Thirty Percent Chance of Being an Earring Holder

Notes from the Front Lines of Caregiving, Mistranslations, and Mice

It's been 48 years since I was born, and somehow I've become the person who knows which insurance forms need the pink copy and which need the yellow. Five Filipino women are surrounding my father’s hospital bed, all speaking Tagalog with the occasional xie-xie thrown in—thank you in Mandarin, but with that unmistakable Filipino lilt that makes it sound like a question.

They're transferring him from bed to wheelchair with the kind of gentle efficiency that only comes from doing this dance a thousand times before.

Dad is eating this up. He’s smiling—actually smiling—for the first time in weeks, basking in all this maternal attention from women who call him “Papa” and fuss over whether his blanket is tucked in properly.

This is the same man who, when I was in college, pulled me aside to warn me about spending too much time with my Filipino roommates.

“When I was in Manila in the Navy,” he said, “I saw Filipino workers with Chinese bosses. Do you want to be a worker, or do you want to be the boss?”

Now here he is, 93 years old with Alzheimer’s, being cared for by Filipino nurses who treat him with more tenderness than he’s shown most people in decades.

The irony isn’t lost on me, but I’m not sure it registers with him anymore. In his current reality, these women are just kind people who bring him pureed foods and make sure his socks stay on.

"Your Papa, he's so sweet," says Maria, the charge nurse, as she adjusts his wheelchair levers.

I nod and smile, because what else do you do when someone describes your father as “sweet” and you're pretty sure they’ve never met the version of him who spent thirty years criticizing everything from my posture to my choices in friendships?

But that’s the thing about Alzheimer’s—it doesn’t just steal memories. Sometimes it steals the hard edges, too.

---

This morning, I went to sign the final paperwork and watch a man push his wheelchair to the van outside.

“Hi Dad,” I say nonchalantly.

He stares through me briefly, then glances away. I hear him whimpering a little as the wheelchair hits the cracked sidewalk.

My emotional range this week: from almost crying in my car because people are doting on my father to almost crying in my car because Dad has stopped recognizing me.

---

Three days later, I’m in my mom’s dining room on a Skype call with Dr. Gina Chen, who just happens to be my college friend from UC Davis and, as luck would have it, is filling in for Mom’s primary care physician.

She also speaks fluent Mandarin.

Mom’s been having some concerning symptoms, which, combined with one of the medications she was supposedly taking, suggested she make a visit to the ER for further evaluation by Telehealth. It just so happened that Gina was in charge of the follow-up meeting the next morning.

Meanwhile, I’m practically vibrating with excitement because finally—FINALLY—we have a doctor who can communicate directly with Mom without me playing telephone between English and Mandarin medical terminology.

That and, you know, gossip about our mutual friends from the college days.

“So, Mrs. Hsiung,” Gina says, switching seamlessly to Mandarin, “let’s talk about your medications.”

What follows is a twenty-minute conversation I never could have anticipated.

It turns out Mom has been skipping half her medications—not because she forgot, but because no one ever explained what they were for. The blue pills? She thought they were vitamins because they were blue, and "no one translated anything for me." The white ones that needed to be taken with food? She’d been taking them on an empty stomach because the pharmacy instructions were in English, and she was too embarrassed to ask.

“But Ma,” I interrupt in English, “why didn’t you tell me you didn’t understand?”

She looks at me like I’ve asked why water is wet. “You’re always so busy,” she says in Mandarin. “And the doctors, they just speak English very fast.”

Gina translates not just the words but the concepts—explaining that the blue pills help her heart, the white ones have to do with her thyroid gland, and that it’s okay to call if she has questions.

Mom nods along, asking detailed questions about side effects and timing that she’s probably wanted to ask for months. I learn too much about her recent digestive struggles and consistency of her poop.

After the call, I’m simultaneously relieved and horrified. How many other medical conversations have been lost in translation? How many times has she nodded and smiled while understanding maybe thirty percent of what was being said?

“Thank you for finding a Chinese doctor,” Mom says as I pack up my laptop. “She’s very smart.”

“She’s not just smart because she's Chinese, Ma.”

“No, but it doesn’t hurt.”

---

The next day, I buy her a case of prune juice on Amazon and one of those weekly pill organizers—you know, the ones with little compartments for each day of the week, labeled with both English and the days in large print.

When the items get delivered, she calls.

“I don’t like the prune juice. Too sweet. You need to return it.”

“Ma, you haven't even opened it.”

“I can tell by looking. Too sweet. I’ll keep it in the garage and hope the mice will carry it away.”

Fine. The pill organizer, though—surely this is a win. It's exactly what she needs: clear compartments, easy to see if she's taken her medications, impossible to get confused about timing.

She picks it up and examines it as if it were a piece of art. "Oh, this is very pretty," she says. "Look at all these colors."

“Yeah, and see? Each day has its own section, so you can—”

“I don’t need it. The colors are so pretty.”

And just like that, my carefully planned system becomes a centerpiece—untouched, admired, unused.”

---

No one tells you that caregiving isn’t about the dramatic, Lifetime-movie moments. It’s the daily, invisible ones that wear you down. It’s the slow realization that you’ve become fluent in a language you never wanted to learn—insurance codes, medication schedules, and the specific tone of voice that gets someone to actually eat their vegetables.

It’s sitting in a hospital room watching your father be cared for by people he once told you to avoid, and realizing that maybe the Filipino nurses understand something about dignity and kindness that took him ninety-three years to figure out.

It’s discovering that your mother has been navigating American healthcare with maybe half the information she needed, nodding politely through appointments while secretly terrified she was doing everything wrong.

It’s buying a pill organizer and giving it a 30% chance at becoming an earring holder, and having it be both frustrating and perfectly reasonable at the same time.

I used to think caregiving meant having all the answers, being the competent adult child who swoops in to fix everything. Instead, I’ve become a translator—not just between languages, but between realities—Dad's reality, where the Filipino nurses are just nice ladies who bring him snacks. Mom's reality where medical instructions are mysterious riddles and pill organizers are too pretty to waste on pills. My reality where I’m trying to keep everyone safe and fed and medicated while accepting that control is mostly an illusion anyway.

The irony is that in trying to take care of them, I’ve learned they were taking care of themselves all along, just not in ways I expected or understood. Dad found kindness in unexpected places. Mom found workarounds for communication barriers I didn’t even know existed.

Maybe that’s what I’m learning about caregiving: it’s less about imposing solutions and more about finding workarounds that honor everyone's unique perspective.

Dad finds comfort in Filipino nurses who call him Papa.

Mom sees a shiny colored box on the dining room table, but still takes her medications correctly.

I learn to be okay with plans that don't survive contact with reality.

There are worse ways to show love than buying someone medical equipment they'll never use and pretending that was always the plan.

Although next time, I’m definitely buying the mouse-proof version of everything.