Dan posting. Laura and I spent a couple of hours with Mom yesterday, and had a lovely visit. She showed fewer signs of confusion, which I ascribe (perhaps simplisticly) to the evident clearing up of the last bacterial infection. The only thing that struck me as a non-sequiter was that at one point, she thought it very important to get across the thought that "I don't have any experience with this." I could not get her to pin down what "this" is -- I asked whether she meant this place, or this experience (of resting all the time,) but struck out in "20 Questions" on this one. She either gave up in frustration, or lost interest -- her affect is usually flat, and much harder to read than most people's.
If I ever succeeded in reliably reading all her expressions, I daresay I'd give up the writing game and become a professional poker player. But as with her speech, I like to think we learn more the more we try.
Sometimes, as everyone who knows her knows, Mom's quite witty, and that's oddly survived. Yesterday, another side of that came through. Please bear with my thoroughly unscientific recounting of this bit -- it's full of my own observer bias, and my love for that side of my Mom's personality.
Early in the visit, I was sort of "getting her started," which either "takes" or it doesn't. Most days it does nowadays. When I visit Mom, there's usually (though not always) a process of what I think of as "surfacing." At first she speaks most slowly, or perhaps does not even acknowledge my presence, though she is awake. Yesterday she greeted us with a very clear "hello, how are you?" when we announced our presence, but as is the norm, she was slow to engage beyond that. At those times, one fishes for something that engages her a bit.
I told her we'd just come from getting our taxes done, and I told her since Laura stopped working full-time last year, and I had not changed the way they withold my taxes at work, we had a big refund this year. She asked what I was going to do with it. I told her "pay debts." She said "I thought you'd say that." I told her we'd do some shopping too -- we need a new comforter and sheets so we can change them more often when the cat-hair gets on them -- etcetera. This resulted in a "that's good" or two. I asked her if she wanted anything. I offered flowers or plants or other art for her walls... she didn't answer any of these offers. I think it may depress her a bit. Materially, it seems, she's got what we all spend our lives trying to acquire, that is, everything she could ever want. Of course the trick to this is that what she could want is to be able to do the things in life for which one would want any of these material extras. She fell silent, at least; that much I can say objectively.
So, having lost her attention with such offers, I began the project of recapturing it. One thus-far reliable gambit is to talk about all her friends and family who send their love, and to relay any news we know of their lives. So I began that way, and then started to tell her something I think she'd like to know: that all the people we met who knew her in New Jersey, and all her friends, were prone to say that people she met loved her immediately, and that so many people sent their love because she really is loved by so many.
Please understand that I don't paint myself as any sort of icon of filial piety. As often as not, my relationship with my mother has been difficult. Nor do I paint my mother -- your sister, friend, cousin, or aunt -- as some sort of saint. But one must be forgiven such sentimental pronouncements when they are true, and when they are the sentiments most likely to evince a response. She did say "that's lovely," or somesuch, often as I told her this. I told her her children all love her so much, because she taught us that loving people was the most important thing. At this point I threw in a bit of humor by reflex, and said "I have it on good authority that you have a big heart."
Now here's the reason I've put you, gentle reader, through so much personal meandering: I can report that although she may have lost some confidence in her read of such things, she has lost none of her talent for double-entendre.
Her immediate response was, "That's good. You mean physically?" Now that was a surprise. I responded "physically and metaphorically." Then she surprised me again, and asked, "Is that okay?" And I could tell by how she asked that she was well aware that such a thing was of medical interest to her. She wasn't panicked, mind you, or if she was showed no signs of it. But she was certainly interested.
I told her that a while back, the doctor said her heart is a little large, but that it's not so dangerous to her, because it's only dangerous if you're very physically active -- and that was the best I could do with my phrasing on the spot.
I think we're learning each time we see her. The stroke's done terrible things to the quickness with which she used to respond and converse. One has to be patient (and we continually feel like we fail her in that way). I think often she's frustrated when she tries to get things across. But sometimes she's very clear.
It's wrong to say Mom's the same old Estelle, only having suffered a stroke, even beyond impairment in communication and loss of quickness. The confusion that attends so many states she is prone to (for example, the effect of UTIs) can't be reliably and conclusively separated from the spottiness of her memory, especially for recent events. One day she'll remember that we're married and visited her in Freehold, another day she thinks Laura is on the Woodbine staff, and still other days our marriage is wonderful "news."
But stroke is notorious for ravaging one faculty and leaving another incongruously intact. I think Mom's sense of humor was always a signal aspect of her personality, both as others observed her, and as her own strongest coping mechanism. I think yesterday I saw her "getting" that there was a double-entendre, and I think she got that effortlessly. I may be wrong; she may have only identified that there was an idiomatic as well as a literal meaning for the phrase "big heart." But I really do think she got that there was a pun there. The other things she's said now and then unmistakably display a continuing facility with humor.
What's fascinating about this is that she is effortlessly in touch with verbal humor, which is so dependent on complex relationships in syntax and vocabulary, and often the witty rejoinder, or response to a joke, is instantaneous, whereas "serious" formation of speech is more difficult. This reminds me very much of the famous singer, who stuttered when he spoke but not when he sang (Mel Tillis I think).
Notes on the medical front: she was using a lot of accessory muscles to breathe -- that is, breathing seemed difficult, something it took visible motion on her part to achieve. We called in the nurse, and he needed a few minutes to take her 02 reading. Her 02 sats were low (95), so they put her back on the oxygen as we were leaving. We'll see if she is still on it when we return this afternoon; they're using it as needed now, but it's disappointing that it was needed. Sorry to give this short shrift, but if I bloviate (or blogiate, I suppose) any longer, we'll never get back over there!
More later,
Dan
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