I don’t know what I’m going to do when Indy has completed his round of speech therapy.
Those appointments just give me so much material.
He has two more weeks of telehealth visits. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts, right guys?
We settled into our appointment this week, Willie running the sink behind us at full blast as usual. Indy’s voice, muffled by his Parkinson’s, struggled even further against the noise.
Indy’s speech therapist, a dedicated and patient professional I will miss come March, always starts by asking Indy if he’s having any pain.
“Yes,” Indy replied. “My throat is sore.”
Prodded by his therapist, Indy reveals his throat has been sore for two weeks. In those two weeks, I have spoken with Indy daily. I spent seven hours in the emergency room with him. I’ve taken him to two doctor’s appointments. I’ve taken him to Pep Boys. I’ve taken him to the bank.
This is the first I’ve heard of a sore throat.
Indy goes on to tell his therapist his pain is primarily in the morning. Usually, drinking some water relieves his discomfort. But sometimes, if he remembers, Indy takes some cough syrup. Cough syrup with codeine.
Hold up. What?
Whenever I spend time with Indy and Willie, I find about forty-three problems I need to fix. Sometimes, Indy and Willie do me a solid. Sometimes, like this particular day, they put all forty-three problems into one big problem. It’s like creating folders for your emails.
Problem number one with Indy’s use of cough syrup for his sore throat is that he never told me, his medical power of attorney, about his sore throat. I’m thinking maybe – maybe – that day I canceled myself from work so I could take Indy to see two of his seven doctors he could have mentioned his sore throat.
Or when we were in the emergency room for nearly a full workday.
Or when we sat in the CVS parking lot waiting for Willie to get prescriptions that weren’t hers. Or Indy’s. Or for anyone related to them.
Problem number two is that cough syrup doesn’t fix a sore throat. If it did, it would be called sore throat syrup.
Next up is the random use of codeine in an 82-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease. Codeine is a narcotic. Narcotics in the elderly are, at times, a bad combination. In Indy’s case, the codeine can be hanging around in his body long after his occasional morning swigs.
Images ruffled through my brain. Images of the times I’ve seen, or Willie has told me about, Indy’s periodic confusion, slowed thinking, and hallucinations. Times Willie has complained Indy slept in his chair until lunch. Times he has been dizzy.
All these symptoms I had been chalking up to his Parkinson’s. Could some of them be related to Indy’s imbibing cough syrup?
After the appointment, I probed Indy’s sore throat and medication misuse further. This is not easy with Indy, who is a terrible historian of his own health. It’s even worse asking these questions with Willie around, who often muddies the water with questions of no consequence.
I say all of that with love.
And exasperation.
But mostly love.
“Is your throat sore every morning?” I ask.
“Why would you have a sore throat?” Willie demands instead.
“Does taking a drink relieve the pain?” I ask.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Willie challenges.
“Is your throat sore on the inside, or is it more muscular on the outside?” I try.
“Why do you need to know that?” Willie argues.
In unraveling the morning shots of codeine-laced cough syrup, I discover that Willie “always” has a bottle of the stuff hanging around their apartment. She and Indy both use it.
So while Sid and Nancy have spent the occasional morning partying in their old folks’ home, I have been calling, texting, and emailing Indy’s doctors. We work on Indy’s dizziness and cognition. His lethargy and confusion.
And in the end, all I had to do was tell him to just say no.
I was unaware of the codeine cocktails flowing like the bottles Flo Rida is popping in “Right Round.” Is there a disco ball hidden somewhere in their apartment? Do they have tub girls walking around with test tube shots?
Oh…I just realized something. I do their grocery shopping. They always have me buy them Jell-O. And when I was putting groceries away the other day, I saw that even though they had about ten boxes of Jell-O, they still had me buy more.
Jell-O shots. They’re doing Jell-O shots of codeine cough syrup.
I spend some significant time untying that whole knot before I move onto the next problem.
Willie wants to exercise. She tells me one of the men in her building posts exercise videos to YouTube. Can I tell her if she can access YouTube through her Xfinity? Also, do I know if Willie owns a DVD player?
Do I know if Willie has a DVD player.
Do I know.
I bypass the DVD player for the moment, instead questioning Willie about this newfound desire to access YouTube. Indy has some YouTube videos he needs to watch. Videos that show him how to do his speech exercises. Videos that show him how to use his sleep apnea machine.
Willie has refused to let Indy watch the videos. She doesn’t like YouTube because they once charged her $600, even though she didn’t buy anything.
She called – yes, called – YouTube, who refunded the money. But she still doesn’t trust them.
Or so she said when I asked her to show Indy the videos.
Why this change of heart?
“Well, if that’s the only way I can exercise, I’ll use it.”
It’s not the only way she can exercise. But arguing with Willie is itself an exercise. An exercise like burpees – difficult and productive, but something no one wants to do.
I show Willie how to access YouTube from her Xfinity as I make a mental note to just show Indy the videos myself.
Then I make an actual note because I love making lists.
I ask Willie if she knows what title her resident Richard Simmons uses to post his videos.
Willie doesn’t know, but she does know his last name is Valli.
“I know his first name isn’t Frankie, because Frankie Valli is a singer,” she tells me.
But she thinks his name is Frankie Valli.
Obviously, I didn’t find any senior citizen exercise videos posted to YouTube by Frankie Valli.
I left Indy and Willie with the suggestion Indy relieve his sore throat with hydration and honey lozenges instead of narcotics and cough syrup.
This should be an easy fix. I know they have running water – Willie demonstrates it each time I log Indy into his speech appointments.
I also know they have lozenges. Both Indy and Willie carry lozenges everywhere, and offer them constantly. They have offered them to me even though I haven’t complained of a sore throat. They have offered them to me even though I haven’t complained of congestion. They have offered them to me even though I haven’t been coughing.
There was one time I was actually sick but had to take Indy to an appointment we’d waited months to have, pre-COVID. I forgot my own lozenges when packing for the long day in University City. When I realized it, I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. Indy is usually locked and loaded with lozenges.
No matter how much I coughed, cleared my throat, or sniffled, Indy wouldn’t take the bait. He never offered me a lozenge. In the end, I asked him for one.
In the apartment, I watched as Willie searched high and low for lozenges.
Nothing.
“I’ll add them to your grocery list,” I told Willie.
But I’m not buying anymore Jell-O.