miles and miles doing leaflet drops throughout our territory.

    During the time that Peter managed the bookkeeping business, I supported the family by working whenever possible. Sadly, I was already experiencing weakness in my legs, and suffering fatigue. I worked a lot at the residential centre in St Paul's terrace, a day centre catering for two mothers and their babies each day. I caught the train, alighting in The Valley and walking up the hill to the centre. 

    Almost on a daily basis I was feeling my disability becoming a fraction worse, but I said nothing to anyone and carried on as I had always done, pretending I was okay, struggling to walk up the stairs. (Fake it till you make it!) Apart from gradually increasing weakness in my quadriceps, I had increasing bladder.weakness.
   
    We tried to get the bookkeeping business started while Peter was on his holiday leave, but another jolt was in store for him. When the nine weeks was up and he returned to work, he found that his job was no longer in existence. In his absence the position of District Superintendent had been eliminated, and a work colleague had been put temporarily in charge. The powers-that-be decided that the impostor should stay there and Peter should go and work in rosters. It was the final insult.  (In my opinion, I don’t think he ever really recovered.) 

     Humiliated and crushed, he went to work in his new department. One day Pete's roster assistant answered the phone, and Peter heard a strangled cry. On the phone was the man’s desperately distraught wife, informing him that their son had been murdered. Returning home from work, she found her son in his bed. He had been stabbed many, many times. His throat had been slashed, and blood was everywhere in the bedroom. Because Peter was a witness to the ensuing anguish, he and another senior officer, as well as the officer-in-charge escorted him home.

    Apparently, the 16-year-old son was feeling sick and left school early, returning home. He was lying on his bed when he was disturbed by a group of young men intent on robbing the house. Because the boy recognized one of them, the murder resulted. It wasn't long before the police had  captured the perpetrators and they were imprisoned, but they wrecked a lot of lives that day.

    I don't suppose the man or his wife will ever recover from that sorrow, but after a few weeks Peter and I took them out to a movie and bought them dinner. The movie was Sleepless in Seattle, which started with a graveyard scene, and I remember thinking, 'Oh God, no!'  Anyway, at the end they seemed to enjoy the night out and they probably appreciated the fact that somebody cared.

    Peter stayed a short while in the rosters Department and then resigned from the ambulance to become a full-time bookkeeper. We threw everything we had into it, walking and driving miles to distribute information to promote it. Peter's franchise area covered five busy suburbs. We did everything we could to enlarge our business but unfortunately our franchisor was in the habit of moving the goalposts, imposing unexpected levies for advertising, which we never saw. We had about five constant customers for a while but then one after the other they fell away for one reason or another. Accountants  discouraged their clients from using a bookkeeping service, which didn't help.

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    When we moved into our own house the children moved to the Ferny Hill’s School because it was closer. The school was running adult education classes in the evenings to raise money, but they were desperate for a coordinator. and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get to know people in the area, and get to know my way around the school. I did the job for two years, making endless phone calls to engage tutors, arranging classrooms and class sizes, and supervising mothers who took the bookings. Peter assisted me as security, locking up the rooms after the classes were finished in the evenings.
   
    Peter had kept in touch with some of his friends in the ambulance. Eventually, he decided that he would have to, (in the face of worsening financial problems,) return to doing full-time work, preferably in the ambulance as that was the work he loved. One particular friend kept him informed of available jobs, and eventually he successfully attained a new position called the Duty Officer with a car supplied. In effect, he was manager of the rosters Department and his office was situated in the new location of the Emergency Services building. He enjoyed the work and had no interest in moving up the ladder again.

    At first he managed the Department alone, with the help of two typists. At the time of his retirement 12 years later, the rosters Department also consisted of three administration officers and an assistant manager. During his time there he created new computer programs and new roster systems and was given an award for his work with computers in the ambulance rostering department. It was an Australia Day Achievement award which was to be presented at Government House at an official ceremony. But Peter never really agreed with special awards because he said they never went to the right people. He refused to go.

    He retired on the 28th of December 2007 to be my carer, and by that stage, work ethics having deteriorated so badly, he was very glad to give the job away.

    In Child Health the full-time jobs were doled out according to how the charge sisters had got on with the trainees during their course. I finished training at the beginning of 1983, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is probably fortunate that I did not gain a full-time position because of my deteriorating health. At the time however, I was disappointed, but was assured there would always be plenty of relieving work.

