Sometimes the thing that is meant to protect you may actually be hazardous to your health. Who knew this about seatbelts? If you’ve been in a car in the last 50 years, you’ve been required to wear them. It’s the law. They all work the same way. We get in the car and put them on without thinking – muscle memory. And if for some reason we forget to put them on, as soon as we start moving the car, the bells and whistles go off to remind us to hook it up. Mom can’t seem to remember how to use a seat belt anymore. Her arthritic hands have a hard time plugging it in – I understand that part, and help her. But she can’t remember where to put the straps. She wraps them around her legs, behind her back, anywhere but across her torso. There is no muscle memory for her, automatically guiding her what to do when her body doesn’t remember. Last week we were headed to pick up Lian from work and per usual, mom was in the back seat. I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw that she was buckled in, so headed down the driveway. When Lian got in the car a few minutes later and tried put on her seat belt, we discovered that mom had taken the seatbelt from the front seat and buckled it into her buckle in the back!
One day we were out and about running errands. Mom likes to sit in the back seat – I think because there is more leg room back there, but I feel like I’m ‘Driving Miss Daisy.’ Anyhow, on this particular day, she was buckled in, but was playing with the strap as she normally does. Sticks her arms through it, wraps the straps around her wrist, and tries to attach it to the door on the other side. At one point I look in the rear view mirror and notice she has it wrapped around her neck like a noose. She had unhooked it, and somehow wrapped it around her neck, and the more she tried to get out of it, the tighter it became. I’m yelling for her to stop pulling it tighter, but she can’t hear and can’t process conversations. I was trying to get to a place where I could pull off the road to help her, but it took a minute and she was choking. I pulled into a parking lot and got out and opened her door and tried to free her. She was in a panic at this point. Try as I may, I could not get the belt off. It looked as if I should be able to just slide it up and over her head, but it was too tight to do that. So…. I got back in the car and drove to a fire station, knocked on the door, and asked for help. They worked for ten minutes trying to free her, looking in the trunk for a way to release the belt. I told them “Look, I love my mom, but this is a leased car, so cutting the seat belt off her needs to be the last resort!” LOL They were finally able to lay her down on the back seat and slide it off her head. Parma Heights Paramedics for the win! And just like her thing for cute doctors, turns out she has a thing for cute firemen as well! But so do I, so I guess we can’t blame that one on Alzheimer’s!
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