Insight: An unforgettable caregiving situation

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Recovering from chemotherapy and several cancer surgeries in 1999 was harder than I thought it would be. As I was starting to function again after months of poor health, I couldn’t go back to work with the newspaper right away and needed something simpler to regain my strength and slowly reacclimate myself to more challenging tasks after months of inactivity.

While recovering from cancer surgery in
1999, Ed Pierce provided caregiving
for a retired U.S. Navy captain named
Earle, who was suffering from dementia.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE  

My mother worked as a case manager for a social worker and asked if I would be interested in helping an elderly veteran with dementia a few days a week while on a leave of absence from my journalism job. The pay was good, and it wasn’t a difficult situation making his meals and keeping him safe. Being a caregiver for him turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Earle was in his 80s and had served as a captain in the U.S. Navy during World War II. When he retired from 30-plus years of military service in the 1960s, he and his wife invested in oceanfront property in Cocoa Beach, Florida, purchased a home and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. The couple had no children and after his wife’s death in 1991, Earle began a slow cognitive decline.

By that time, he had accumulated a portfolio worth more than $2 million from land sales and sound stock purchases and he appointed a friend as his guardian to safeguard his income and to ensure that he remained in his home for the rest of his life instead of being placed in a nursing home.

Round-the-clock caregivers were hired after he drove to a nearby Denny’s for breakfast and instead of hitting the brakes on his truck, he hit the gas pedal inadvertently and drove into the front of the restaurant. When the police arrived, they discovered he wasn’t wearing any clothes too.

Over the course of several years as Earle’s mental health declined, some of the caregivers helped themselves to some of the cash that the guardian provided for groceries or were asleep in the middle of the night when he slipped out the door and was found wandering through town in his pajamas. That’s when the social worker became involved, and my mother thought I could help myself through looking after him, but I could also be a trustworthy and dependable person to spend time with Earle.

Accepting the job, I quickly learned this was not going to be easy. The guardian asked me to take him to the movies and I did. In the middle of the film, he removed one of his hearing aids and flung it across the darkened theater. Another time he flushed another of his hearing aids down the toilet. I found a hearing aid buried in his sock drawer and another one was whistling in his mouth when I asked him what happened to it.

The caregivers would stay overnight at his house and one week both the caregivers and Earle were suddenly sick from colds in the middle of summer. We couldn’t figure it out. But then one night I heard Earle in the kitchen at 3 a.m. and watched what he was doing. He got a spoon out of the drawer, opened the refrigerator and ate a spoonful of mayonnaise straight out of the jar. He licked the spoon dry and replaced it in the silverware drawer and went back to bed. That’s how we all became sick at the same time.

The first week I worked there, the guardian dropped by and handed Earle $400 to buy groceries with. I made a list of things we needed and then I drove Earle to the grocery store. He helped choose the items and brands he wanted, and we filled the shopping cart up. Going through the checkout line, the cashier finished ringing everything up and the bill came to $335. I asked Earle to pay her for the groceries and he said no. He wouldn’t give us his wallet with the cash in it and I learned a lesson that day, the guardian needed to hand me the cash for shopping, not Earle.

I also discovered a lot about myself and my own phobias while working that job. One time, Earle slipped and hit his head on a table, cutting his forehead. Blood spurted onto the floor, and I found that I didn’t mind cleaning up blood. But another time Earle was in his room taking a nap and had taken off his Depends and made quite a mess in his room. I found cleaning that up to be rather unsettling for me.

Eventually my health was fully restored after a year or so and I was ready to return to my newspaper job full-time. It was difficult to say goodbye, but I left that situation knowing I had done my best for him, and he was in good hands with people who cared about him and were honest.

About six months later Earle was eating breakfast one morning when his heart gave out and he died at the kitchen table. It was sad, but I was comforted in knowing this proud veteran was at peace and no longer suffering.