He is overweight, has diabetes, high blood pressure, and no thyroid.
At first, I assumed his shoebox were all prescribed medicines that he had to take because he was "sick" - that's how Tolga always described him. Then I realized it was also filled with medicines you would find in a medicine cabinet. My mother-in-law delivers the shoe box to the table ceremoniously with a glass of water.
He has all types of medicines in his bottomless shoebox. Some prescribed, some self-prescribed, some prescribed years ago...some daily medicines, some medicines for whenever he deems fit. Some for colds, some for injuries. Bandages, salves, cotton, antiseptics, vitamins, minerals, creams, antibiotics, an inhaler, cough drops, ear drops, eye drops.
When he sits down with it, I can't help but feel he's like an artist with a pallet of paints, about to create whatever inspires him that day.
But not a landscape or portrait painting. A splatter painting.
No one really knows what he's taking, when or why - beyond the three legitimately prescribed medicines. Sometimes he throws in an allergy medicine, or a cold medicine, or a vitamin, or - the latest: liquid iron. It doesn't seem like anyone questions him either. Random our pharmaceutical cousin will take a look, or Tolga will as - and Baba has a reason for every medicine - so he's mostly left to his own devices.
The problem is the randomness and inconsistency of it - Baba's always been famous for his belief in medicines from America, or medicines that instantly work, or made-up remedies (like drinking more water will counter the amount of sugar he ate that day) - he talks about them with amazement, and so we leave him to his childlike beliefs in the somewhat dangerous land of concoctions to cure his various ailments.
No one's taken command of the situation, occasionally different people will put their foot down about a certain medicine (the allergy medicine was making him sleep all day), or a certain habit (eating salty and sugary things), or an emergency surgery or a painful prostrate (but skipped the kidney/bladder issue because it was too soon/ he didn't feel like it / he felt better / he felt worse. I get this horrible feeling that things in Turkey are not followed through - by families or by doctors. Treatments and medicines aren't consistent, if not contradictory, and slowly people's health and lives are slipping away.
I've let the issues go as well - because of the endless frustration I feel with the lack of follow through.
Living here has also made me realize the reverse - how much I have taken from my own culture: how you must control your own health (vaccinations, check-ups, mammograms, etc.) preventive, proactive and irritatingly positive. "Good thing I've been going to get a colonoscopy for the last 20 years or I may not have found these precancerous polyps."
Creating another false sense of control. Another type of sugar pill. Happy, hopeful, annoying Americans.
I guess my point is that I am trying to find a middle ground here. I want to be health conscious, but not health crazy. As much knowledge as we have, we still don't know, and still can't control the outcomes. I know smoking causes lung cancer - but I know smokers that lived to an old age while a non-smoker that died at 35 of lung cancer. There's just no for sures, so accepting my Baba's shoebox of medicine has been an exercise in part of letting go of my "But you have to..." "But he should..." "But that's so bad for..." and so on.
But here's the wrench in everything. Our Baba has started to lose his mind.
He's always been a bit childish to me. Something Tolga shrugged off to his old age. Something my father called a gift. I guessed it was cultural differences - something I use to explain anything I don't understand.
A few weeks ago, he started complaining of bed bugs. I was horrified, but Anne and Tolga dismissed him for seeing things.
I started itching too.
He began wearing a winter cap (not unusual), socks, switching beds. Tolga took him to the doctor to get a blood check and a brain scan. His hormone levels were high and his brain scan showed nothing abnormal to his age ... maybe the beginnings of deterioration that come with age... and dementia. They changed his hormone medicine and have him a drug to help stop the hallucinations and help him sleep. Then he began washing his socks, multiple times. Putting plastic bags over his feet, a band-aid over his nose. Sitting on the balcony to "freeze" the bugs and taking multiple showers in the day. Sometimes just washing his head or feet. Shaving. Then shaving his head. Sleeping in a chair, in the hallway, in the bathroom, on the coach.
Tolga has argued with his father. Trying a logic tactic which has been actually quite comical because Tolga isn't really mad at his father. It's his way of talking him through it. He's also tried giving him a "special powder that kills bugs, from England, very expensive, and used only in the field." It was baby powder that Baba has spread everywhere. And now our house smells kind of good, just some powder stains here and there.
Tolga's has taken him back to the doctor several times, and today to the psychiatrist who quite quickly dismissed it as the early stages of dementia. But how does this happen so quickly? Were there signs? Could it be something else? And what is with this dementia? So many elderly people get it - and nothing can be done? There are medicines that help, sometimes - but what a heartbreaking disease! Families put their loved ones in homes because they can't care for him or her. And in their worst state they don't know anyone or themselves. They are aggressive or paranoid and having hallucinations and they are left to strangers that can better manage their care. What a terrifying experience. I may not have patience for foolishness or laziness - but for something like this ... is there not anything we can do to relieve what haunts them? How does that fit into Christianity? When you lose a person you love mentally but not physically? We are totally helpless to these diseases of the elderly, of the brain. Where is the Great Comforter for these people?
Or we all just in different states of dementia? Losing our minds and ourselves to our fears and thoughts and beliefs?
Tolga sat with his father, massaging his feet with oil to calm him down. Love isn't going to fix him, but it sure works as the best answer.
God bless my dear husband and our dear family.
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