Colouring

Mom is back "home." Not doing great but still with us. The hospital was a frenzy of busyness and the relief when she goes back to the nursing home and we can call off the 24 hour bedside oxygen and i.v. vigil is very welcome. But the trips to the hospital are coming closer and more frequently and there's less and less we can probably do to counteract her electrolyte problem coupled with her Congestive Heart Failure symptoms, diabetes etc.

Today my sister and her kids and I took Mom some supper and she went along with things, but really just wanted to be in bed. While the rest of us coloured Mom slowly and carefully wrote the word "raisins."

I can't think of anything that more expresses how far away we are from the person she used to be in terms of how impossible it would be to figure out where that word came from and why she suddenly wrote it in cursive with exquisite care.

The kids and I talked afterward about that Grandma wasn't feeling very well today and the nine year old from the picture two posts below, had noticed far more than he had let on. We will have to be careful to honour his wishes as far as how much more deterioration he is okay to see.

Side By Side

Mom's in the hospital with pneumonia. In the end what's important has nothing to do with me not getting sick so I sat in emerg for a few days with her, dead center in infectious control, beside the curtained off bed of a man who may or may not have had Lock Jaw.

Mom takes her oxygen out 20 to 30 times an hour when she's awake. Best way to stop her is to gently take the hand she intends to use. Sometimes she gives me a kind of "Aw you got me" look in her eye and squeezes my fingers with a little smile."

I got my wish to hold her hand.

Losing Ground

I've missed a whole year. Not a lot has changed and yet if I look back there are clues that Mom is losing ground physically, intellectually and age wise. The picture above won a little calendar contest at a nursing home. I'm proud of it but prouder of the kids for so clearly loving their Grandmother just as she is and for Mom for fighting so hard to keep remembering us most of the time and being loving about it when she can't. I understand intellectually that it is really just a game of luck that allows one person with Alzheimers to keep their social graces while others lose that capacity, but it still feels like it is something she is working very very hard to keep so she can be with us for the moments that we are with her.

Mom has a bad cold and I feel bad because I have not visited her - I know that it would not be smart for me to get sick as I tend to get very sick when I do. But I still want to go be with her and hold her hand because she is becoming very young and when you're little you want someone to hold your hand when you are sick. I try to call but even though I know she is confined to her room due to illness she does not pick up her phone. That is something new, losing the instinct to talk and pick up the phone is significant I think.

Last night I dreamed that Dad came and took her home. It was lovely to be with him for a while even if it was just a dream. Even though we have essentially lost the person she was for more than a decade and having been mourning this loss heavily all the while, and even though I want Dad to come and take Mom home, it's still not going to be easy when it happens.