Middle Age

BY J.B. COLLUM

When my wife and I looked forward to being grandparents many years ago, we never imagined it would be like this. We didn’t expect to be raising young children at our age. Instead, we imagined having them visit often, perhaps even spending some long stretches with us over school holidays or the summer. But we never envisioned it being full time. We wanted the grandparent package where you get to spoil them rotten and then send them home. Sadly, that never materialized. However, when their parents separated and realized that they couldn’t handle them individually, after some discussion we agreed to take all three until the end of the school year, to get some stability into their lives while their parents found their separate paths and stabilized their home situations.

We recently learned that their father is now homeless, and their mother is working hard but struggling to make progress toward having a home for them to return to in the near future. So it looks like this situation will be more long-term than we had anticipated. Along with this, my regular readers know that I face many health challenges common to middle age and exacerbated by neglecting my health issues for many years. Add to that, the fact that our youngest granddaughter suffers with intellectual disabilities and our situation might seem quite bleak. Indeed, sometimes it is overwhelming.

Despite these challenges, we are determined to do our best to provide a safe and loving home for our grandchildren. Our oldest daughter, the children’s aunt, has been a shining star in allowing us to handle the situation. When the kids moved in, she did too, and the three of us — her, my wife, and I — tag-team the situation, but if I am being honest, I am like the little guy in the corner mostly just cheering them on and occasionally chiming in to help briefly, only to be beaten up and rescued by them fairly quickly. I’m a real coward when it comes to dealing with some messes, and those two wonderful ladies bail me out regularly.

Our son is also helping, but from afar. His work has taken him to Europe for a while, and before that he was living about 4 hours away at the beach, but he has helped us financially in a very generous fashion, and when he is here he spends copious amounts of time with the children. My mother has also stepped up to the plate and is helping financially despite us insisting she not do it, but her generous nature wouldn’t allow that. She’s never been materialistic. Neither was my dad.

One other thing that helps is that our family is hard-wired to find the humor in everything and this helps us to cope. For example, when Freyja, our 5-year-old granddaughter, breaks something (a daily occurrence), we try to find the humor in the situation rather than getting angry. “Well, I wanted a new TV anyway. That 75-inch model was feeling kind of small, and it is already over a month old anyway, so time to upgrade!” I’ll say.

You might think that the teenaged grandchild would be the most difficult, and she for sure isn’t easy, but our biggest difficulty comes from Freyja, who has Angelman’s syndrome. At only five years old, she has already endured countless doctor appointments, hospital visits, and therapies and has a regular regimen of medication to control her seizures.

Angelman’s syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects the nervous system, causing developmental delays and difficulties with movement, balance, and coordination. It also causes communication difficulties and can lead to seizures. We know that caring for our granddaughter requires even more patience and understanding than we are already giving, and we have been warned that although she may make some improvements here and there, we should expect increased difficulties as she gets older. So humor will continue to be needed in abundance

We make sure that Freyja receives the best medical care possible, but we also have to adapt to her specific needs at home. For example, we have to be extra careful with her safety, as she seemingly has no fear and will climb anything and put her hands into anything. She will also put anything in her mouth (except for the healthy food we want her to eat). We have to make sure that she has plenty of space to move around and play, but that the area is also safe and secure. She must either constantly be watched, or kept in a safe space.

We were encouraged by experts to have a room with no dangers in it that she can be kept in (locked into) for those times when we might have to turn our eyes to some other tasks, like cooking a meal, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, etc. However, we didn’t have an extra room in the house, and we didn’t like the idea of locking her away in a room away from people. So, we instead built a playhouse in the living room that is visible from the kitchen, most of the dining room, and even some of the den. So the living room has become her play area, and we designed the playhouse so we can see into it from any angle. We had hoped that we could keep her in the playhouse, but she has learned how to climb out, so we will continue to make it more secure. In the meantime I have also added a camera that will allow us to keep an eye on her if one of us is watching her alone and has to step away for a moment. We have added a special swing designed for someone with her intellectual disabilities. It is like a blanket, and she can climb in and

THE BEST LIE A PATIENT EVER TOLD ME I was a nurse working in triage when I called through an 18 year old girl whose presenting complaint was abdominal pain. Nothing unusual there. She was accompanied by her mum. Again, nothing unusual there. It was immediately apparent she was in pain, which appeared to be coming and going every few minutes. I started to take - or at least try to take - a history, when the mum starts shouting that her daughter is pregnant, to which the daughter is shouting back that she isn’t. I asked the mother to leave the room, which she did, glaring at her daughter as she left.

I then continued with the girl, asking her about contraception (she said was on the pill), periods (she’d been having withdrawal bleeds), etc. Vital signs, other than a slightly elevated pulse, were normal. She was wearing a fairly loose fitting top, and certainly didn’t look pregnant, but there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something didn’t ring quite true about her story.

Either way, something was going on, so I took her through to a cubicle, then went to briefly discuss her case with a colleague. I trotted off back to triage whilst my colleague headed off in the direction of the girl’s cubicle.

A short time later, the same colleague appeared at the door of triage looking slightly wide eyed. “She had a baby,” she said in a hoarse whisper. My eyebrows shot up. She then went on to explain, slightly breathlessly, that she’d gone in to the cubicle to get the girl to change into a gown, get a urine sample (to do a pregnancy test) and so forth, but instead ended up delivering a baby.

I processed this information for a few moments. “Well, guess we don’t need a pregnancy test now.” She nodded thoughtfully and left triage.

Midwives took her up the the labour ward after that, and I never did find out what happened to her or her baby.