Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Days of Our Lives

Not a good day for Mom. She went to bed by 7 last night as usual but was up by 11:00 convinced that Julie and I had left for work and it was time to get up. Joe tried to get her to go back to bed but she sat at the table doing her crafts until after 1. Joe dozed in the recliner where he was near her. Mom was up again sometime before 5:30 and was in the kitchen. Then, when I went to the kitchen at 6:30ish, Mom came out of her room fully dressed. We made light of it as I subtly questioned her about how well she slept. Mom was very confused and not making sense with her answers. She was very quiet eating her breakfast and kept looking vacantly at me across the table. Light conversation failed. Before I actually left, I questioned her about who would be home with her today - she answered several times that it was just her, she would be alone, just her... When I asked her who Joe was, she did not know. When I asked if she knew who I was, she also did not know. BUT Mom told me that her name was Marjorie Marie Ventura! Mom was like this all day, napping and wandering - compliant but not connected. I tried to keep her up late so I delayed giving her a shower until 7 but she was in bed right after that.

Monday was good though! I was off for the holiday. Mom did not connect any of that, but when I greeted her that morning, she announced that she needed to go shopping. She did not know for what, but she needed to go. So, after breakfast, she and I went to one of her favorite stores, Goodwill. When I told her where we were going, she did not know what Goodwill was. After purchasing a jacket there we went to Michael's to get some more craft supplies and Mom stayed busy sorting and creating the rest of the day.

I hope that you have all read up on Alzheimer's by now and you know that this is part of it all. The difference between today and other days was the vacancy in her thoughts, speech, and eyes all day. I am sure that after a good night's sleep she'll be back to her old ditsy self doing crafts and trying to out banter Joe. I'll keep you posted. And if you haven't read about Alzheimer's/dementia - please do it - it could happen to you. Love you all!

3 comments:

David in Ohio said...

Many prayers and lots of love!

Anonymous said...

Cheryl, this scenerio sounds so familiar. The reason Grandma Ashley had to go to the nursing home is because she was getting up and dressed at all hours of the night. The home she was in could not deal with Grandma and tend to the other patients during the day.

By the way, thanks for the gifts. They will be appreciated and hung. Aunt Joyce said she will take more. We all loved the ones with our name on them.

Let me give you Sheila's address.
SHEILA GUTZMAN
750 E. 8th Ave.
Apt.1
North Pole, AK 99705

class of 2009 said...

good choice of the store where you took grandma. GOODWILL is amazing.