After the Fall

At 9:30 the phone rang.  The caller ID said it was my mother, but she always calls my cell phone and yes, it was not my mother.  It was someone from Atria calling to let me know she had had a fall.  I said I'd be there in 10 minutes and probably made it in less.

When I got to Atria there were 2 fire engines and an ambulance.  I got to her apartment and there was nobody there, so I went to the front desk, where they said that they had sent her to Kaiser in Vacaville.  When I got outside, the fire engines were gone, but the ambulance was still there so I called out to them and went down there to see if she was inside, which she was.  She was very confused and wasn't sure why she was in the ambulance.  The paramedic asked if she normally knew things like the year and the month and I told him no.

They took off for the hospital and I followed them.

She was in a room in the ER and very confused.  She didn't know why she was there, doesn't remember falling, and is very upset that her fingers hurt.  She also wanted to know what the liquid was that was trickling down her face (blood).

So the questions she wanted asked were:  what happened?  Why do her fingers hurt?  What should she be doing?  Why was she in a hospital?

How many times can she ask those questions in 2-1/2 hours?  Sometimes she understood my answers, sometimes she told me I wasn't making any sense at all and that she was too old to understand.

The funny thing is...the two things she is fixated on under normal circumstances are her watch (comparing the time with the wall clock) and her toenails.  When she can't think of anything to talk about, she asks me if I think her toenails are pretty.

So in the middle of all those questions she was asking, she suddenly noticed that one foot was peeking out from under the hospital gown and she stopped to let me know how pretty her toenails were.

Over the time we were there, she had x-rays on her hands (fingers sprained) and a CT scan to see if she had a concussion (no).  While she was gone, I had a nice conversation with a social service worker and we talked about dementia and alzheimers.  She gave me her phone # in case I have things I want to discuss with her.

When she returned to the ER room, the doctor put 5 stitches in her forehead and then went off to find the scans that had been taken (this took a long time).  Now she wanted to know again why she was there.  When I mentioned the stitches, she asked when she had stitches because she didn't remember that at all.

I was glad I had my cell phone with me and took her picture to show her what her face looked like.  Oddly, she didn't seem to feel a connection between herself and the picture.

Her cut seemed to bleed a lot periodically and I spent a lot of time cleaning blood off of her face.  Also, she was very upset at all the "red" on her hands and she didn't know what it was and however did she get blood on her hands.

She needed to go to the bathroom badly and I went to get the nurse, but my mother looked at me like I was crazy...she didn't need to go to the bathroom.  Five minutes later if she didn't get up to go to the bathroom she was going to "poop all over" but when the nurse came, she didn't know why she was there...she didn't have to go to the bathroom.

Sigh

Eventually we found that the fingers were just sprained and that the CT scan showed there was no concussion.  A nurse cleaned up her and put a bandage over her stitches.

I knew that I couldn't go off and leave her alone, so I planned to spend the afternoon.  Figuring she would sleep, I stopped by the house here and picked up my Kindle.  It was a good stop because Ned was here and he always brings such sunshine to his visits with his grandma. She stayed in the car and he went out to spend some time with her.

Back at Atria, someone came to explain what actually happened.  Apparently she fell getting out of bed and was bleeding so much she went out into the hall to find help.  She has a pendant to wear, but she has stopped wearing it and even when she wears it, she doesn't know what it is for, so I don't know that it would have helped her.

But they also told me that the day before someone found that she had taken her bed apart and had removed the mattress.  Whoever it was asked if she knew where she was.  She said that yes, she was in San Francisco and was looking for a phone to call her mother.

In the late afternoon, she asked me "where is our mother?"  I said "did you mean where is YOUR mother?"  She said no, where was OUR mother and then snapped back and realized that I was her daughter, not her sister.

I don't know what I will find tomorrow.  I've taken the day off at Logos and will stay at Atria all day just to make sure she's OK.

The Pill Battle

Early in the day, I had stopped by Atria to deliver a gorgeous basket of red carnations I had found at Michael's for my mother.  They look so real and they won't die on her, which is always a plus.  She was unintentionally funny today and though on the one hand it was sad, on the other hand, I couldn't help but laugh at what happened.

I found her sitting in the hall outside the dining room, where the men--fathers and their grown up sons--were stopping by a big bin of bow ties, gift for all the fathers going to lunch.  "I'm getting too old and I don't know what's going on any more," she said, as I explained to her more than once that it was Father's Day and the ties were for all the Dads.

After awhile we went to her apartment.  I had her pills for next week to leave for her and I was fairly certain that if I left her sitting in the hall, she would not remember to take the flowers with her when she went back to her apartment.  And I was right, because even when I reminded her to take them, her reaction was "Oh?  Are those for me?"

