Caregiver Vignette – The Stairs

We are at the bottom of our stairs. Standing up one step from Cindy I drape her forearms on top of my shoulders. I reach down and cusp my right hand behind her left knee. Her leg is limp and easy enough to move; I need only to navigate the foot over the lip of the step.

The right leg is a different matter. After Cindy’s left leg is firmly planted on the next step I straighten my body, at least one or both hands behind the small of her back in support, which effectively lifts her up. However, stiffens her right leg and holds it back. I try to move it the same way I moved the left, with my left hand behind her right knee, but the knee goes back too far and makes this difficult. I’ve learned now to put my left foot under her right. In a few moments her leg relaxes and I am able, with my foot, to lift her right foot up to join her left on the next step.

This goes on for seven steps, until we reach the landing platform halfway up, where we make a simple left turn. A simple turn perhaps, but this is one of a few factors why a chair lift is not a practical solution for us. By holding onto her hand and stretching I can climb up enough steps to open the gate at the top of the stairs, intended to keep the cat hair on the first floor. Then we go up the last seven steps the same way, one slow step at a time. When we reach the top Cindy is out of breath, despite me doing all the work, because going up and down the stairs is a risky business in her mind. I hold her until her breathing calms down and reflect on our recent history with these stairs.

We’ve been going down these stairs in a similar manner for months, but until recently she was able to walk up them with me only holding onto hands. Going up and down the stairs twice a day became her only real exercise during that time. Then came one day a few weeks ago when getting her upstairs just by holding her hands proved impossible. I carried her over my shoulders up the stairs both times that day … resolving for safety sake that we would now stay on the second floor, except for the one day a week that we might go on a “date.”

I maintained this strategy for ten days or so when a depressing thought occurred to me. What if the memory of our first floor, where so much of our family living occurred, leaves her? Just as depressing was the thought of Cindy spending her days on one floor, mostly sitting in one room, with virtually no exercise at all. I worked out this alternate, safer, means of getting her upstairs, which we now do once a day, instead of once a week.

I sit Cindy in our “entertainment room” where I put on an episode of Gilmore Girls. This will run long enough for me to do my workout, which includes running the first seven steps of these same stairs 200 times. This is great cardiovascular exercise, providing an optimal level of “shortness of breath.” I should know, having engaged in many endurance activities over the years. Yet none of those previous endurance activities are as repetitive as my stair workout.

Since the mind tends to wander with such repetition I use my fingers to count to ten repeatedly; I change my rotation after every 50 stairs as another means to keep track. Even so, my mind wanders off, reflecting in disbelief on how I can keep doing something so tedious. Even when training for marathons in the great outdoors I did not exercise as regularly as I do these stairs. I’ve backpacked over twenty miles a day for weeks at a time of course, but though there are moments of tedium on some stretches of trail, as a whole the experience is far more exhilarating than going up and down, up and down, seven steps, 200 times.

I’m only on rep 24, patting myself on the back with how great my mental discipline must now be, when a sobering thought confronts me. I keep doing these stairs with such regularity because they are actually a highlight of my day. This has been especially true these past five days. Snow and other factors prevented companions from visiting after Monday. Meanwhile, Noah is gone for two weeks with the National Guard, though there never was much interaction there. Essentially, Cindy and I have been reclusive shut-ins throughout the week. That explains how I can run up and down the stairs 200 times, not so much because of a strong mind conquering tedium, but to avoid it.

Yet I figure I am better off than Cindy. During each day I read to her and play guitar for her. I hook up the WoW video game to the television monitor and tell her to watch her hero in actions. The video game actually engages Cindy fairly well; she reacts when an orc makes a sudden appearance or when a wyvern flies gracefully through the air. At regular intervals I get her up from her chair while we “dance” to big band, disco or southern rock. Yet mostly we watch Netflix together, then she continues to watch Netflix while I get a break by running up and down stairs.

I’m over 100 reps in, the point where I usually break into a sweat, when my mind wanders back to this concern of making life more engaging for Cindy in her limited state. I reflect that only socializing can do the trick now. I’m on my last rotation of 50 stairs as I work out the details for my next blog post. I think I’ll use the title: “Caregiver Vignette – The Stairs.”

I decide my post will conclude with an appeal for more folks to come visit. They would not have to know Cindy that well, nor have to watch her while I go off and do something else. I could stay in the room for the visit as well. Even when there are no snowstorms preventing the usual companions from dropping by in the morning, most afternoons are open for a visit.

I finish my 200 reps and walk throughout the downstairs rooms in circles for my cool down. I still have time to fit in 100 push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, in that order, before Gilmore Girls is over. Then I go up the stairs one more time, pull Cindy out of her chair and dance a couple more songs with her. Our “dancing” is neither as energetic nor as fun as in the past, but is still more enjoyable than running up and down the stairs.