Friday, June 25, 2004
Hmmm...well, a few things on my mind...
...not all that much time to explore them. Maybe that's good.
I wonder what her numbers will be this morning.
Later.
- Although for the time being the phone remains unplugged and an essential email remains unanswered, I feel somewhat more optimistic about the business part of the day. I will allow it to intrude only as it does not distract me from Mom. Today is Day Two of Our More Active Phase and I want to remain alert to whatever may happen. I'm planning a short trip to Costco with the walker and the wheel chair (just in case) and, of course, the ever present emergency bag. We don't need much. Some of the stuff we will shortly be needing I can put off for a few days as Mom's strength develops. I also expect, though, that our breakfast "hour" will drag out to a good two hours, we probably won't be out the door headed toward Costco until it will only be an hour and a half or so until Mom's lunch, which will arrive about the time we finish shopping at Costco. So I'll take meds.
I do have a shorter trip in mind in case Costco seems too daunting to her. I need to get some more of those iron protein succinylate pills I've been giving her. The only source up here is New Frontiers Natural Foods [sorry, they don't seem to have a website, although they're mentioned throughout the web on other sites]. She'll enjoy looking around there and walkers are common in the aisles. Although she hates to admit it, I think she thinks it sounds "shallow", she's a born shopper and loves product watching as a close second to people watching. Watching people shopping is a big hit with her. - Something about her curiously ancient memory: I've been thinking about it since the afternoon after she'd completed her blood transfusion and I was back after a restless nap. The day nurse, a jewel who took an unusual interest in Mom, although she had a propensity for referring to Mom as "cute" which we both found mildly offensive, mentioned that Mom's mental faculties "were coming back", from what apparently was a bit of a low the last time she was checked immediately after the transfusion was closed down. "Right after we took her off (the infusion line), she didn't know who the president is and the year."
Hmmm...I thought. She never knows those. I wish, sometimes, that I didn't know them.
"But," the nurse continued, "she seems to have perked up. I'll bet she remembers just about everything, now," she chirped optimistically. Luckily, the nurse did not put this supposition to the test.
My mother's mental creativity is rarely evident, especially in public (including on the telephone) when she's "on show". This is why I call her condition, which is surely a decline from the point of view of her ability to manage her life in society, "mental creativity". Although she continues to surprise me in what she remembers, what she doesn't and how she remembers what she does remember, I've gotten the hang of how her mind works now and can often fill in the details when her mind drifts in the middle of a memory surge. I can even do this during the more bizarre instances, as, for instance, when she decided I was older than her. I have no trouble understanding where her creativities come from nor do I have trouble, in my feet-in-reality way, going along with them, sometimes in order to steer her back to this agreed upon present, sometimes just to enjoy myself on a foreign voyage.
The thing is, though, what I've been thinking about since listening to the nurse's take on my mother's mental acuity (or lack thereof) is that, in my mother's case, it does not matter anymore who the president is, nor what year or century we're in. I'm not, for instance, always clear yet on the century. In my mother's defense, the nurse also told me that, when asked who the president was, my mother said, "What does it matter?" In the Buddhist sense, good question.
The problem, I think, with nursing homes and care facilities (whether skilled or not) is that those with "declining" mental abilities but with a strong hold on the reality surrounding them at any particular moment cannot be seen within the entirety of their lives, thus their mental creativities are not given the dignity and respect nor accorded the reality that caregiving within a home environment with at least one relative with whom the Ancient One has a past can afford. For this reason (among others) I believe our situation is highly preferable to nursing home care for my mother at this stage of the game. I fully recognize that senile dementia can become unmanageable for any caretaker. This doesn't always happen, though: The Ancient One does not always outlive their brain and different stages can be handled most felicitously in different ways.
My maternal grandmother, for instance, remained in the home of and under the care of her youngest daughter and family, all of whom were adults and passing through the house on a regular basis, bringing the world outside into my grandmother, until she could no longer stand it and curled away from all of it in a paranoid fetal position, one of the last described stages of classic Alzheimer's. When, in the nursing home, she could be pried into a wheelchair, she was constantly ready to "go." Various medical staff had their own interpretations of this phenomenon. Mom and I, though, when we visited Grandma at the nursing home, knew she wanted to go anywhere but where she was, that was the ticket. So, one way or another, when we visited her we went through Mom's and my memories and guesses of where Grandma's favorite places to be might have been. We would know we'd hit a good one when she stopped chanting, "Go, go..." and drifted into reverie on our retelling of memories.
So, you see where I'm going with this? Have I gotten there?
I wonder what her numbers will be this morning.
Later.