We got to the apartment and I went to put her pills in the bathroom, where I always leave them.  I saw that the previous week's pill box still had two days' worth of pills in it.  It had been 3 days since I was last there and when I was there, there were two days' worth of pills not yet taken, so she hasn't been taking her pills.

I confronted her with it (which is always pointless, but somehow I need to do it).  "There are two days worth of pills in there so I know you haven't been taking your pills," I said.

She got defensive and then said "OK...I'll take one NOW."

She got herself a glass of water, and two cookies and went to sit down and dutifully eat her cookies.  I got her pills and handed them to her.  "What are those?" she asked, and then said "Oh...do I take pills?"

I'm going to have to monitor her more closely to make sure she is taking the pills, which means going to Atria more often.  But I had to admit that I got a good chuckle out of her thinking that she was doing what she was supposed to do by eating two cookies with her glass of water.

Feeling Helpless

To cheer myself up, while Ned painted the shelves for my office, I went to Atria.  I hadn't been there in 3 days and had my mother's clean laundry ready to bring back.

It was the kind of day that I just hate because (a) I feel so helpless, and (b) I don't have a clue what to do.

She was kind of curled into a ball on the couch when I arrived and was asleep.  I sat in a chair and waited for her to wake up, which she did about 10 minutes after I arrived.  She felt terrible and she didn't know why.  There didn't seem to be any pain, but her body just wasn't right.  She said she hadn't eaten, but you can never know if that's true or not because she can't remember if she has eaten as soon as we walk out of the dining room.  Her shoes were near the couch, which I always take as a sign that she has at least been out of the apartment, hopefully for a meal.

She seemed sick to her stomach and tried to vomit several times while I was there, but I don't think she actually brought anything up.  She sat in her chair, looking like a limp dishrag.

I checked her kitchen and saw that she has NO food at all, which isn't surprising.  I decided to go and get food and stock the cupboards so that in case she doesn't feel like going out, she has something to eat.  I went for junk food rather than anything nutritious because I wanted things that would (a) last indefinitely and (b) be appealing to her.  (The first thing I bought was a box of Twinkies since I've heard that there are so many preservatives in Twinkies that they will outlast most humans on the planet),

I also replenished her big jar of cashews, bought the kind of potato chips she likes, the oatmeal cookies she always bought, and some goldfish crackers, and then a package of Hershey Kisses, which she used to have in the house all the time.  None of those things will go bad if she doesn't touch them for a year, but if she is hungry they are there.  Oh, I also bought two tiny cups of Haagen Dazs ice cream for her empty freezer (I am remembering when she had 12 partially eaten ice cream cones in there).

When I got back from the store, she was in worse shape and was again curled on the couch with her hands over her head and moaning.  She would try to sit up and when she put her head back would yelp and dive back to the pillow. I stayed for a long time during which time she sat up again and we started talking.  As before, the more we talked, the better she seemed to feel.

My dilemma is whether to take her to the doctor or not.  If she didn't start sitting up, I would have rushed her off (against her will) to the doctor, but it's Sunday and Kaiser in Davis is not open on Sunday and we would have to drive all the way to Sacramento.  She NEVER wants to go to the doctor and if she feels very sick tells me to wait until she's better and then she will go.  Her childhood years as a Christian Scientist really kick in these days, though she converted to Catholicism more than 50 years go.

I have to work at Sutter tomorrow and I considered not going, but either she will be fine, with no memory of today, or she will still feel bad and grudgingly agree go to the doctor and then sit in the exam room and tell the doctor that she feels fine and she doesn't know why I get so worked up.  Then she'll get back in the car and moan about it all again.

The worst part is that as bad as she does or does not feel, what compounds it exponentially is that she doesn't know what's wrong, she can't figure out what caused it, and she can't make it stop, so obviously she is stupid, stupid, stupid (I lost count of how many times I heard that) because she should be able to diagnose it and control it.  But she's just stupid, stupid, stupid.

This lady had better die in her sleep.  She has never had a serious illness in her life and should she have some sort of organ event that requires hospitalization, she is going to be the world's worst patient.

I'm going to work tomorrow, but will stop by Atria on the way home at 4:30 and see how things are.  I know I will worry all day about her, but she doesn't seem to answer her phone any more and sleeps until noon, so I can't stop by on the way to work either.

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!

Meltdown

After the hour of repetitive conversation with my mother, which always depresses me, we had a major crisis.  When I arrived, her door was ajar, not closed, which surprises me because you have to make an effort to leave it open, since it locks automatically.  