    To be granted relief work at the time though, it was necessary to keep in touch with various centres where I was prepared to work. This meant phoning the sister-in-charge of various centres and asking if there was any work available, and could she ‘keep me in mind.’  If you did it often enough, they gave you work to get you off their backs! 

    Eventually I started getting days here and there. If I was called to work, my conscience wouldn’t let me say no, and I went to some very out of the way places. I ended up  in centres from as far away as Caboolture in the North, the bayside suburbs in the east, Samford in the north-west, and some suburbs across the city just over the Indooroopilly Bridge. I worked in places that were strange to me, like the old, antiquated Fortitude Valley,  where the centre had high ceilings, and large echoing rooms. When I worked at upmarket suburbs like Hamilton, Paddington or Ashgrove, which were old and charming, but now trendy and very expensive real estate, I wandered the streets at lunchtime admiring the antiquated buildings and old gardens. I found the architecture fascinating, and the houses varied according to the era in which they were built.

     I gained a lot of valuable experience at the residential centres of Clayfield and St Paul's Terrace too. I find it hard to believe I had the temerity to drive around in busy places like Hamilton and Paddington, but you do all sorts of things when you are young, well and full of confidence. I wonder what happens to our confidence as we grow older?

    After Pete’s mum moved in with us she took a trip to Cairns in far North Queensland on the train, (pensioners got a free trip once a year on the train to anywhere in Queensland,) and later on with some friends she travelled, partly by coach and partly by ship, to Tasmania. Ater a few years she lost all interest in going away. I had noticed for quite some time that she frequently repeated herself. That had been happening since before she came to live with us.
   
    Peter and I became concerned about her mental health and we made an appointment to see her doctor. We were vastly unimpressed with his response because he never once looked us in the eye, and that never went down well with Peter. The doctor advised us to get her a diary and ask her to keep a record of what she'd done during the day. After we got it I realized it was far too late for such measures, as it had the effect of demoralizing her because she could hardly ever remember what she'd done during the day, and it embarrassed her. I threw the diary away in disgust.

     Although she was happy living in the flat under the house, she got very lonely at times. At first she spent a lot of time knitting or crocheting, but then patterns became too difficult for her to follow. She loved going out and I took her on as many outings as I could, even to Bible study. I worked often which meant that I was coming in and out in the car a lot. 

    When she was still able to go out to the shops, the children went to a day-care mother in the next street. Always involved in lots of activities, the children also went to swimming lessons, piano classes, and speech and drama. I was one of the organizers at Steph’s school fete, but when I was late home, she rang the church, trying to find out where I was. People with dementia suffer a lot of anxiety when they aren't sure what is happening.

    With my work and the children’s activities, she witnessed the car coming in and out multiple times. “That car could go out on its own!”  She was watching a very different lifestyle to the one she’d lived.

    Peter and I delight in using her quaint old-fashioned sayings, such as, "Your hair looks like a yard of pump water!"

    Some of her sayings came from Pete’s father, for instance, "Look at the time, and not a baby in the house washed!" A little imagination soon lets you work out where they came from.

     After six years I realised her fridge contained almost no food. At least, none to speak of, (maybe a small amount of butter and bread, but that's all.) It seemed obvious that she was living on bread and butter and tea, as old people frequently do. At that stage I decided it was necessary for me to cook her meals, so, to her delight, she came upstairs and ate with us. In the end I was showering her too. In all she lived with us for about seven years.

    Typically with senile dementia, peoples’ minds go back to their past. In my mother-in-law’s childhood, most people didn't have a bathroom indoors, or independent transport. This was probably the reason why hair-washing was a three weekly affair. Hair washing was probably a big deal, requiring a lot of effort with  a cake of soap and a  hand basin of water, (or several hand basins of water.)

    Our problem was solved when I devised a plan, persuading her that at this time in her life she needed to be waited on a little bit, and as she could easily afford it, I would take her to the hairdresser once a week. It was a new experience but she loved it. A local hairdresser washed and blow-dried her hair every week, and occasionally trimmed it for her. It worked very well, easing the burden on me.

