Clutter

Days plod along. Mail arrives. Packages appear, too. Opening them creates waste paper and cardboard boxes. Mail envelopes, spam advertising, and so much more creates more waste.

New machines are unpacked for Rocky. A suction machine. A new electronic larynx (buzzer voice box thingy), supplies for the laryngectomy, pills for Parkinson’s, instructions on assembly of the new items, and more instructions on how to use it all. The literature piles up. Along with journals and a few magazines.


SCORE client files and session notes stack up as well. New clients add to the stack.


After discharge from both hospitals, instructions on daily care and cautions of what to look for add to the paper presence. And a part-time job required to monitor it all. So too, the billing papers to track with insurance documents so we know what to expect financially. So far nothing has arrived to inform us of the terrible toll of medical bills. I’m guessing high, but then hope for the best on what is left for co-pays and deductibles. It will be high no matter what.


We will sort that all out when it comes. Meanwhile, it is the other stuff that accumulates.


We have returned the transport wheelchair; not needed at this time. We maintain a plethora of canes, and one rollator (a walker with four wheels and a handbrake system, seat and storage compartment; all that’s missing is a bicycle handlebar bell!).


Remaining are several piles of medical supplies. Most are not used but came home with us as possibly helpful. Most are not, but once dispensed at hospital, they cannot reabsorb to their inventory. We still need to sort these out.


We continue with two bathrooms. Mine is pristine and ready for use. Rocky’s is not pleasant. That is because it is in constant use for medication procedures, wound site cleaning, stoma clearing, and specialized bathing procedures. The rest you can guess. Without daily maid service it rapidly declines in acceptability. I am not so inclined to provide that particular service.  So Rocky will need to do that.

Hard hearted caregiver, I know. But there are limits.


Limits also become more important as insistent claims on my time rise. If they are foreseeable, they can be planned and made routine. I will rise to the routine, not the feigned emergency which is not. Writing a paragraph requires concentration; interruptions are the enemy of that. So too, completed book chapters while reading; or, of course, TV programs that are interrupted at the crucial moment of discovery and plot resolution.


Things are not the only clutter in our lives. Lack of routine is the new clutter. How I hate unplanned, non-routine obligations. They clutter the mind and the mood. Yet they are required until we make new routines and understand the new normal.


Clutter as process. A new understanding of daily living.


Argh!!


August 19, 2019