As Makai, my huge Anatolian Shepherd, and I were walking this morning, I felt a sense of relief that I hadn’t felt in several months. For those faithful readers who have commented on my “disappearance” since last August, please take comfort in the fact that “rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” In fact I have written quite a lot for our Bad Golfers Association website and also as a guest blogger for Brick Bodies, a local fitness center that Mrs. Commish and I belong to. However, after writing about Uncle Cletus on these pages I have not had the strength to continue to deal with his problems and write in a manner that I felt would be compelling for others to spend their valuable time reading. I thank you for asking about Cletus and, as requested by several of you, am writing a follow-up article.
If you have not read the first story, please skim it because this will make much more sense with a little background into Cletus, the Russian mob, police visitations, and mail scams. It was posted in August 2010 and is titled “An American Tragedy.” While that article had much pathos in it, hopefully this one will provide a bit of humor to go along with it.
Cletus is still suffering from some form of dementia. He has been hospitalized four times in the past 3 months for fluid buildup around his heart. Each time, after he has been stabilized and released, we have worked with the hospital’s social workers to secure visiting nurses to check on him and his medications. Each time they have had to stop their visits because Cletus will not stay home and if he can drive then he cannot get the visitations. He simply starts his car and drives wherever he wants to go. Nobody will ride with him anymore, you can guess why, but there is no way to take away his driving privileges. No wonder we have so much danger on the roads if we refuse to take away the right to drive from repeat drunk drivers, I guess it makes just as much sense to let senile drivers on the road. After all, he hasn’t killed anyone, YET.
Trying to accept all of this, Mrs. Commish and I do what we can to help him but realize that we are going to lose in the end. Cletus will call and cry that no one will help him. Then, in the next breath, he says that the nurses don’t know what they are talking about. He seems to be proud that he takes 22 pills plus insulin 3 times a day. The problem is that he mixes up his times and all of that medication seems to exaggerate his mental fogginess.
For a brief month, Mrs. Commish or I would talk to Cletus thrice a day to remind him what meds to take before each meal and which ones to take after eating; and how much insulin to take depending on his readings, etc., etc., etc. This seemed to work as he stayed out of the hospital, seemed less confused, and complained much less about everyone he knew being dead, an inevitable byproduct of living a long time.
One problem still existed, scams in the mail and on the telephone. Cletus still freely sends off about $500 a month to various sweepstakes and “You Are a Winner”-type mailings. He admits to spending over three hours each day reading all of the junk mailing that come to him and then, because they tell him to send $39.95 to enter the next stage of whatever “contest” they pretend to be, he does send them a check. A check and his phone number so he can be “contacted if he is one of the Grand Prize Winners.”
Surprise, surprise he gets contacted at least twice a month and has to have an additional $995.00 to hand to the sweepstakes representative when they come to present him with his “Big Prize” the next morning at 9:00 a.m. When he called to ask me if I thought everything was okay, I told him not to be home alone because it was a scam and you don’t know what they will do to get his money. When he sounded doubtful, I convinced him to call the police and ask them what he should do. Of course they told him not to let anyone in and to stop answering the phone when his call waiting said the call was from Jamaica or the caller was “unknown.”
The next morning I got a call at the office from the police. A neighbor had called because Cletus was driving up and down in front of his house honking his horn, crying and begging for help. He didn’t sleep all night and was worried about strangers coming to his door. The police were wonderful. Again they told him all of the things that he had been told before but they were able to sit with him and get the phone company to give him a new and unlisted phone number. While they were there the officer threw away fifteen new solicitations that he was getting ready to send money to. We followed through and changed all of his bank accounts, again.
Thanksgiving came and Uncle Cletus drove to our house and we enjoyed a nice dinner and he finally gave us permission to have his mail sent to us so that we could screen it and remove all of the scams. He left early to visit a friend, Eddie, who has just been released from the hospital. Eddie, 92, is a few years older than Cletus and was home but confined to bed. We told him to drive carefully and to call us when he got home so that we would know he was safe.
That is why I had this feeling of relief as Makai and I were taking our walk this morning. Things were getting straightened out with Cletus. But, before you get too happy for me let me tell you just a little bit more.
When Cletus left us early Thanksgiving afternoon, we expected to get a call in a couple of hours. We live about an hour away and his friend is about 10 minutes from his home. After four hours we tried calling Cletus but got no answer. Finally at almost 11:00 p.m., seven hours after he left, he called us. He had gotten lost driving home! We have lived in our house for over 30 years and Cletus has lived in his for even longer so he has made this drive a few times. After getting lost he could not get his cell phone to work so he had to wander about until he found something familiar and ended up at Eddie’s home. He honked and honked but no one would come out to help him walk in so after ten minutes he left and went home angry, without seeing Eddie. Not only had Cletus gotten lost but he forgot that Eddie was confined to bed and couldn’t help him even if he had wanted to.
Beware, Cletus is out there driving and I doubt that he is the only “questionable” driver amongst us.
