April 3, 2020: Priorities 2-4, Foot Version –

Lighter foot-related thoughts: Depending on where you live, you may have already seen, or be just starting to see, people complaining that their pedicures need refreshing. (2  Curve). Some worry about the people who work at the place they go for pedicures, and whether/how those folks are going to manage (4). (I have been told that in Arizona, nail salons are labeled “essential services.”  Not here.)

Darker foot-related thoughts:  All this got me thinking again about the vulnerable (3).

My mom fought a twelve-year losing battle with Alzheimer’s and a bad hip replacement, and she couldn’t reach her toenails and didn’t care. For a few years, I was the person who wrestled her into some sort of submission so I could deal with those toenails (she did not enjoy the process), and then I had a brainstorm that we could make the whole thing FUN! We’d go out like any normal mother and daughter and get a pedicure together! She’d enjoy the outing and the pampering!

She did not. She writhed throughout her one and only (abandoned after about one minute) attempted pedicure, moaning and shrieking and yelping and twitching and fighting, basically acting as if she were being violated, which, in her mind, she was.  (It lasted a whole minute because in the dementia, freakouts happened sometimes, and passed, and I really thought she’d like it if she just took a breath, but I was wrong). When we got her back into her shoes, she said to me, in a fury:

Don’t you EVER do that to me AGAIN.

I didn’t.

This was early in the twelve years. So early.  After the Pedicure Crisis, we went back to wrestling over toenail cutting, but it was not Quality Time for the two of us, not a great relationship builder. Things went further and further south, and eventually, I signed up for Sandy, who would come to Mom’s memory care facility and do Foot Care for all those on her list, just like clockwork.  Sandy was the Goddess of Foot Care, and Mom seemed to like her, whoever she was, and she was a regular visitor (a treat!), so for the last many years, Mom’s feet were in better shape than most of the rest of her.

Today I started worrying about the people I know who are in care facilities , and wondering if family-not-visiting was going to lead to foot troubles and if Sandy and her fellow Foot Goddesses could get in to see them, or if that was dangerous for Sandy or for her clients…. Ramification spiral.