    At that time I also got her into the Shepherd Centre a few suburbs away, one day a week. It was a respite centre for elderly and disabled. In the first week she accused me of taking her to 'that place,' but after a few weeks, she got to love it and even got dressed to go on the wrong day some times. The Shepherd Centre was situated beside Hillbrook School where Stephanie was in grade nine. Steph included, some of the students went to the Shepherd Centre to do voluntary community work, which is how I became familiar with it. After a while the bus came to pick her up from home in the mornings and brought her home in the afternoons, a wonderful advantage for me as well.

    All during the early 90s I kept working for the Child Health Department up to three days a week. I worked a lot at the Clayfield residential centre, called Riverton, but I could feel my pelvis growing weaker and standing for any length of time became an issue. My bladder was weakened and I often left the wards in a hurry. I started wearing small incontinence pads and at times, (caught out by a sudden overflow,) was desperate enough to use huge wads of paper. For years I said nothing to anyone, muddling through on my own and pretending everything was okay. I discovered that wet patches didn't show too badly on a navy blue skirt, and more than once I had to try to dry off a dampened chair.

    After a while I confessed to some of the girls that I was having problems and explained about the M.S. They were understanding, but I felt I shouldn't be there unless I was fully capable of undertaking the work, and a lot of the time pretended I was fine. The hardest job was tackling the stairs. My quads were weakening, especially on the right leg. I battled on though, fighting fatigue and heavy, lethargic legs. My rule of thumb was still, 'fake it till you make it.'

    Day after day I reached home exhausted, where I still had to prepare dinner for the family, shower Pete's mum, and then clean up the kitchen. I longed for help with dishes, but determinedly wouldn't get a dishwasher. I knew if I tried to explain to the family how I felt it would sound like whinging and whining, and I was determined to try to prove that I could still manage everything.

    At Riverton they often gave me shifts on the phone service where I could sit down answering the phone. Child Health had a 1 800 number for out-of-town mothers to call in for advice. Mums called in from all over Queensland. Although I enjoyed it, in the end working on the phones also became too much. Other staff couldn't understand why sitting down all day didn't suit me. They couldn't feel my weak back or fatigue and they certainly couldn't feel my distress when I had to run to the toilet every hour, tense and worried that I wouldn't make it. I had to switch the phone over to the ward sisters if I left and was embarrassed to do it too often. Not only that, I dreaded the effort to walk. Many a time I went through personal crises, managing to cover it up without attracting attention. Thank God for that dark navy skirt!

    In 1995 I turned 50, and Pete surprised me with a trip to America to see and stay with Ann, my pen friend of 36 years, in Nebraska. We had five wonderful weeks sightseeing and living with Ann. Peter learned to drive on the right hand side of the road, we saw Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, met all Ann's adult children and visited Boys-Town in Omaha. We all flew down to the Grand Canyon, which Ann hadn't seen before either. In the last week Ann came with us on a trip through the Rockies in Canada before we flew back to Australia. It was money well spent and I managed to get through with only one bladder disaster.

    Back home in Queensland, life reluctantly returned to normal for us. I started to become very environmentally aware and before recycling bins were ever distributed to the community, I did as much recycling as possible. I phoned Sims Metal at Northgate and found out what I had to do to recycle tin cans. By the time the recycling bins arrived from the Pine Rivers Shire Council, I had already put together a carton of clean flattened cans with labels removed. The guy at Sims Metal had told me that if the labels were not removed, more pollution than ever was created when the paper was burnt away before the metal could be reused. If the bins hadn't arrived when they did I would have had to deliver the box full of flattened cans to Sims Metal myself.

    Although it wasn't a rule of the council, I removed the labels from the cans before I put them in the recycling bin. Washing the cans was simple, but it upset Peter when he cut his hand on a piece of twisted metal left after the can opener.

    During this time I was taking hand building pottery lessons, which  I loved, but encroaching M.S. made life too difficult to continue on to wheel work. Clay is heavy, and the extra equipment was too awkward for me to carry around. However, I took some clay into the Shepherd Centre one day to help the carers involve some of the people with something different. We made simple little dishes. They enjoyed creating something unique, and I arranged the firing and glazing.

    My favourite subjects to mould with the clay were figures sitting on seats. I made three similar, (two old men on a seat,) and called them The Politician.) One time my daughter asked me to make a gift for one of her friends out of clay, and I made a copy of the girl and two of her friends sitting on one of the seats at school. The boy in the group had distinctive hair which hung down in his eyes, and I did my best to depict that. I often wonder if the girl still has that gift.