She was worried, as she always is, because there was something she needed to ask me, but couldnt remember what it was.  Then she asked me to check her door because there was something wrong with it.  She said she couldn't get it to close and was afraid someone was going to get angry with her for leaving it open.

I checked the door and it was closed, and told her it seemed fine, which seemed to calm her.  I chalked it up to one of the odd fears she sometimes has.

Toward the end of the visit, I got up to get her laundry to take home and wash and I noticed that her room keys were not on the counter where she keeps them.  I didn't say anything, but started looking around and they were nowhere.  She realized I was looking for something and asked what I was doing.  I told her that her keys were missing.  She immediately got what Walt describes as the "kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar" attitude and told me she knew nothing about it.  She never used the keys. Someone must have put them somewhere.

She helped me look and at one point was standing in the living room saying "I can't even remember which shoes we are looking for."  I am afraid I yelled at her that we weren't looking for shoes, we were looking for keys. She was sitting on the couch with her head in her hands and I felt guilty for letting her know how frustrated I was.

I looked everywhere, but they were nowhere.  I even checked the refrigerator, where Alzheimers patients sometimes put things like keys.  I finally was going to leave her my set of keys when I thought that maybe she had put them in her purse.  Then I couldn't find the purse.  She keeps it in a drawer, but it wasn't there.  I checked all the drawers.  No purse.  I finally checked her closet and in a dark corner the purse was there, as were her keys.  

I took out her checkbook, which I long ago put in her wallet to keep her from losing it (that system has worked well).  In the keys search, I had found her AT&T bill and wrote the check for her to sign, but then found out that the return envelope was not there.  I also went to get the newspaper bill, which I made the mistake of not paying 3 days ago.  It was part of a stack of junk papers that needed to be thrown away but she wouldn't let me touch because she needed to go through it all.  I pulled the bill out and told her NOT to throw that away.  But of course she did.  

The nice thing about dementia is that even when something unpleasant happens, you immediately forget it, so by the time I had written the AT&T check and packed up the laundry to go home, stopping to talk with her about a headline in the newspaper, she had forgotten all the drama of a few minutes ago.  But of course I had not and got into the car still agitated.

The Talk about my office

I went to Atria today to deliver meds and pick up laundry.  Fortunately she was in her apartment so the visit was easier because we could talk many times about how much she loved the flowers around here.  I started telling her that Ned was painting my office lavender.

You'd think that would be easy.  You'd be wrong. She has lost the ability to process information.

- Ned is home painting my office.  We're painting it lavender.
- What about lavender?
- That's the color of the paint.
- Paint for what?
- My office.  Ned is painting it.
- Ned?  Where in your house are you painting?
- My office.
- I've never seen your office.  What are you doing to it?
- We're painting it.

etc.

And that's just the FIRST time we talked about it.  Know how many times you can repeat this conversation in an hour?

We also had an argument, of sorts about her mail.  She has a stack of opened envelopes that she says she needs to throw away.  It's been there for awhile.  I told her I'd go through it to see if anything needed to be attended to.  In the tall stack there were ads for X-Finity, ads from AAA asking her to return (for the car she no longer has), empty envelopes, etc.  I got them all sorted and the 3 envelopes she needed to keep set aside and she was adamant that I throw NOTHING away because she had to go through it all herself and decide what she needed to keep.  Then she set it all back where it was, waved her hand over it and said "I have to get rid of all this crap."

Sigh.

Quick Visit

I went back to Atria, where I found my mother sitting by the dining room and sat with her.  I wanted to get coffee, but you can't GET coffee in the damn place any more.  Forget about a cookie or something like that. I discovered that you also can't visit with my mother in the alcove there, especially on bad memory days, which today was.  When we are in her apartment, she spends an inordinate amount of time talking about the beautiful flowers in her apartment and the leaves on the trees outside the window.  With those two topics not possible, we had nothing to talk about at all.  I only stayed 15 minutes and then left.  The good thing is that she has no concept of time, so she had no idea that I stayed such a short time.

If she would ever...just once...not ask me who the cute little girls are on the back of my phone, I would be so happy, but it's like another knife in my heart every time to know that she has no awareness that she has great grandchildren, or that she has ever seen them, or has any interest in them or emotional connection to them.

Sleeping

I stopped at Atria to deliver my mother's pills and her laundry.  I really should have done that yesterday, but put it off another day.

When I got there, her newspaper was still outside and when I knocked there was no answer.  I always fear the worst, and let myself in quietly.

I could see that she was still in bed, at 1 p.m., and tiptoed into her bedroom to see if she was alive.  I was happy to hear that she was snoring loudly, so I tiptoed out again, wrote her a note and left, hoping she'd figure out that the bag I left in her bedroom was filled with clean underwear.