I’m beat down. I mean I woke up this way. Hmmm, maybe that way. Maybe woke is too past tense, I’m waking up that way. It seems like I should be chain smoking; stress, pain, smoke my old friend. Every day has been lifting my father from whatever place on the floor he’s ended up on, unable to ascertain whether he fell, slid, just laid down. And he’s either completely enuretic and incontinent or his floor attempts were to get to the can. I don’t know. I know last night fucked me up, I mean the muscles in my nerve recovering arm and around my fucked disc.
Right at the moment a burly young nurse has called for back up, the two of them can lift him. He needs in a 24 hour care facility. We are trying to arrange it. I can’t keep doing it. I’m typing, at least the first few paragraphs to avoid hobbling downstairs and trying to help. At this point I don’t care what they fucking do. I made heroic efforts.
I use that term a lot. Outside medical and legal professions the phrase doesn’t mean what the English language would suggest, sort of like calling my dads dementia Mild Cognitive Impairment doesn’t mean the same thing in Doc Speak as English. I was never in the medical profession, not really, a few year stint as a field medic meant I drove a red cross jeep and knew basic first aid and the same CPR lifeguards know. I did use it to make my reports legal. Legally it doesn’t mean some feat of uncommon strength or goodness or selflessness. It means going beyond the adequate, the minimum expectation of what doing a thing means.
That sounds like I’m denigrating heroic efforts; I’m not. Outside of your favorite sports team, how often do you see anyone in any profession or social situation go above and beyond. I’ll give you examples; crowded place you are the first to the door, you hold it open for the next several people, many of them thank you, one, maybe mentions what a great kindness, in part allowing others first crack at whatever is inside. All feminism aside where if you holding open for solely women it’s a horrible chauvinist act (is that a synonym for what chivalrous has come to mean? In American English it sort of has come to mean be nice and protective of chicks, a far cry from the religious moral code) it’s really the bare minimum of courtesy. Just sayin’ it becomes praiseworthy because it’s any courtesy at all.
The other example might piss some of y’all off. Before I start I made a lving doing this before too and I tip ninety nine percent of the time, the other one percent is a mixture heavily leaning towards not having the cash or involves getting management and issuing a complaint. But waiters and Waitresses. Yes, there are some very good at their job, but the expected part of the job is to get people to tell you what they want and then bring it to them in a timely fashion. We give a lot of leeway and praise them with extra money when the fashion was timely enough. I do that because that’s where their living comes from. But, and it’s a general observation, the industry has sort of become the minimum expectation. And rote. It really stands out when one is eager or flirty or anything above the standard.
You are welcome to disagree with my observations. Legally heroic efforts means, at least as it mostly applied to my two professions where court documents were inherent to the gig, taking a few steps beyond the letter of minimum expectation. A frequent and real example would be the search for a putative father, going beyond the yellow pages or what the realistic requirement should be; asking the mother. It’s important making a determined and wide reaching search using every resource plus a few only we could use be called heroic efforts. The case is built on preponderance of evidence and it need be shown everything possible was done to find the putative father. If he shows up you want to demonstrate how much it took to get him to come on behalf of his child (demonstrating he heretofore hadn’t supported the kid and was good and god damned absent) and if he didn’t show up you made a heroic effort to find (because his rights will be terminated in abstentia).
The recent (last decade or two) rash of family courts demanding mediation as part of divorce is a sort of heroic effort thing. In no fault states (which, correct me if I’m wrong is all of them now) the phrase is almost exclusively irreconcilable differences --- mediation is the court forcing defendant and plantiff to go beyond arguing to try and reconcile, heroic efforts.
Ok, I’m typing because it’s the only position my arm and back don’t scream in, at the moment. And I’m typing about heroic efforts to quit being so hard on myself. I’m not crying, not really upset, but I am in the middle of failing to do what I came to do, follow my fathers last “of sound mind” wishs and trying to keep him at home. Fail is the accurate word. I have made heroic efforts. In the legal sense. I did beyond the normative standard minimal effort. I can’t anymore. I mean I physically can’t do it. I slept late, woke up sore, and despite telling everyone ahead of time that if the fire department is called again they will take him to an ER, that’s what they are doing down there right now.
I’m sure my dad slid top the floor, might be under something and whatever he is wearing is soaked in urine and maybe pasted with feces. In my mind it was a heroic effort the first time I took a washcloth to him. I can, for the most part, deal with elevated pain in back and shoulder from dead lifting a man taller and heavier than I am, but body fluids are gross, make me gag, whatever adrenaline comes from seeing a fallen parent is drained into weariness by the strong scent of ammonia that stale piss is. I’ve done this mostly alone at least twice a day for the last week. Doesn’t seem heroic at all, but it’s the definition of heroic efforts and it demonstrates I’ve tried hard enough to hit my limitations and beyond.
The fucking ER will release him, I’m not even sure I can get him into a car or, back out of one, or if he can walk on a snowy sidewalk, up stairs --- I don’t know. We have an application into a nursing home. If the hospital could do an Admit then three days and he goes right in. I don’t think the ER will do that.
Ok, this position doesn’t work very well now either. Painful and that’s through the muscle relaxers, narcotics and nerve thingy (gabapentin). Don’t know how unedited this is I’m not going to edit it.
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