There is a way in which, once you are in the health care system - say, you've been admitted to the hospital or you're in an Assisted Living facility - no matter how good the hospital or the facility, it's like you're in the criminal justice system - your life is no longer your own.  Your choices are no longer your own.  The rules, for the most part, have been created by people who genuinely are trying to protect infirm or elderly people, I do believe, but the effect of the rules is to render the individual in the center ineffectual in his or her own life.  It is infantalizing in the name of protection and healing.

Today I stopped in to see my mom; I was in the area doing errands and I have to confess that I love the way she smiles when she sees me walk in.  It is a sweet, young smile, the kind that she might have had when she was 8 years old and someone offered her a lollipop, if she had ever been allowed to be 8 years old and if she had known people who carried around lollipops.  It makes me feel loved by this woman who loves on such an uncomplicated level these days, so unconditionally.  I sat for a while, talked about how good her hair looks, helped her go to the bathroom, picked up around her room, watched some Bonanza, showed her some pictures on my laptop.

At BJ's today I found a DVD set of very old Betty White sitcoms, apparently the first ones she did.  I've never seen them, but I love Betty White, and I know my mom loves Betty White.  It will be fun to watch them together in the next couple of weeks.  Sometimes when I buy something like this, a set of DVD's with, I think, 40 episodes, it feels like an investment in the future; I'm believing she will live to see these episodes.  Maybe.

I'm always thinking about my mom: does she need incontinence supplies? does she need snacks? is her private-duty aide coming today or will she be lonely? did they find her laundry basket? is her congestion better or should I call and ask them to give her a PRN nebulizer treatment? is the money in the bank account for me to pay her bill today? does she have enough sweaters for this cold spell? is she eating well enough? should I call the nurse to do a test to see if she has a urinary tract infection? etc.  I am what Gail Sheehy calls hyper-vigilant.  I don't recommend it.  It creates stress, emotional eating, headaches, exhaustion....  Feeling responsible has to have some boundaries around it.  I know that my mom's life is improved by my hyper-vigilance, but it doesn't help her if I drop dead of a heart attack.

So I'm working on stress reduction. Breathing. Exercise. Eating well. Reiki. The thing is, when you work so hard at reducing how hard you work, it sort of cancels out.

Contraband.  Last week I brought my mom some ointment from my acupuncturist to help her shoulder.  She has a torn rotator cuff on her right shoulder and she is not a good candidate for surgery, so she lives with the pain. The ointment might help her.  I didn't want to go through the channels at her Assisted Living place, with orders for the MedTech or a fee for medication self-administration, so I put it in the bathroom cabinet with instructions for her private-duty aide to put it on her shoulder every night before bed.  Contraband.  Against the rules. She looked at me and pointed to the jar and said, "Contraband."  She had not been talking much for the last couple of days, her dementia on a downswing that left her practically speechless for hours at a time.  But she knew Contraband, and she smiled at me, a conspiratorial smile.  We were in this together, she and I, we were buddies in the trenches of this life.