Take it Minute by Minute

It was yet another trip to Kaiser in Sacramento, this time to take my mother for some further in-depth eye films (no suspected problems, I don't think...I think it's just routine, which her doctor told her should be done at least once at her age).

I was feeling SO much better when we got home.  

As bad as she was yesterday, she was a different person today.  She has no memory of the telephone stuff and thinks she must be going crazy, but she never mentioned her age once today.  I did not hear her say the word "old" except once when the technician asked her age.  

We had a nice lunch with a woman named Shirley, with a gorgeous snow white page boy.  She said that "Mildred is the fun one," and recalled having lunch with my mother and her friend Loretta and how they made her laugh (my mother even kinda sorta remembered who Loretta is after I described her).

A waitress also came by our table and said something about how nice my mother is.

I was wishing that I could meet this nice, fun person that everybody seems to like so much!

But it's always nice having lunch with someone like Shirley, who is 85, and who is also strugging with dementia.  The two of them could not finish sentences, but it didn't seem to matter.

I left Atria feeling much better.

An hour after I got home, I had a call from someone at Atria saying people had seen my mother walking in the hall seeming agitated.  I don't know how bad it really was, but I talked with her and it was the same agitation about the feeling that she needed to be doing something but didn't know what it was that she was supposed to be doing.

I explained to the Atria woman that she says this every day and always seems to be upset that she can't figure out what she is supposed to be doing.  I really don't know if this was worse than usual, or if people just saw it this time.  But they decided they'd put her on a watch list for a bit and check her every couple of hours.

I am feeling so helpless right now.  I am making another appointment with my therapist to brainstorm.  I feel like I should make a "to-do" list for my mother each day so she will know what to do, though I can't think of anything to have her "do" since it's all done for her.  I could put activities at Atria on her to-do list, but she is adamantly opposted to having any fun or doing anything but sitting in her apartment that wouldn't work.

The guy with Alzheimers who writes on Facebook almost daily letting people know what is going on inside his mind has beeh helpful but he started writing very long screeds about what a terrible person Obama is, with many followers answering and writing their own angry messages that I finally unfriended him.

Today is my "day off.' No trip to Atria planned.