Growing Older

Yesterday Mr. D came over to fix the bathroom. These days it is getting increasingly hard to get handymen over to fix little drops that drip and hooks that come off – somehow every contractor only wants to do a turn key job – one that involves at least a year of your time and half of your pocket . The standard complaint of any contractor is that labour is hard to find. So does that mean that there are no plumbers, painters, carpenters, masons and electricians left? Or does this mean that everyone is so well provided for ( by God obviously since our Government doesn’t care about giving us anything) that they don’t need to work?

Well, whatever the case may be, Mr. D who is a qualified civil engineer has been running his grandfather’s contracting firm and from specialising in Plumbing, he has gradually moved to painting, carpentry and the odd electrical job. But his main area of competence is plumbing and despite the fact that his employees are old, ancient and definitely lacking in any social skills, is still the only person we know who will come to look at a small drip. He is a very calm and patient man who inspite of his busy schedule loves having a cup of coffee with me whenever he makes a house call. However, yesterday the normally unflappable Mr. D actually declined the offer of coffee and seemed to be in a bit of a flap. He just had to go home in a rush he said, because he had to organise an ambulance for his father-in-law.

The story unravelled like this : Mr. D’s in laws were visiting when the old man developed a heart condition. He was admitted to the hospital and was advised further treatment. But being an old man with an old doctor whom he had immense faith in, he decided he’d return home to Pune and continue with the recommended treatment under his own doctor. Now this makes sense if you have a wife and other relatives to take care of you . Unfortunately for Mr. D, his own wife was the only child in India left to care for her parents.
Anyone who is looking after old parents will know the attendant problems of this situation – apart from dealing with the patients, you have to also deal with other siblings especially those living in the US who constantly call to ask – So what are you doing?
The best answer for this is – I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do – is not something that will go down well, so one has to go through the rigmarole of explaining everything to absent siblings who are in the meanwhle having their own consultations with their own doctors or that God Who Knows All  aka Google.

After having deftly tackled this this question, Mr. D and his wife were in the process of arranging a cardiac ambulance to take the old man back to Pune. The old lady was staying back with Mr. D because there was no one at home to take care of her while her daughter stayed at the hospital with her father.

Before I could ask Mr. D why his mother-in-law couldn’t be left at home, he told me that the day before his son had received a call at work from his grandmother who sheepishly informed him that she thought she had taken a double dose of her blood pressure medicine. Now the young lad panicked because he didn’t know whether the old lady had or  had not taken a double dose. So he called his father who happened to be visiting a site close to their home and Mr. D rushed back to check on her. He counted all the tablets in the medicine organiser and found that there was nothing amiss. The old lady then said that she may have taken the medication directly from the strip. Once again Mr. D checked the strips and couldn’t find any tablets missing. However, the old lady insisted that she’d taken the tablet herself but she couldn’t remember when. Now this could have been yesterday or even never.


The whole of the previous day Mr. D kepts making trips back home to keep an eye on his mother-in-law who it seems has either dementia or alzheimer’s. He immediately packed up all the medicines and kept them under lock and key and devised a chart whereby any one who administered the medication had to tick it off…

Incidentally Mr. D too has crossed over to the wrong side of fifty and a few years ago would have qualified to be an Old Man himself! The perils of growing old are not so much ageing but ageing with ageing parents. With our own memories getting fuzzy and our muscles getting weak, it is indeed a rough time dealing with old age!

p.s I’ve taken the picture off the Net