He's in the Dog House Now!

The atmosphere here on the Planet Aphasia is warping my waffles. Don't ask me what that means. If your waffles are warped too, you'll understand. If not, trust me when I say that it's not a good thing here in the city of Caregiverville.

Every year there are eighty thousand new cases of the language disorder, aphasia, and I get a singer. Headline: Giddy Little Husband Tools Around In His Wheelchair Greeting His Day Like He's Been Over-Dosing On His Celexia Again.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you," my husband, Don, belted out like he was determined to be heard on the moon.

The problem is no one was having a birthday. The song is one of two that Don's aphasic brain can sing using actual lyrics. Well, sort of---the words often come out like they went through a blender first.

I should be happy for lyrics. Any lyrics. After all, Don has so few words in his vocabulary since his stroke. But these two songs are different. They're ones my husband learned when he was still using a highchair and they're stored in a relatively undamaged part of his brain. Even so, hearing "happy birthday" was a pleasure this morning---for the first hour. In the second hour, sweet little wifey poo that I am, I politely requested that he switch to his other song.

"Jesus likes me. Yo, you know," he complied. Okay, so he's got work to do on that childhood favorite before he's ready for American Idol.

"Yo," I interrupted Don, "Jesus likes me? I think he loved you when you were a kid."

This afternoon we were coming back from running errands and no one had yet found the switch on the back of Don's head to turn him off and he was getting annoying. Back up here---I'll admit that I was more than annoyed. I'd reached my quota of being a Nice Nancy about the never ending, loop of songs.

I pulled over to the side of the road and told him to get out if he couldn't behave himself. Hey, it worked on my brother and me when we were kids so I figured why not give it a try. And for a split second I thought that I really could do that, shove Don and his songs out the door and drive off. How much trouble could a person get into for leaving a wheelchair bound guy sitting at the side of a country road, singing "Yo, Jesus?"

When I shifted the car into park, Don looked at me as if---well, as if I'd warped my waffles for good this time, permanently indenting brain matter that isn't suppose to be marked with such a precise pattern of man-made deformities.

"I mean it," I practically shouted, trying to sound mean and bitchy. "Get out or get quiet!" If I were inclined to be honest here I'd admit that it wasn't much of a stretch for me to be the perfect bitch. Four hours of "Jesus has a birthday" or whatever it was that Don was singing at the top of his happy little lungs was doing a number on my head.

My husband took in my angry words and gave me an angelic smile, his blue eyes smoldering with mischievousness and after a very---and I do mean very---long pregnant, aphasia driven pause he said, "Change lanes."

I stared at Don for a full minute. I couldn't have been more astonished if he'd just used ruby red fingernail polish for eye liner and I wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel. (Now you know how waffles get warped in Caregiverville.) It's been five years, ten months and seven days that I've been trying to teach Don to say "change lanes" and "turn here" when we're in the car and he's frantically trying to get me to do one or the other. And the gods of Aphasia, bless their wicked asses, picked that time to let the words come down the pike and out his mouth.

"Okay, buddy-boy," I said with recessing gruffness as my bitch persona made her exit and I shifted the Blazer back in gear. "I'll change lanes and we'll go home. Together. But don't you forget that you're in the dog house now!" ©

By Jean Riva

This article appeared at Yahoo Contributors but they are going out of business and the rights to publishing it reverted back to me. So I've moved it and others this month to my blog to preserve them. If they seem out of order to the rest of the content in this blog, that is the reason. 

Taming the Shrew, Caregiver Style

The dog needs his own alarm clock. I'm sick of fighting with him to see who gets to pee first in the mornings. My bathroom is at one end of the house and he needs to be at the other end and I can barely run fast enough to service us both. One of these days I'm going to pee my pants trying. If Cooper could just get himself up fifteen minutes before I do he could let himself out, trek around our deck, do his business then come in and lick us awake. It shouldn't be too hard for the dog to learn the door opening trick. We've got those handicapped levels (instead of door knobs) and he's a smart little bugger. Don, my husband, is no competition for pee time. He's right side paralyzed and pees in a urinal. Ah, the feeling of togetherness I get when Don and I pee at the same time! "The family that pees together stays together," I often tell him from the throne.

Some of the words that tumble out of my mouth---entirely of their own volition---shock even me. Like: "Don, do it yourself, I'm not your mother!" This shrew-lady comes to our house mostly after Don's showers when he wants me to pick out his clothing. We've got this great, wheelchair accessible closet with hangers down at his level and low hooks for his not-ready-to-send-to-the-cleaners wool shirts. And it's not like his choices are as hard as those on an SAT test; it's mostly wheelchair compatible sweat pants and tee-shirts. But every day it's the same old thing; he'll sit in the closet for a few minutes, then he'll bellow out "Jean!" or "Cooper!" which ever name his language disorder, aphasia, plops on his tongue.

If I'm in another part of the house I can't be entirely sure, from the frantic tone of his cry, if: 1) he's fallen and he can't get up, 2) there's a spider on the wall, 3) he can't decide what to wear, 4) I forgot to flush the toilet, or 5) the house is on fire. So, I come running at the sound of his voice as if it's a dinner bell at an Over-Eaters' Anonymous meeting and I'm the hungriest woman in the room.

Can someone tell my why this full-grown, macho guy developed a fear of itsy bitsy spiders since acquiring a wheelchair? It doesn't matter if they are butt-ugly and scary or cute like Daddy Long Legs from a Walt Disney movie. He sends me off on a hunt like I'm after a bull elephant in heat that's just torn down a primitive village. Glory hallelujah! With Kleenex in hand, I stalk the little beast and get my man! Shall we have him stuffed and mounted? Gone are the days, when I once made a big deal over giving a reprieve to a spider living in a corner. "Spider," I said with dramatic wave of my arm, "This is not your day to die." And I completely missed the possibility that it could be a female ready to lay eggs while it waited for the governor to call and give it another pardon. Oops.

Back standing in front of the closet, I have to decide: is this a Shrew-Lady day or did Miss. Manners stop by? I hate having two personalities! On Miss. Manners' days I might sweetly suggest, "Don, you've only got three colors of sweats. Let's pick one. Good choice! Now, let's see what color shirt will go with your pants"---straight out of the pages of "The Caregivers' Guide to Building Self-Esteem." It might be a coincidence, but I think Miss. Manners comes by on the days when we're in a hurry. On Shrew-Lady days, she makes Don pick out his own outfits, and then she bits her tongue when the color combinations look like they were selected by a blindfolded dart thrower.
Cooper, he's met Shrew-Lady too. That silly little pompous poodle has learned how to take short cuts underneath Don's wheelchair when he's blocking a doorway, but he couldn't figure out why Shrew-Lady got so upset when he snatched the top piece of bread off a sandwich and dropped it mustard side down on the carpet.

Not long ago, Miss. Manners decided that Shrew-Lady needed to chill out and get in touch with her softer side. So Miss. Manners sat Shrew-Lady down in a chair and told her that even before the stroke Don used to call and ask: "Jean, what should I wear?" Shrew-Lady, she might not be entirely tamed but now she tries to remember the words I've said to so many novice caregivers: "Not all things are stroke-related." Or to put it another way, all guys will be guys. ©

By Jean Riva

This article was first published by Yahoo Contributors, in their humor section, but they are going out of business and the publishing rights have reverted back to me. So I've moved it to my blog to preserve it. If it seems out of order to the rest of the content here, that's the reason. It was written before my husband passed away.