Few and Quick

Just a few quick notes tonight. Mom is still sleeping quite a bit and she is a bit grumpy with the caregivers when it’s time to wake up. With me, however, she is always sweet smiles and happiness, so I’m the alarm clock and sometimes the meal enforcer. It’s working for us! I have noticed that if we can get her to taste the food, she is usually willing to try and eat. Getting her to wake up enough to take that first bite is the real trick though. Often times we put the tastiest part of her meal in her mouth to wake her taste buds up. The toast with jam, at breakfast, is usually a winner, and at dinner it’s the fried chicken, or the fruit cup or… whatever she liked the most, the last time she had that meal.

On a bit of a funny note, she is moving away from using her utensils for eating now. She will eat things like her spinach with her fork, but when it comes to anything solid, she uses her fingers. Sometimes she will actually hold the fork in her right hand and use her left hand to eat her meal. Needless to say, we are keeping her hands well cleaned and her nails trimmed close so that we don’t risk her getting sick.

On the issue of germs, I think the local grocery stores consider me a bit of a germ freak. I’m the one who wipes the cart handle down, then the seat where my purse will sit, then the perimeter of the cart all the way around. Anywhere that my hands might touch in the course of a shopping trip, I wipe down. If the store doesn’t have wipes out, then I use the ones I keep in my purse. Why? Because we have one rule in this house above all others… bring no sickness into the house and around mom. With this disease, if she gets physically sick, her mind slips down, too. When her body is fully recovered, her mind has not come back as well. So, yes, we go over the top to keep germs away from Mom and if anyone of us does get sick, we Clorox wipe everything we touch in the off chance she might touch it after us. It makes the house smell funny, but we have managed to keep her from getting even a head cold for the past several years and I count that a win!

Mom is starting to be more prone to pain. When her foot was joggled by someone passing by her chair today, she cried out in pain. I don’t know if she was actually hurt or if she was startled and cannot register the difference in the sensations of pain and surprise. She cried out when I was holding her under her arm to steady her the other morning. Again, I hold her that way each time, but in that instance she seemed to feel intense pain, so I try to be extra gentle while still giving her the support that her increasingly wobbly legs need to keep her upright. 

Mom’s face, especially around her eyes, is getting puffy. I don’t know if it’s from too little movement, too little to drink or infrequent enough urination. I’ll try to get more information when/if I talk to the hospice team next week. If I don’t connect with them, I will ask her doctor. I just want to be sure that I’m not missing something that I could be doing to make things easier for her.

Did I say “a few” or “quick”? Sorry, I wax verbose on occasion. OKAY!! All the time!