A Nice Touch by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher

To pass along helpful hints, I frequently post links to Caregiver.com posts and Today's Caregiver articles. Today I would like to share with you one of their posts that is simply beautiful. Beautiful language, creative presentation of grief's hues, and powerfully encouraging.

Here is the article, "A Nice Touch," by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher.

To Panic ... Or Not?

Panic might not be the right word. Perhaps strong worry is better. When the issue is your parent’s potentially life-threatening condition, your chest squeezes out your breath and your stomach knots into a rock. I suppose it’s a combination of dread, helplessness, and hope. It took my 99-year-old mother’s nursing home three weeks to diagnose her cough as pneumonia. I was so scared, panicked even, that this time, pneumonia might do her in. But I have to say that my mother seems stronger now, so I needn’t have worried. After they finally did diagnose it, these conversations occurred:

Me: I’m concerned about my mother’s cough.

Mom’s nurse: She’s not coughing.

Me: She just had a coughing jag that rocked her whole body.

Nurse: When the aide wheels her by the nurse’s station to go to lunch, I listen and your mom is not coughing.

Me: Would you please come to her room to listen now?

Me: I have read that pneumonia is contagious; is my mother’s?

Mom’s nurse: No, but wash your hands a lot.

My conclusion: Caution is advised. Thank God for diagnosis and proper medication, but know that the nurse probably has so many residents to look after, her attention to my mother will be scattershot. Follow my gut sense on when to clue her. And yeah, wash my hands a lot. No need to panic. As the British World War II mantra goes: Keep calm and carry on.