Sorry for the length of this post. Just need to get some stuff out there for thought....
Medical
- If we're not going to do the sleep study any time soon, we should cancel the next appointment. The only reason to take mom to the doctor is when there's a new test that's been run for which we need to hear the results. Otherwise, there's really nothing for the doc to do.
- Even though the CerAxon is over the counter, we're still doing it, right?
- Isabel questions whether we need to continue the B12 into the future. I'm ok either way. I think the doc is just trying different things that some studies have indicated can help, bu there's no silver bullet, and there's no cure.
- I still think mom tends to complain more about her other physical ailments when she's lonely. She also uses the ailments to rationalize her inabilities. She told me the other day she couldn't draw because her wrist hurt too much.
- Last night, (3/20) I told Mom I would take care of her credit card bill. She said "I didn't know those had to be paid."
- I also cleaned out one of the desk drawers with her there next to me. It was full of old, empty check boxes. She wouldn't let me throw them away. She got a bit stressed out about it so I let her keep them.
- Mom doesn't know how much money she has, at all. She's completely oblivious to that. She says she has $400.
- A couple of days ago she told me that she'd set the A/C. She was quite proud of herself for fiddling with the switches. It was on "Heat." It reminded me of how she kept messing up the A/C last year (Sarah had identified the cooling issues) and we thought she didn't understand how to run the thermostat. It now appears that her inability to run the thermostat is just another example of how she's losing the ability to do simple tasks. She never clears out her answering machine, and she has trouble understanding the remote control (she took the batteries out the other day then put them back in backwards - that can cause batteries to heat up, I think).
- Last weekend I took both my kids over there. She talked to them in Spanish the whole time.
- That same day, I heard water running somewhere. I went back to the bathroom off the utility room and found that she had left the hot water faucet on. It had been running for quite some time, so much so that when I opened the bathroom door a small cloud of steam floated out. It was like a small steam bath in there.
- Last time the three of us met we talked about tracking her mental "slips." The problem with that is that is trying to differentiate between the importance of different mental slips. For example, leaving a burner on or leaving the iron on or leaving the water running are all comparable mental slips, but the first two are more dangerous than the third. I think that all three slips should carry the same weight as far as our assessing her cognitive abilities, and that the assessment shouldn't take into account the potential danger of the slips. The potential danger of an event is misleading - what matters is how frequent and how fundamental the slips are.
- Bottom line - I think she's in really bad shape.
- She's open to the maid idea. We may want to pursue that. How can we find someone we can trust?
- Every day I'm more and more convinced that she needs to move. I just finished talking to my boss about his mom, and every person I talk to points out how effective socializing is when trying to improve mental functioning. Maybe mom has gotten so much worse so fast because she's lost herability to get out and interact with people? (Of course, her brain could also be suffering from daily tiny infarctions, but I guess we'll never know). I think we need to seriously ramp up the move discussion. Six months is too long.
- Here's a link we may want to follow up on. Maybe this can lead us to some services to help get mom out of the house? http://precinct2gether.org/senior-citizens-program/
- The move would also alleviate many safety concerns
- I trimmed the vines in front of her house and finished her taxes.
- I am also going to monitor her Chase checking account. She'd been writing checks out of the Chase savings account so I took that checkbook and left her with only the Chase Checking one. That one carries a much lower balance. That's also the one where Jesus is a cosigner. I pointed out to her that I agreed with Isabel about mom using only the credit card. That's a much less stressful way for her to pay for things.
- I think she needs a new phone. Maybe we can find one that has big Speed Dial buttons. With how quickly she seems to be losing the ability to use simple devices, that might make it easier for her to reach us in the future.
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